The Constitution of England

Chapter IX

186 u c h a p t e r i x u A farther Disadvantage of Republican Governments.—The People are necessarily betrayed by those in whom they trust. However, those general assembliesof aPeoplewhoweremadetodetermine upon things which they neither understood nor examined,—that general confusion in which the Ambitious could at all times hide their artifices,and carry on their schemes with safety, were not the only evils attending the ancient Commonwealths. There was a more secret defect, and a defect that struck immediately at the very vitals of it, inherent in that kind of Government. It was impossible for the People ever to have faithful defenders. Neither those whom they had expresly chosen, nor those whom some personal advantages enabled to govern the Assemblies (for the only use, I must repeat it, which the People ever make of their power, is either to give it away, or allow it to be taken from them) could possibly be united to them by any common feeling of the same concerns. As their influence put them, in a great measure, upon a level with those who were invested withtheexecutive authority, they cared little to restrain oppressions out of the reach of which they saw themselves placed. Nay, they feared they should thereby lessen a power which they knew was one day to be their own; if they had not even already an actual share in it (a). (a) How could it be expected that Men who entertained views of being Praetors, would endeavour to restrain the power of the Praetors,—that Men who aimed at being one day Consuls, would wish to limit the power of the Consuls,—that Men whom their chapter ix 187 Thus, at Rome, the only end which the Tribunes ever pursued with any degree of sin-cerity and perseverance, was to procure to the People, that is to themselves, an admission to all the different dignities in the Republic . After having obtained that a law should be enacted for admitting Plebeians to the Consulship, they procured for them the liberty of intermarrying with the Patricians. They afterwards rendered them admissible to the Dictatorship, to the office of military Tribune, to the Censorship: in a word, the only use they made of the power of the People, was to increase privileges which they called the privileges of all, though they and their friends alone were ever likely to have the enjoyment of them.1 But we do not find that they ever employed the power of the People in things really beneficial to the People. We do not find that they ever set bounds to the terrible power of its Magistrates, that theyeverrepressedthat class of Citizens who knew how to make their crimes pass uncensured,— in a word that they ever endeavoured, on the one hand to regulate, and on the other to strengthen, the judicial power; precautions these, without which men might struggle to the end of time, and never attain true liberty (a). And indeed the judicial power, that sure criterion of the goodness of a Government, was always, at Rome, a mere instrument of tyranny. The Consuls were at all times invested with an absolute power over the lives of the Citizens. The Dictators possessed the same right: so did the Praetors, the Tribunes of the People, the judicial Commissioners named by the Senate , and so, of course, did theSenate itself;andthefactof thethreehundred and seventy deserters whom it commanded to be thrown down at onetime, as Livy relates, from the Tarpeian rock, sufficiently shews that it well knew how to exert its power upon occasion.2 influence among the People made sure of getting into the Senate, would seriously endeavour to confine the authority of the Senate? (a) Without such precautions, laws must always be as Pope expresses it, Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong. [[De Lolme quotes Alexander Pope’s 1733 An Essay on Man, epistle 3, line 194.]] 1. De Lolme here returns to and expands upon a theme he first introduced in book 2, chapter 2; see p. 150, note a. 2. For Tarpeian Rock, see book 2, chapter 1, p. 148, note 3. 188 book ii It even may be said, that, at Rome, the power of life and death, or rather the right of killing, was annexed to every kind of authority whatever, even to that which results from mere influence, or wealth; and...