Jeremy Bentham

“ Coming now then to the British Constitution, it is in the superior degree in which these qualifications of the legislative body are possessed by it, that its peculiar excellence is to consist. It is possessing the qualification of strength, that it possesses the advantage of a monarchy. But how is it then that, by his account, it possesses the qualification of strength? By any disposition made of the legislative power? By the legislative power's being lodged in the hands of a single person, as in the case of a monarchy? ”

“ But hold Our Author, when he attributes to the members of an Aristocracy more wisdom than to those of a Democracy, has a reason of his own. Let us endeavour to understand it, and then apply it, as we have applied the others. In Aristocratical bodies, we are to understand there is more experience at least it is intended by some body or other there should be: which, it seems, answers the same purpose as if there was. `In Aristocracies,' says our Author, `there is more wisdom to be found, than in the other frames of Government ”

“ For, as with us the executive power of the laws is lodged in a single person, they have all the advantages of strength and dispatch that are to be found in the most absolute monarchy: and, as the legislature of the kingdom is entrusted to three distinct powers entirely independent of each other; first, the King; secondly, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, which is an aristocratical assembly of persons selected for their piety, their birth, their wisdom, their valour, or their property ”

“ The power, the only power our Author has been speaking of all along till now, is the legislative. `Tis to this, and this alone, that he has given the name of `sovereign power'. `Tis this power, the different distributions of which he makes the characteristics of his three different forms of government. ”

“ It is by looking at men's titles that he perceives, not merely that they ought to possess certain merits, not that there is reason to wish they may possess them, but that they do actually possess them, and that it is by possessing those merits that they came to possess these titles. Seeing that some are bishops, he knows that they are pious: seeing that some are peers, he knows that they are wise, rich, valiant. ”

“ In the members of a Democracy in particular, there is likely to be a want of wisdom Why? The greater part being poor, are, when they begin to take upon them the management of affairs, uneducated: being uneducated, they are illiterate: being illiterate, they are ignorant. ”

“ Experience is, in virtue of their being an anstocratical assembly, to afford them wisdom: thus far we were arrived before. But he now pushes the deduction a step farther.Wisdom is to afford them `circumspection and mediatory caution;' qualifications which it seems as if we should see nothing of, were it not for them. Let us now put a case. The business, indeed, that originates in the House of Lords is, as things stand, so little, that our Author seems to forget that there is any. ”

“ Ignorant, therefore, and unwise, if that be what is meant by ignorant, they begin. Depending for their daily bread on the profits of some petty traffic, or the labour of some manual occupation, they are nailed to the work-board, or the counter. ”

“ It is neither more nor less, than that want of leisure which the bulk of the numerous members of a Democracy must necessarily labour under, more than those of an Aristocracy. But of this, what intimation is there to be collected, from any thing that has been suggested by our Author? ”