1823 Feb. 19

Greece

Beginning

On this occasion, the proper object of all arrangements taken for the enabling the people thus to act by delegation is the production of such arrangements as it may be presumed would be taken by the people themselves had they respectively sufficient time for the making them an additon to sufficient time for qualifying themselves for the making of them by means of appropriate information in all its various shapes.

Of the mode of election best adjusted to this end mention will be made a little further on in its place

At present suppose for argument sake this best mode found and carried into practice.

Here then we have already two distinguishable bodies of men in the government. 1. The people at large by whom for the taking of these arrangements of detail by which their greatest happiness is to be provided for a set of functionaries have been provided: functionaries placed by the choice or election made of them for that purpose: substitutes delegates functionaries who in point of physical possibility might be chosen out of any assemblage of men but who most naturally and as to the greater portion at any rate most beneficially will have chosen by them from among themselves. In these immediate delegates of the people is supposed /conceived/ as yet to reside the whole of the power just©mentioned: call it the ”Operative power•: in /to/ the people at large remains and resides the power of determining at all times in what individuals that same operative power shall have place: in a word to constitute them what with relation to that function they are: call it the ”Constitutive power•.