Having this [thus?] established the principle, it would be easy to consider it in practice, and to demonstrate its good effects. It would be easy to prove that it is indispensible for realising the responsibility of the executive power; for curbing inordinate ambition, and turning every kind of superiority to the profit of the State; for preventing fundamental institutions, the public rights of citizens, and all the higher branches of legislation, from being treated as simple measures of government, and made subject to the instability of political experience: but these considerations would lead me too far; I wished to establish this constitutional form in principle, because it is owing to the want of such foundations that it has long been regarded with mistrust and doubt by many enlightened men. Its utility is never disputed; its good results are acknowledged; but men are generally ignorant how it can be made to agree with the general principles of a free government; and it has been found, not without reason, that these principles would be weakened by any derogation from them. In times when the human race is subject to regenerative influences, empiricism is never the ruling spirit: man then requires some rational and rigorous principles which may furnish a solution to every difficulty; and he mistrusts experience when he finds her counsels at variance with those primitive axioms which his reason has firmly adopted. This is our natural disposition: let us not lament it, it characterises all great epochs; it is then only necessary rigidly to examine principles themselves, and to grant dominion to those ideas only which truly deserve it.
How Should It Be Effected?
A second question remains for consideration: it is, to ascertain how the division of the legislative power into two houses ought to be effected, and what should be the mode of formation, what the attributes and the relations of the two assemblies. This, at least to a great degree, is a question of circumstance, the solution of which is almost entirely dependent upon the state of society, its internal constitution, and the manner in which wealth, influence, and intelligence, are distributed; this is sufficiently indicated by what I have said about the causes that led to the formation of the House of Peers in England. It is evident, for example, that those countries in which there was no such inequality as then existed between the different classes of society, would be ill adapted for a division of the legislative power based upon the same ideas, presenting the same characteristics, and entailing the same consequences. Perhaps the only general idea which can be laid down beforehand upon this subject is, that the two assemblies should not proceed from the same source, and be constituted in the same manner; in a word, that they should not be exactly alike. The object of their separation would then be defeated, for their similitude would destroy the mutual independence which is the condition of their utility.
Lecture XIX.
Power and attributes of the British Parliament in the fourteenth century.
At its origin, and subsequent to its complete development, the Parliament retained the name of the Great Council of the kingdom.
Difference between its attributes and its actual power at these two epochs.
Absorption of almost the entire government by the Crown; gradual resumption of its influence by the Parliament.
Original Name Of The Parliament.
The first name borne in England by the assembly which was succeeded by the Parliament, was, as you have seen, that of the great council, the common council of the kingdom, magnum commune consilium regni. The same name has also been given to the Parliament in England for the last two centuries, when it is desired to indicate completely the nature of its interference in the government, and the part which it there performs. It is called the great national council: the king governs in Parliament, that is to say, with the advice and consent of the great council of the nation.
Thus, both at the origin of the British government, and since it has attained its complete development, the same idea has been attached to the assembly, or union of the great public assemblies; and they have both been designated by the same word.