[clxiv. 116]

1820 June 25

Emancipation Spanish

?.8. Corruptive influence

5. Mode of operation

There are two arrangements, by each of which, restraint may be put upon the power of a functionary or set of functionaries - upon a power, which, but for such restraint would be absolute and despotic: the one is exposure to punishment in case of a misuse of the power appertaining to the situation; the other is - liability to be removed /exposure to removal/ out of it. Of these two arrangements, exposure to punishment may perhaps be necessary to compleat the security, but of itself it is altogether inadequate, and on the supposition that either can suffice without the other may with the least prejudice /inconvenience/ be dispensed with. Liability to be removed /exposure to removal/ is the most obvious, the most simple, the most immediately efficient, the most plainly /manifestly/ apposite remedy. One case however is not less manifest /obvious/ in which it would manifestly be imperfect and inadequate: this is where a functionary who by /according to/ law is exposed to removal refuses to submitt to it.

According to this so compleatly /undeniably/ glorious, though so far from matchless Constitution of ours - functionaries or sets of functionaries of the three sections between /amongst/ which the supreme operative power of the government - the one the Monarch is exposed neither to punishment nor to removal: the Lords /Members of the Lords House/, so long as they /the majority of the body/ act together as little exposed to either: the Members of the Commons House, in that same case as compleatly exempt from punishment, and that not only in effect, but in form likewise, enjoying avowedly an equal impunity: to removal, at the hands of the people, whose removable Agents they profess themselves to be with one breath while they deny it with the next in effect as little exposed as the Lords.