represented by such mock constituents, the working of the machinery of representation is only encumbered by a useless apparatus.

There is only one point more, connected with representation, I shall notice; it is the duration of the representative body. As at an early period of our history the simple business of parliament was quickly despatched, prorogation was unfrequent, and parliament was mostly elected as often as it assembled. Later the term of duration was irregular. Charles II. protracted his second parliament to seventeen years—a term long enough to obliterate all connexion with the electoral body. In the 461 years preceding the reign of George III. there were 202 parliaments, whose average duration was two years and a half. In the sixty-nine years of the reigns of George III. and IV. there were only thirteen parliaments, averaging five years and one-third each. A three years' term, as fixed at the Revolution, appears a just medium. A lease of seven years, as Junius expresses it, gives a corrupt member six years to commit sins and one year to atone for them. Effective legislation lies between the extremes of annual and septennial parliaments. The short parliament has the inconvenience of frequent elections, and does not afford time to perfect sound measures of national improvement, or even to acquire the information which the responsibility of legislation needs; while the long parliament deprives the elector of the means of repairing the error of his choice within any reasonable period of reco

very, and gives to the representative the means of trading at will upon a trust, which should always be considered as held under constantly renewable liabilities to his constituents. The more the principles of representative government are considered, the stronger will be the conviction, that the elected legislature is as much entitled to have a sufficient period of trial, as the people are to possess a reasonable power of redemption and renewal in their own right.

CHAP. V.

PROGRESS AND PRINCIPLES OF THE ENGLISH
CONSTITUTION.

A DISTINCTION is mostly made by political writers between constitution and government. Government has been already defined to consist of the legislature, the laws, and their administrators; and the constitution is that department of the laws which prescribes the origin, powers, and composition of the legislative body, the functions of the executive, the franchises of the people, and the form, construction, and course of judicial administration. The constitution refers almost exclusively to the acts of public functionaries; the law, more comprehensive, refers not only to these, but to the acts of the people, ̈ or that great division of the community apart from the administrative government.

Every unconstitutional act is also an illegal act,

but every illegal act is not an unconstitutional act; that is, neither the act itself nor the perpetrator may be so important as to contravene the general and fundamental provisions which the constitution has established. It would be unconstitutional in the crown to raise money by prerogative, but it is only unlawful in a person to steal, or for a judge, or magistrate, to convict contrary to established precedent or act of parliament.

Political constitutions have mostly had two origins; either they have been promulgated at once and entire in a public act emanating from the whole or a portion of a community; or they have been the gradual creation of successive emergencies and occasions, resulting from the fluctuating wants of different ages, from the contentions and interests of different orders and parties in society. America, France, and Belgium offer examples of the former description of constitutions; England of the latter.

It was a common practice with writers of the last century, to represent the British constitution as a scheme of government formally planned and established by our ancestors in some remote period of our national history. Such representations might be necessary, and even venial, at a time when antiquity was often considered to give a higher sanction to authority than principle. But a better understanding of the purposes of government dispenses with the necessity of historical fables to establish the justice and utility of popular immunities. Without fear of misconstruction it may be now affirmed, that

it is futile to revert to ages of barbarism for models of free and enlightened institutions; that the early institutions of the Britons were analogous to those of all communities entering on the first stages of civilization; that there is no distant date or point of time in history when the government was to be set up anew -when it was referred to any single person, assembly, or committee, to frame a charter for the future political administration of the country—or when a constitution so prepared and digested was by common consent received and established. The English constitution is the result of successive improvements advancing with the increasing wealth and intelligence of society. Those who entertain a different opinion rely, I apprehend, either on descriptions purely imaginary, or refer to a period too remote for authentic intelligence.

The surest test of the excellence of public institutions, and the extent of popular rights, is the administration of justice. The executive government may claim and exercise a transitory power dependent on the character of the sovereign or his ministers, or imposed on them by the emergency of the moment, but the judicial administration is that permanent and wide-spread division of social machinery which touches all the members of society; and accordingly as their rights are respected or violated under it, may be inferred the general existence or absence of civil liberty among the people. If we apply this test to the state of society under the Anglo-Saxons, as described by Turner and Pal

grave, or to much more recent periods of our annals, down even to the Revolution of 1688, as illustrated in the State Trials, it will be found that popular rights, in the modern sense, had hardly begun to exist were crudely defined, and little appreciated in courts of justice, and courts of justice are, in truth, the only places to look to for evidence of the existence of general practical liberty.

Two reasons may be assigned for misapprehensions on the progress of the English constitution: first, wrong impressions as to the import and application of certain current phrases in acts of parliament and royal proclamations, to which meanings have been ascribed irreconcilable with the contemporary state of society; secondly, the ascribing powers to ancient institutions, designated by popular names, which only appertain to them in their present form of administration. I shall mention one or two examples illustrative of each source of error.

In the writs issued by Edward I. for the assembling of a parliament in 1297, occurs this phrase: "What concerns all should be supported by all, approved by all, and common danger should be repelled by all." "No such introduction to a writ," says Prynne, "had been before issued;" and from it has been deduced the right to universal represen tation, or the right of every one not to be taxed without his consent. Notwithstanding this popu lar expression, the principle it imports never entered into the practical government of the country. For a long period subsequent to the reign of