1823. March 1.

Greece. J.B. Observations on particular Articles

Division of power

True it is, that where, between one functionary or set of functionaries and another, a power which is independent of that of the people, is shared out, a case there is, in which such division, in so far as it has place, has a tendency to be productive of effects beneficial to the interest of the people. This is - where the power so divided is the Supreme power in the State, say the power of legislation in the highest grade, and the mode of division such, that no valid act can be performed by the one of these authorities without the concurrence of the other. In this case the power is fractionized: the whole power is the integer, and each of them has a fractional part of it. Thus in the English Government the whole of this power is divided into three fractions: to the King belongs one, to the House of Lords another, to the House of Commons another: In the case of each of these two Houses, the fraction is moreover further fractionized: to each Member belongs a fraction of that of the House he sits in: which fraction is thus a sub-fraction of the whole. In a case of this sort, this same good tendency which does it depend upon? It depends upon those disagreements and those contests which in such a case are so natural, and have been so universally exemplified. Every such contest having for its subject matter the obedience of the people, each party has at times found itself under a necessity more or less urgent of courting the good will of the people. The consequence has been that when between the parties so contending a cessation of hostility and a compromise in some shape or other has had place, they have both of them found themselves under the necessity of concurring in the establishment of some arrangement from which the interest and condition of the people has received some more or less beneficial service

Under the sense of this necessity it was that on the occasion of their contest with King John the Members of the great Aristocratical body of the time the Barons in the termination they put to that contest by the Charter which they succeeded in exacting from him, admitted the great body of the freemen into the benefit of some portion of the security, such as it was, which it professed to establish. But, what seems probable, is - that the portion of the population to which this security was on that occasion extended, formed in those days by far the smallest portion of the whole.

Thus again on the occasion of that conflict which in the year 1688 substituted one race of Monarchs to another when the Aristocracy of the country obtained for itself, not only security against arbitrary power in the hands of the Monarch, but the confirmation of a share coordinate with his own in the power belonging to the legislative and judicial departments, they could not altogether avoid admitting the great body of the people to the benefit of some share of the security obtained for themselves in respect of person and property. For their own share they gave themselves that security which was afforded by the undisturbed possession of their till then disputed and precarious share in the Supreme power as above: As To the people, their Masters knew better than to give to them any such security: in place of it, what they gave them was - that tissue of vague, unobligatory and ineffective generalities called the Bill of Rights. From men so situated how could any thing better have reasonably been expected? By a genuine representation of the people, the power of the people would have been encreased, whereby that of those their rulers would immediately have been diminished, and peradventure ultimately abolished. The system of sham representation as if it had been the peoples only safeguard, was therefore most carefully, and in all its plentitude, preserved.