king, a kind of sacred depositum, so are those of the legislative power in the hands of the two houses. The king must abstain from touching them, in the same manner as all the subjects of the kingdom are bound to submit to his prerogatives. When he sits in parliament, he has left, we may say, his executive power without doors, and can only assent or dissent. If the crown had been allowed to take an active part in the business of making laws, it would soon have rendered useless the other branches of the legislature.

CHAPTER V.

In which an Inquiry is made, whether it would be an Advantage to public Liberty, that the Laws should be enacted by the Votes of the People at large.

BUT it will be said, whatever may be the wisdom of the English laws, how great soever their precautions may be with regard to the safety of the individual; the people, as they do not themselves expressly enact them, cannot be looked upon as a free people. The author of the Social Contract carries this opinion even farther: he

says, that, “though the people of England think

they are free, they are much mistaken; they

are so only during the election of members for parliament: as soon as these are elected, the people are slaves-they are nothing*."

Before I answer this objection, I shall observe that the word liberty is one of those which have been most misunderstood or misapplied.

Thus, at Rome, where that class of citizens who were really masters of the state, were sensible that a lawful regular authority, once trusted to a single ruler, would put an end to their tyranny, they taught the people to believe, that, provided those who exercised a military power over them, and overwhelmed them with insults, went by the names of consules, dictatores, patricii, nobiles, in a word, by any other appellation than that horrid one of rer, they were free, and that such a valuable situation must be preferred at the price of every calamity.

In the same manner, certain writers of the present age, misled by their inconsiderate admiration of the governments of ancient times, and perhaps also by a desire of presenting lively contrasts to what they call the degenerate man

* See M. Rousseau's Social Contract, chap. xv.

R

ners of our modern times, have cried up the governments of Sparta and Rome, as the only ones fit for us to imitate. In their opinions, the only proper employment of a free citizen is, to be either incessantly assembled in the forum, or preparing for war. Being valiant, inured to hardships, inflamed with an ardent love of one's country, which is, after all, nothing more than an ardent desire of injuring all mankind for the sake of that society of which we are members,—and with an ardent love of glory, which is likewise nothing more than an ardent desire of committing slaughter, in order to make afterwards a boast of it,-have appeared to these writers to be the only social qualifications worthy of our esteem, and of the encouragement of law-givers*. And while, in order to support such opinions, they have used a profusion of exaggerated expressions without any distinct meaning, and perpetually repeated, though without defining them, the words dastardliness, corruption, greatness of soul, and virtue, they have not once thought of telling us the only thing that was worth our knowing, which is, whether

* I have used all the above expressions in the same sense in which they were used in the ancient commonwealths, and still are by most of the writers who describe their go

vernments.

men were happy under those governments which they have so much exhorted us to imitate.

Nor, while they have thus misapprehended the only rational design of civil societies, have they better understood the true end of the particular institutions by which they were to be regulated. They were satisfied when they saw the few who really governed every thing in the state, at times perform the illusory ceremony of assembling the body of the people, that they might appear to consult them and the mere giving of votes, under any disadvantage in the manner of giving them, and how much soever the law might afterwards be neglected that was thus pretended to have been made in common, has appeared to them to be liberty.

But those writers are seemingly in the right: a man who contributes by his vote to the passing of a law, has himself made the law; in obeying it, he obeys himself;-he therefore is free. A play on words, and nothing more. The individual who has voted in a popular legislative assembly has not made the law that has passed in. it; he has only contributed, or seemed to contribute, towards enacting it, for his thousandth, or even ten thousandth, share; he has had no opportunity of making his objections to the proposed law, or of canvassing it or of proposing

restrictions to it; and he has only been allowed to express his assent or dissent. When a law has passed agreeably to his vote, it is not as a consequence of this his vote that his will happens to take place; it is because a number of other men have accidentally thrown themselves on the same side with him-when a law contrary to his intentions is enacted, he must nevertheless submit to it.

This is not all; for though we should suppose that to give a vote is the essential constituent of liberty, yet such liberty could only be said to last for a single moment, after which it becomes necessary to trust entirely to the discretion of other persons, that is, according to this doctrine, to be no longer free. It becomes necessary, for instance, for the citizen who has given his vote, to rely on the honesty of those who collect the suffrages; and more than once have false declarations been made of them.

The citizen must also trust to other persons for the execution of those things which have been resolved upon in common: and when the assembly shall have separated, and he shall find himself alone, in the presence of the men who are invested with the public power, of the consuls, for instance, or of the dictator, he will have but little security for the continuance of his liberty,