Thoughts on Government
193
made? In a large society, inhabiting an extensive country, it is impossible
that the whole should assemble to make laws. The first necessary step,
then, is to depute power from the many to a few of the most wise and
good. But by what rules shall you choose your representatives? Agree
upon the number and qualifications of persons who shall have the benefit of choosing, or annex this privilege to the inhabitants of a certain extent of ground.
The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed,
in constituting this representative assembly. It should be in miniature an
exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason and act
like them. That it may be the interest of this assembly to do strict justice
at all times, it should be an equal representation, or, in other words, equal
interests among the people should have equal interests in it. Great care
should be taken to effect this, and to prevent unfair, partial, and corrupt
elections. Such regulations, however, may be better made in times of
greater tranquillity than the present; and they will spring up themselves
naturally, when all the powers of government come to be in the hands of
the people’s friends. At present, it will be safest to proceed in all established modes, to which the people have been familiarized by habit.
A representation of the people in one assembly being obtained, a question arises, whether all the powers of government, legislative, executive,
and judicial, shall be left in this body? I think a people cannot be long
free, nor ever happy, whose government is in one assembly. My reasons
for this opinion are as follow:—
1. A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an
individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected
and defects supplied by some controlling power.
2. A single assembly is apt to be avaricious, and in time will not scruple to exempt itself from burdens, which it will lay, without compunction, on its constituents.
3. A single assembly is apt to grow ambitious, and after a time will
not hesitate to vote itself perpetual. This was one fault of the Long Parliament; but more remarkably of Holland, whose assembly first voted
themselves from annual to septennial, then for life, and after a course of