1823 March 1

Greece. J.B's Observations on particular Articles

Warning against latent Negatives

Mark now the secret perils, which every offspring of the wisdom of the so stiled Legislative Senate has to encounter and surmount before it can come into existence. Instead of birth comes abortion, if either to the so stiled Executive Council, that is to say to those out of its five Members, or to the President of the so-stiled Legislative Senate, or to the Principal Secretary of that same Legislative Senate, it has the misfortune to be an object of displeasure, or even of indifference.

But the list of its perils is not yet at an end. When it has passed through them, and (under Article 32) received existence from the hands of the so stiled Executive Council, if as affairs turn out so it happens that to three of the five Members of which the so stiled Executive Council is composed it afterwards ceases to be agreable, it is consigned to a sleep, to which there is no assignable termination. For, says Article 54, "The Council causes the laws to be executed by the Ministers." Suppose then a law, which, to the Minister, by whom execution and effect should be given to it happens to be disagreable or an object of indifference: if so it be likewise to three out of the five Members of the so stiled Executive Council, they have but to let the law pass unnoticed, and so long as this is the case with it it sleeps. Suppose it even to be agreable to the Minister, still if it fails or ceases to be so to any three of these five great functionaries, I would not give much for any benefit that rested upon it.

One concluding point is yet behind. Be the arrangement what it may, in vain might it suit the views of a majority of the so stiled Legislative Senate; in vain might it suit moreover the views of four fifths of the five Members of the so stiled Executive Council. If the President of this same Council is not one of them, he has but to withold from the Act his signature and there is an end of it. For, by Article 57, "Every Act and decree of the Council is signed by the President, countersigned by the Principal Secretary and sealed by Seal of the State."