They are good and useful in
the composition; they must be mischievous if they preponderate so as
virtually to become the whole. Their very excellence in their peculiar
functions may be far from a qualification for others. It cannot escape
observation that when men are too much confined to professional and
faculty habits and, as it were, inveterate in the recurrent employment
of that narrow circle, they are rather disabled than qualified for
whatever depends on the knowledge of mankind, on experience in mixed
affairs, on a comprehensive, connected view of the various,
complicated, external and internal interests which go to the formation
of that multifarious thing called a state.
After all, if the House of Commons were to have a wholly
professional and faculty composition, what is the power of the House
of Commons, circumscribed and shut in by the immovable barriers of
laws, usages, positive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoised
by the House of Lords, and every moment of its existence at the
discretion of the crown to continue, prorogue, or dissolve us? The
power of the House of Commons, direct or indirect, is indeed great;
and long may it be able to preserve its greatness and the spirit
belonging to true greatness at the full; and it will do so as long
as it can keep the breakers of law in India from becoming the makers
of law for England.
Pages:
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76