tumultuous subjects of the internal kingdom. I might refer to the admirable works of Bacon, Locke, and Watts, to show the vast importance of early impression and example in qualifying the young for the duties of life; and, indeed, it is in my own parlour that I endeavour to enforce those axioms and maxims on the opening minds of my children, which I trust will conduct them safely and innocently through the turbulent voyage of life, and remain as records in the all-seeing Eye, when I have to appear, trembling with apprehension, before the mercy seat. No. XIII. ON THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION. It is the land which slavery's yoke Degrades not by its tyrant thrall ;— Where Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton-woke Music that cannot pall: It is the insulated ground Where mightiest minds have aye been reared; For every liberal art renowned; By every bond endeared. CLARKE. THE invaluable liberty which we possess is caused:-1st, By the impossibility under which the leaders or men in power are placed, of invading and transferring to themselves any branch of the governing executive authority. 2d, By the anxious care, consequently, with which these men continue to watch the exercise of that authority. 3d, By the easy preservation of the solidity, and indivisibility of the power of the crown, from the division of the great men of the state into two assemblies, whose interests clash, and lead them to oppose each other's incroachments. 4th, By the facility and safety to itself with which the Crown can execute the laws, or deprive any subject of office, howsoever overgrown. 5th, By the independence conferred on the Judges, and the open manner of all judicial proceedings. 7th, By trial by Jury. 8th, By Habeas Corpus. 9th, By liberty of the Press. 10th, By the judicial and censorial powers being vested in the people. 11th, By the liberty of the subject being unbounded, except by the laws; all his actions being presumed lawful till that law is pointed out which stops him. Hence the ease and certainty with which some brush so near the law in their tangents from the circle of natural and civil equity. Hence the operations of those law quibbles, and trifling circumstances by which an offender is enabled to slip aside and escape, though ever so narrowly, the breach of the law, let the intrinsic guilt of his conduct be ever so openly admitted. 12th, From the narrow circumscription of the exertions of Government, which can do nothing without law to show the ground on which it stands, it is shut out of that unbounded space unoccupied by any law, in order to have its motions confined to that spot which express and previously-declared provisions have chalked out. For by Magna Charta, the sovereign bound himself neither to go, nor send upon the subject, otherwise than by Trial of Peers, and the law of the land" Nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus nisi per legale judicium parium vel per legem terræ." And this is the most characteristic circumstance in the British constitution. 13th, By the complete subjection of the military to the ordinary courts of law. Montesquieu, speaking of the English constitution, says;-"Have not Rome, Lacedemon, and Carthage perished? It will perish when the legislative power shall have become more corrupt than the executive." But it is different from all others, and cannot be judged by analogy. In the ancient governments, all liberty and power were accumulated as it were on one point, so as to leave, every where else, only slavery and misery, consequently only seeds of division and secret animosity. In England the political rights of the people are inseparably connected with the right of property, which, like the blood of the body, circulates to VOL. III. |