1. division of powers;
2. election; and
3. publicity.
It is not difficult to convince ourselves that these characteristics necessarily flow from the principle of representative government. Indeed,
1. all sole power in fact soon becomes absolute in right. It is therefore necessary that all power in fact should be conscious of dependence. "All unity," says Pascal, "that is not multitude, is tyranny." Hence results the necessity for two Houses of Parliament. If there be only one, the executive power either suppresses it, or falls into so subaltern a condition that there would soon remain only the absolute power of the single House of Parliament.
2. Unless election occurred frequently to place power in new hands, that power which derived its right from itself would soon become absolute in right; this is the tendency of all aristocracies.
3. Publicity, which connects power with society, is the best guarantee against the usurpation of sovereignty as a right by the actual power.
Representative government can neither be established nor developed without assuming, sooner or later, these three characteristics; they are the natural consequences of its principle; but they do not necessarily co-exist, and representative government may exist without their union.
This was the case in England. It is impossible not to enquire why representative government prevailed in that country, and not in the other States of the Continent. For, indeed, the Barbarians who settled in Great Britain had the same origin and the same primitive manners as those who, after the fall of the Roman Empire, overran Europe; and it was not in the midst of very different circumstances that they consolidated their dominion in that country.
From the fifth to the twelfth century, we find no more traces of true representative government in England than upon the Continent; its institutions were analogous to those of the other European nations; and we behold in every land the conflict of the three systems of free, feudal, and monarchical institutions.
We cannot fully resolve this question beforehand, and in a general manner. We shall answer it gradually, as we advance in the examination of facts. We shall see by what successive and varied causes political institutions took a different course in England to that which they pursued on the Continent. We may, however, indicate at once the great fact which, from a very early period, determined the character and direction of British institutions.
Division Of Power.
The first of the great external characteristics of representative government, division of power, is met with in every age, in the government of England. Never was the government concentrated in the hands of the king alone; under the name of the Wittenagemot, of the Council or Assembly of the Barons, and after the reign of Henry III., of the Parliament, a more or less numerous and influential assembly, composed in a particular manner, was always associated with the sovereignty. For a long period, this assembly somewhat subserved despotism, and sometimes substituted civil war and anarchy in the place of despotism; but it always interfered in the central government. An independent council, which derived its strength from the individual power of its members, was always adjoined to the royal authority. The English monarchy has always been the government of the king in council, and the king's council was frequently his adversary. The great council of the king became the Parliament.