date

22 Aug 1809 Parl y Reform Corruption
22 Aug 1809

Parl y Reform

Corruption

3. Electors

9

A trustee then is the character in which not only in the present state of things but in every state of things it would be proper that every /each/ parliamentary Elector should be considered: the electors each of them as a trustee for the others and for the whole community at large; the members each of them as a trustee in the first place for his electors, but beyond them /that/ also for the community at large: and that /this/ with only this difference, viz. that whereas, as to /towards/ the electors, the Members are /each Member is/ in virtue of the right and faculty which the /his/ Electors have on any ulterior occasion to re-elect or to forbear to re-elect them in that effective /efficient/ sense responsible, on the other hand with reference to the great body of the people the electors themselves are in no such determinate and efficient sense responsible : members, responsible in the political as well as moral sense of the word responsibility: electors responsible in the moral sense only.

But if such be the moral responsibility of the elector, who having /possessing/ one vote out of say four thousand accepts in return for that one vote that pecuniary recompense which /recompense /return/ in a pecuniary shape that/ is called a bribe, what shall we say to that /the moral responsibility/ of the Peer or richly endowed commoner who having by one means or other by the course of his single influence the faculty of placing in the House of Commons to the number say of ten Members (for greater numbers than this have been exemplified) places for the sake of some feather or feathers in his cap all these ten component /elementary/ parts of the sovereign body /power/ in a state of dependence on the Minister? If, responsibility of the political or say legal head being in both cases added (suppose) to the moral - if in this case a week's imprisonment would be competent to the offence committed by this possessor of a forty thousandth part of the power so possessed by the peer, would the whole life of the peer afford days enough in it for his punishment in this same shape?

[marginal insertion:] say for example to take a sum which has been said to have been exemplified to wit at Norwich half a guinea
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    Thus stands the matter in regard to legal responsibility responsibility to punishment at the hands of the possessors /administrators/ of the power of the legal sanction.

    Look now to moral responsibility - responsibility to the purpose of eventual exposure to the punitive power of the Public Opinion Tribunal, administrators /possessors/ of the force and influence of the popular or say moral sanction: the power that is to say /and in particular the power/ of the democratical sanction of that same invisible yet not the less efficiently /effectively/ operative tribunal: a tribunal like the Vehmic invisible; but, like that not the less operative. To responsibility /punishment/ to not altogether ineffective responsibility in this shape /punishment in a certain shape/, not only in representative democracy the possessors but even in an absolute Monarchy, the possessor of the supreme operative power are capable of being responsible /standing exposed/. In fact In this shape in this sense is /are/ the most compleatly absolute Monarchy the Monarch is always to a certain degree responsible, and feels himself so to be: though in some Monarchies at some times so faint /feeble/ has /such has been the feebleness of/ this responsibility been in the character of a counterforce to the powers of government in the highest grade, that the effect of it in respect of a cause of mitigation to the evils of misrule - of depredation and oppression - in experience has hardly been perceptible. has seldom in any determinate degree or shape been perceptible.
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    So much as to the case of a Monarchy.

    In /Now as to/ the case of a Representative Democracy. In this case at the charge of the Members of the supreme Operative power - of all of them without exception legal responsibility, may have place without difficulty: legal responsibility - not nominal /in name/ only, but effective /in effect/, namely to the purpose of exposure to punishment. During their continuance in that situation, and to the extent of the absolute majority of them, no: a proposition asserting the affirmative would be a self contradictory one. But even during their continuance in office, the minority remain, in the very nature of the case, in a state of legal responsibility as towards and under the majority: and from and after the expiration of their power /authority/ being on the /a/ /no other/ footing /no other than that/ of all the other members of the community they remain each and every of them responsible in the legal sense for whatsoever they may have done - whether in that situation or any other. An arrangement for that purpose has accordingly been proposed in the Text. See Articles
  • Title: [[clx. 340] 1822 July 11 Constitut]
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    1822 July 11

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    Responsibility in the sense /to the purpose/ 1. of exposure /liability/. 2. of sufficiency

    Note

    Note To the word responsibility the sense /import/ thus attributed /attached/ is common to all languages which have sprung out of or derived supplies from a Latin stock

    In English attached to this same word is an /another/ import which requires to be distinguished from it. A person is said to be a responsible person not in virtue of his actual and effectual subjection to either tribunal, and in particular the legal, but in virtue of his being in such a situation, principally in respect of his pecuniary circumstances, that if it were the desire of government that by means of coercion he should be made to do or suffer so and so, he would accordingly be made to do so and so, namely by reason of his being in possession of benefits in particular either money or power or both, on which it would be in the power of government at large, and the judicial branch of it in particular to take hold, supposing it so disposed. /disposed to do so./

    The distinction is a real and an important one In England the situation of King by the avowed state of the law is placed above the field of legal responsibility: to the purpose of exposure to punishment he can not be made to suffer nor consequently to do any thing that it does not please him to do or suffer

    In the other sense however he is in an abundant degree responsible - he has money enough for example by the seizure of which could it be got at without his leave he could be brought to do any thing which by any one it was desired he should be seen doing

    It is by the plenitude of his responsibility in this particular sense that he is eased of all responsibility in the general sense: so material it is that the two senses should be mutually distinguished.

    In general, from the top of the scale to the bottom the more abundantly responsible a man is in respect of sufficiency, the less responsible he in respect of effectual exposure.

    In respect of exposure to punishment the King is irresponsible by law. Other classes /situations/ there are that are so in effect, though by law and to outside shew responsible: witness the Lord Chancellor, his two immediate subordinates and the twelve paid Judges.