1.With a set of data,such as we have seen in the last chapter,we may judge whether our author can meet with any difficulty in proving the British Constitution to be the best of all possible governments,or indeed anything else that he has a mind.In his paragraph on this subject there are several things that lay claim to our attention.But it is necessary we should have it under our eye.
2.`But happily for us in1this island the British Constitution has long remained,and I trust will long continue,a standing exception to the truth of this observation.For,as with us the executive power of the laws is lodged in a single person,they have all the advantages of strength and dispatch that are to be found in the most absolute monarchy:and,as the legislature of the kingdom is entrusted to three distinct powers entirely independent of each other;first,the King;secondly,the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,which is an aristocrati cal assembly of persons selected for their piety,their birth,their wisdom,their valour,or their property;and thirdly,the House of Commons,freely chosen by the people from among themselves,which makes it a kind of democracy;as this aggregate body,actuated by different springs,and attentive to different interests,composes the British Parliament,and has the supreme disposal of every thing;there can no inconvenience be attempted by either of the three branches,but will be withstood by one of the other two;each branch being armed with a negative power sufficient to repel any innovation which it shall think inexpedient or dangerous.'
3.`Here then is lodged the sovereignty of the British Constitution;and lodged as beneficially as is possible for society.For in no other shape could we be so certain of finding the three great qualities of Government so well and so happily united.If the supreme power were lodged in any one of the three branches separately,we must be exposed to the inconveniencies of either absolute monarchy,aristocracy,or democracy;and so want two of the principal ingredients of good polity,either virtue,wisdom,or power.If it were lodged in any two of the branches;for instance,in the King and House of Lords,our laws might be providently made and well executed,but they might not always have the good of the people in view:if lodged in the King and Commons,we should want that circumspection and mediatory caution,which the wisdom of the Peers is to afford:if the supreme rights of legislature were lodged in the two Houses only,and the King had no negative upon their proceedings,they might be tempted to encroach upon the royal prerogative,or perhaps to abolish the kingly office,and thereby weaken (if not totally destroy)the strength of the executive power.But the constitutional government of this island is so admirably tempered and compounded,that nothing can endanger or hurt it,but destroy ing the equilibrium of power between one branch of the legislature and the rest.For if ever it should happen that the independence of any one of the three should be lost,or that it should become subservient to the views of either of the other two,there would1soon be an end of our constitution.The legislature would be changed from that which was originally set up by the general consent and fundamental act of the society;and such a change,however effected,is,according to Mr Locke (who perhaps carries his theory too far)at once an entire dissolution of the bands of Government,and the people would be reduced to a state of anarchy,with liberty to constitute to themselves a new legislative power.'
4.In considering the first of these two paragraphs,in the first place,the phenomenon we should little expect to see from any thing that goes before,is a certain executive power,that now,for the first time,bolts out upon us without warning or introduction.
The power,the only power our Author has been speaking of all along till now,is the legislative.`Tis to this,and this alone,that he has given the name of `sovereign power'.`Tis this power,the different distributions of which he makes the characteristics of his three different forms of government.
`Tis with these different distributions,distributions made of the legislative power,that,according to his account,are connected the several qualifications laid down by him,as `requisites for supremacy':qualifications in the possession of which consist all the advantages which can belong to any form of Government.Coming now then to the British Constitution,it is in the superior degree in which these qualifications of the legislative body are possessed by it,that its peculiar excellence is to consist.It is possessing the qualification of strength,that it possesses the advan tage of a monarchy.But how is it then that,by his account,it possesses the qualification of strength?By any disposition made of the legislative power?By the legislative power's being lodged in the hands of a single person,as in the case of a monarchy?No;but to a disposition made of a new power,which comes in,as it were,in a parenthesis,a new power which we now hear of for the first time,a power which has not,by any description given of it,been distinguished from the legislative,an executive.
