indeed, managed by the intrigues and combination of a few, who are fituated near the place of election, each voter confidering his fingle fuffrage as too minute a portion of the general intereft to deferve his care or attendance, much lefs to be worth any opposition to influence and application; that whilft we contract the reprefentation within a compafs fmall enough to admit of orderly debate, the intereft of the conftituent becomes too fmall, of the reprefentative too great. It is difficult alfo to maintain any connection between them. He who reprefents two hundred thoufands, is neceffarily a ftranger to the greatest part of thofe who elect him; and when his intereft amongst them ceafes to depend upon an acquaintance with their persons and character, or a care or knowledge of their affairs; when fuch a reprefentative finds the treasures and honours of a great empire at the difpofal of a few, and himself one of the few, there is little reafon to hope that he will not prefer to his public duty, thofe temptations of perfonal aggrandizement which his fituation offers, and which the price of his vote will always purchase. All appeal to the people is precluded by the impoffibility of collecting a fufficient proportion of their force and numbers.

The

The factions, and the unanimity, of the fenate are equally dangerous. Add to thefe confiderations, that in a democratic conftitution the mechanism is too complicated, and the motions too flow for the operations of a great empire; whose defence and government require execution and dispatch, in proportion to the magnitude, extent, and variety of its concerns. There is weight, no doubt, in these reafons; but much of the objection feems to be done away by the contrivance of a federal republic, which, distributing the country into districts of a commodious extent, and leaving to each diftrict its internal legislation, referves to a convention of the ftates, the adjustment of their relative claims; the levying, direction, and government of the common force of the confederacy; the requifition of fubfidies for the fupport of this force; the making of peace and war; the entering into treaties; the regulation of foreign commerce; the equalization of duties upon imports, fo as to prevent the defrauding of the revenue of one province by finuggling articles of taxation from the borders of another; and likewife fo as to guard againft undue partialities in the encouragement of trade. To what limits fuch a republic might, without inconveniency, enlarge its

dominions, by affuming neighbouring provinces into the confederation; or how far it is capable of uniting the liberty of a fmall commonwealth, with the fafety of a powerful empire; or whether, amongst co-ordinate powers, diffenfions and jealoufies would not be likely to arife, which, for want of a common fuperior, might proceed to fatal extremities, are queftions, upon which the records of mankind do not authorize us to decide with tolerable certainty. The experiment is about to be tried in America' upon a large fcale.

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CHAP. VII.

OF THE, BRITISH CONSTITUTION.

Y the CONSTITUTION of a country is

BY

meant fo much of its law, as relates to the defignation and form of the legislature; the rights and fun&ions of the feveral parts of the legislative body; the conftruction, office, and jurifdiction of courts of juflice. The conflitution is one principal divifion, fection, or title, of the code of public laws; diftinguished from the reft only by the fuperior importance of the fubject of which it treats. Therefore the terms conflitutional and unconflitutional mean legal and illegal. The diftinction and the ideas, which these terms denote, are founded in the fame authority with the law of the land upon any other fubject; and to be afcertained by the fame inquiries. In England the fyftem of public jurifprudence is made up of acts of parliament, of decifions of courts of law, and of immemorial ufages: confequently, thefe are the principles of

which the English conflitution itself consists; the fources from which all our knowledge of its nature and limitations is to be deduced, and the authorities to which all appeal ought to be made, and by which every conftitutional doubt and queftion can alone be decided. This plain and intelligible definition is the more necessary to be preferved in our thoughts, as fome writers upon the fubject abfurdly confound what is conftitutional, with what is expedient; pronouncing forthwith a measure to be unconflitutional, which they adjudge in any refpect to be detrimental or dangerous whilft others again afcribe a kind of tranfcendant authority, or myfterious fancity, to the conflitution, as if it were founded in fome higher original than that which gives force and obligation to the ordinary laws and ftatutes of the realm, or were inviolable on any other account than its intrinfic utility. An act of parliament in England can never be unconstitutional, in the firict and proper acceptation of the term; in a lower fenfe it may, viz. when it militates with the fpirit, contradicts the analogy, or defeats the provifion of other laws, made to regulate the form of government. Even that flagitious abufe of their truft, by which a parliament of Henry the Eighth conferred upon the king's proclama