ld be made subservient to a system,
by which it was to be degraded from the dignity of a national council,
into a mere member of the Court, it must be greatly changed from its
original character.

In speaking of this body, I have my eye chiefly on the House of Commons.
I hope I shall be indulged in a few observations on the nature and
character of that assembly; not with regard to its _legal form and
power_, but to its _spirit_, and to the purposes it is meant to answer in
the constitution.

The House of Commons was supposed originally to be _no part of the
standing Government of this country_. It was considered as a control,
issuing immediately from the people, and speedily to be resolved into the
mass from whence it arose. In this respect it was in the higher part of
Government what juries are in the lower. The capacity of a magistrate
being transitory, and that of a citizen permanent, the latter capacity it
was hoped would of course preponderate in all discussions, not only
between the people and the standing authority of the Crown, but between
the people and the fleeting authority of the House of Commons itself. It
was hoped that, being of a middle nature between subject and Government,
they would feel with a more tender and a nearer interest everything that
concerned the people, than the other remoter and more permanent parts of
Legislature.

Whatever alterations time and the necessary accommodation of business may
have introduced, this character can never be sustained, unless the House
of Commons shall be made to bear some stamp of the actual disposition of
the people at large. It would (among public misfortunes) be an evil more
natural and tolerable, that the House of Commons should be infected with
every epidemical frenzy of the people, as this would indicate some
consanguinity, some sympathy of nature with their constituents, than that
they should in all cases be wholly untouched by the opinions and feelings
of the people out of doors. By this want of sympathy they would cease to
be a House of Commons. For it is not the derivation of the power of that
House from the people, which makes it in a distinct sense their
representative. The King is the representative of the people; so are the
Lords; so are the Judges. They all are trustees for the people, as well
as the Commons; because no power is given for the sole sake of the
holder; and although Government certainly is an institution of Divine
authorit