The Constitution of England

Chapter VII

178 u c h a p t e r v i i u The Subject continued—The Advantages that accrue to the People from their appointing Representatives, are very inconsiderable, unless they also entirely trust their Legislative Authority to them. The observations made in the preceding Chapter are so obvious, that the People themselves, in popular Governments, have always been sensible of the truth of them, and never thought it possible to remedy, by themselves alone, thedisadvantagesnecessarilyattendingtheirsituation.Wheneverthe oppressions of their Rulers have forced them to resort to some uncommon exertion of their legal powers, they have immediately put themselvesunder the direction of those few Men who had been instrumental in informing and encouraging them; and when the nature of the circumstances has required any degree of firmness and perseverance in their conduct, they have never been able to attain the ends they proposed to themselves, except by means of the most implicit deference to those Leaders whom they had thus appointed. But as these Leaders, thus hastily chosen, are easily intimidated by the continual display which is made before them of the terrors of Power, as that unlimited confidence which the People now repose in them, onlytakes place when public liberty is in the utmost danger, and cannot be kept up otherwise than by an extraordinary conjunction of circumstances, and in which those who govern seldom suffer themselves to be caught more than once, the People have constantly sought to avail themselves of the short intervals of superiority which the chance of events had given them, for rendering durable those advantages which they knewwould,of themselves, chapter vii 179 be but transitory, and for getting some persons appointed, whose peculiar office it may be to protect them, and whom the Constitution shall thenceforwards recognize. Thus it was that the People of Lacedaemon obtained their Ephori, and the People of Rome their Tribunes.1 We grant this, will it be said; but the Roman People never allowed their Tribunes to conclude any thing definitively; they, on the contrary, reserved tothemselvestherightof ratifying (a)anyresolutionsthelattershouldtake. This, I answer, was the very circum-stance that rendered the institution of Tribunes totally ineffectual in the event. The People thuswanting to interfere with their own opinions, in the resolutions of those on whom they had, in their wisdom, determined entirely to rely, and endeavouring to settle with an hundred thousand votes, things which would have been settled equally well by the votes of their advisers, defeated in the issueevery beneficial end of their former provisions; and while they meant to preserve an appearance of their sovereignty, (a chimerical appearance, since it was under the direction of others that they intended to vote) they fell back into all those inconveniences which we have before mentioned. The Senators, the Consuls, the Dictators, and the other great Men in the Republic, whom the People were prudent enough to fear, and simple enough to believe, continued still to mix with them, and play off their political artifices. They continued to make speeches to them (b), and still (a) See Rousseau’s Social Contract. [[For Rousseau’s statement concerning the Roman tribunes, see The Social Contract, book 3, chapter 15.]] (b) Valerius Maximus relates that the Tribunes of the People having offered to propose some regulations in regard to the price of corn, in a time of great scarcity, Scipio Nasica over-ruled the Assembly merely by saying, “Silence Romans; I know better than you whatisexpedientfortheRepublic.WhichwordswerenosoonerheardbythePeople, than they shewed by a silence full of veneration, that they were more affected by his authority, than by the necessity of providing for their own subsistence.”—Tacete,quaeso, Quirites. Plus enim ego quam vos quid reipublicae expediat intelligo.Quâ voceauditâ,omnes pleno venerationis silentio, majorem ejus autoritatis quam alimentorum suorum curam egerunt . [[De Lolme cites and translates Valerius Maximus (ca. 20 b.c.e.–50 c.e.),Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX (Nine books of memorable deeds and sayings), book 3, chapter 7, section 3.]] 1. The ephori of the ancient republic of Sparta (or “Lacedaemon”) were five magistrates elected annually by the popular assembly. Like the tribunes of republican Rome, the ephori functioned to protect the interests and liberties of the populace against the power of the Spartan kings and wealthier citizens. 180 book ii availed them-selves of their privilege of changing at their pleasure the place and form of the public meetings. When they did not...