themselves, instead of an assembly of their representatives only. A secondary value only is thus allowed to the representative system. This is a grave error. Even were it physically and locally possible to assemble the entire American people, and rule by the Athenian pebble or procheironia (their show of hands), we must still cling to the representative system as a substantive institution. The market government belongs to antiquity-the period of city-states-not to our period of national states; and national states have not only a meaning relating to physical extent of country.

It has been observed that the period of nationalization of tribes toward the close of the middle ages, is one of the most important in the progress of civilization and modern political development, as a period of medieval disintegration and division would be the necessary effect of denationalization. Rome perished of a political bankruptcy, because the ancient city-state was incompatible with an extensive empire. A representative government could alone have saved it; for its recollections and forms of liberty prevented a full-blown centralization, the only other form which could have given to it a Russian stability. Constantine, indeed, established a centralized court government; but it was then too late. The decree had gone forth that the vessel should part amidst the breakers.

The market democracy is irreconcilable with liberty as we love it. It is absolutism which exists wherever power, unmitigated, undivided and unchecked, is in the hands of any one or of any body of men. It is the opposite of liberty. The people, which means nothing more than an aggregate of men, require fundamental laws of restraint, as much as each component individual does.

Unless we divide the power into two parts-into

5

the electing power, which periodically appoints and recalls, and into the power of elected trustees appointed to legislate, and, as trustees, are limited in their power,absolutism is unavoidable. Absolutism is the negation of protection; protection in its highest sense is an essential element of liberty. It is the trusteeship that gives so high a value to the representative government. When the Athenians, trying the unfortunate generals after the battle of Argenusæ, were reminded that they acted in direct contradiction to the laws, they exclaimed that they were the people; they made the laws; why should they not have the privilege of disregarding them?

Every one feels his responsibility far more distinctly as trustee than otherwise. Let a man in an excited crowd be suddenly singled out, and made a member of a committee to reflect and resolve for that crowd, and he will feel the difference in an instant. How easy it would be to receive the most lavish and most dangerous money grants from an undivided and absolute multitude! Is it necessary to remind the reader that liberty has been lost quite as often from false gratitude toward a personally popular man as from any other reason? Trustees, carefully looking around them, and conscious that they have to give an account of themselves, are not so easily swayed by ravishing gratitude. The trusteeship in the representative government is the only means yet discovered to

To refer to books on such a subject is very difficult; for it almost comprehends the whole history of modern liberty.

I have treated on many points connected with the representative system in the Political Ethics. The reader will peruse with interest M. Guizot's Histoire des Origines du Gouvernement Representatif en Europe. Paris, 1851. It is interesting to learn the views of a Frenchman of such celebrity on a subject of vital interest to us. Regarding the deputative principle, the Histoire de la Formation et des Progres du Tiers Etat, by Augustin Thierry, Paris, 1853, is instructive. I am sorry that I have not been able to read Mr. George Harris's True Theory of Representation in a State, London, 1852.

temper the rashness of the democracy, and overcome the obstinacy of monarchs.

6

How necessary for liberty a national representative government is a representative system comprehending the whole state, and throwing liberty over it broadcastwill appear at once, if we remember that local selfgovernment exists in a very high degree in many Asiatic countries, where, however, there is no union of these many insulated self-governments and no state selfgovernment, and therefore no liberty. We shall also presently see that where there is only a national representative government without local self-government, there is no liberty, as we understand it.

Nor must we forget two facts, which furnish us with an important lesson on this subject. Wherever estates or other bodies have existed, no matter how great their privileges were, or how zealously they defended their liberties, civil liberty has not been firmly established; on the contrary, it has been lost in the course of time, unless the estates have become united into some national or state representative system. Where are the liberties of Arragon, and where is the freedom of the many Germanic polities? It was one of the greatest political blessings of England, that favourable circumstances promoted an early national fusion of the estates into two houses. On the other hand, we find that those governments which can no longer resist the demand of liberty by the people, yet are bent on yielding as little as possible, always have tried as long as possible to grant provincial estates only. Some monarchs of this century have shown a real horror of national representation, and would rather have perilled

I take here the term national in the sense of relating to an entire society spread over the territory of an extensive state, and as contradistinguished from what belongs to a city-state.

their crown than granted it; yet some of these monarchs have readily granted an urban self-government of considerable extent. Their ministers and servants have frequently gone so far as to extol local self-government, and to proclaim the idea that liberty consists far more in the "administration" being left to the people, than in any general representative government. In doing so, they pointed to countries in which the latter, existing alone, had brought no real liberty. Asia, as was before stated, furnishes us with innumerable instances of local selfgovernment, which are there neither a source nor a test of liberty.' True liberty stands in need of both, and of a bonâ fide representative government largely and minutely carried out.

7 A curious picture of Asiatic local self-government, without any liberty, has lately been given to the public, in Lieutenant-Colonel C. G. Dixon's Sketch of Maiwara, giving a brief account of the origin and habits of the Mairs, &c. London, 1851.

CHAPTER XVI.

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT CONTINUED. BASIS OF PROPERTY. DIRECT AND INDIRECT ELECTIONS.

28. THE prominent points of a national representative government, considered as a guarantee of liberty, consist in the representative principle, that is, the basis of representation and the right of voting for the representative, in the election of laws, and in the organization of the representative legislature, with its own protection and liberties.

All that we can say Anglican liberty requires, regarding the principle of representation, is that it be a broad or popular one. Universal suffrage cannot be said to be an Anglican principle, whatever the American view, of which we shall treat by and by, may be. The principle of a wide popular representation, however, or an extensive right of voting, has constantly though slowly expanded in England, and continues to be expanding.'

The English not allowing universal suffrage, or indeed a representation based upon numbers" alone, require some limit beyond which the right of voting shall not go. This limit is, as a general rule, which has however its exceptions, indicated either by property, or by a certain annual expense which usually indicates the amount of income over which man may dispose, namely house-rent. Hence it is often said that property is the basis of representation

For the historic development of the English representative government, it will hardly be necessary to refer the reader to Hallam's History of the English Constitution.