Deputation

“ Of course, you are furnished with the names of the friends in [pg 11] advance, and your private secretary (your right-hand man) makes it his special business to post you up in all that is necessary about them. The day arrives, and with it the deputation. If the House is sitting, you can see the Members in your own room. It looks well if you can show your accosters how small a chamber you occupy, and how hard at work you have to be at all hours of the day and night. Failing a meeting in Parliament, you can receive them in the Department itself. ”

“ Elective functions—Deputation—Elective councils.—There is a whole class of functionaries, if it be permitted to say so, who owe their origin to election, and who are the mandataries of the people, either in municipal councils, or in general councils, or in the great elective bodies of the State, the Senate and House of Representatives. (See Civil instruction.) The principle of the sovereignty of the people requires that for all its interests, communal, departmental or national, the country have a deliberative voice by means of its representatives. ”

“ The deputation consisted of respectable-looking and apparently earnest men, some of whom spoke the language of Alton Locke, while others talked in a more modern strain of dynamite, Secret Societies, and "a life for a life." The most conspicuous figure in the deputation was an engineer called John Burns, [40] and those who are interested in political development may find something to their mind in the report of the deputation in The Times of February 17th, 1885. ”

“ At least eight days before the end of each session, the legislative body sends to the king a deputation, in order to announce to him the day whereon it proposes to terminate its sittings. The king can come to close the session.
4. If the king thinks it important for the welfare of the state that the session be continued, or that the adjournment should not occur, or that it should occur only for a shorter time, he can send a message to that effect, upon which the legislative body is required to deliberate. ”

“ In that Assembly we see the first-born child of the British Parliament, the eldest brother, so to speak, of the legislatures of the United States and of the English colonies of to-day. This Assembly was composed of a council and a body of twenty-two representatives from the eleven plantations, elected by the freeholders, imposing taxes and passing laws, meeting either annually or at frequent intervals." [59-1] In this manner were our notions of representative government transplanted.
A representative is not necessarily chosen by the people he represents. ”

“ I give my confidence to every individual competent to serve the Nation. Before the men whom the general voice elects to the perilous honour of the Legislative office, such as Marat, such as Robespierre, I bow my head; I am ready to support them to the measure of my poor ability and offer them the humble co-operation of a good citizen. The Committees can bear witness to my ardour and self-sacrifice. ”

“ This critical opposition is the consequence of cabinet government The great scene of debate, the great engine of popular instruction and political controversy, is the legislative assembly. A speech there by an eminent statesman, a party movement by a great political combination, are the best means yet known for arousing, enlivening, and teaching a people. The cabinet system ensures such debates, for it makes them the means by which statesmen advertise themselves for future and confirm themselves in present governments. It brings forward men eager to speak, and gives them occasions to speak. ”

“ Nothing was left for them to do but to appeal to the people. {2338} The General Committee of sixty members, many of them of the loyal majority in the assembly, yielding to the pressure of popular sentiment, called a meeting of the freeholders and freemen of the city at the Exchange, to take into consideration the election of delegates to a convention of representatives from such of the counties of the province as should adopt the measure, the sole object of such convention being the choice of proper persons to represent the colony in the Continental Congress. ”

“ When vice, folly, impudence and knavery, have carried the election one year, they will acquire, in the course of it, fresh influence and power to succeed the next. In the course of the year, the delegate in an assembly that disposes of all commissions, contracts and pensions, has many opportunities to reward his friends among his constituents, and punish his enemies. The son or other relation of one friend has a commission given him in the army, another in the navy, a third a benefice in the church, a fourth in the customs, a fifth in the excise ”

“ We virtually and implicitly allow the institutions of any Government of which we enjoy the benefit, and solicit the protection. In wide extended dominions, though power has been diffused with the most even hand, yet a very small part of the people are either primarily or secondarily consulted in Legislation. The business of the Publick must be done by delegation. The choice of delegates is made by a select number, and those who are not electors stand idle and helpless spectators of the commonweal, wholly unconcerned in the government of themselves. ”

“ Similarly, we may describe the office of a Parliament as that of averaging the interests of the various classes in a community; and a good Parliament is one in which the parties answering to these respective interests are so balanced, that their united legislation concedes to each class as much as consists with the claims of the rest. 425 Besides being comparable in their duties, these great directive centres, social and individual, are comparable in the processes by which their duties are discharged. ”

“ Cabinet ministers are responsible to a majority of the people's representatives in Parliament, and hold office only as long as they retain their confidence. That is how the harmony between the Legislature and the Executive has been secured. ”

“ As soon as any deputy accepts any lucrative employment in the service of one of the departments of the government, he ceases to be a member of the Assembly, and his re-acceptance as a member of the Assembly depends on his resigning such government appointment, and being re-elected by the people. ”

“ The whole is applicable, we think, fully, even to “Congress” itself. Write “our General Legislature” in place of “Parliament,” “assembly” instead of “congress,” for “Bristol” read “Virginia,” and we see no difficulty whatever.
Our general legislature is not an assembly of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain as an agent, and advocate against the other agents and advocates; but our general legislature is a deliberative [Mr. B. has italicized deliberative] assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole. ”

“ By an Assembly of Deputies, popularly elected, who shall form the laws, determine the expenses of administration, decree duties, and fix the military force, with consent of the federal congress.
2. By a Council, similarly chosen, whose privilege it shall be to give or withhold sanction to the laws, to counsel the executive power, and to nominate the individuals holding the higher offices of the state. ”

“ In reality the lieutenant-governor is a. figure-head, and power is in the hands of the legislature, which consists of two houses, a Legislative Council, appointed nominally by the lieutenant-governor, really by the premier, and an Assembly, chosen by what is practically manhood suffrage. ”

“ Any government fit for a high state of civilization would have as one of its fundamental elements a small body, not exceeding in number the members of a cabinet, who should act as a Commission of Legislation, having for its appointed office to make the laws. ”

“ Like the present French House of Commons or Chamber of Deputies, Protestant assemblies in France, being representative institutions, necessarily consisted of deputies, or members (as we would call them) . But the office of Deputy-General was a novelty ordered by the king in 1601, when Henry IV., considering that a “political assembly” had sat too long, commanded them to separate. ”

“ No person who has held or exercised any office, civil or military, except offices merely ministerial and military offices below the grade of colonel, State or otherwise, under the usurping power, shall vote for or be a member of the legislature or governor. ”

“ The second is what is also essential to the nature of a subordinate legislature, and what the Colonists never call in question. That therefore the point here meant to be stated as in debate, is, Whether a subordinate legislature can be instructed, restricted, and controuled, in the very act of legislation? whether the King's instructions or letters from secretaries of state, and such like significations of his Majesty's will and pleasure, is a due and constitutional application of the governors, or of the royal negative? ”

“ But between the sovereign authority and arbitrary government there sometimes intervenes a mean power of which something must be said.
15. Deputies or Representatives AS soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home: when it is necessary to meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home. ”

“ Assembly; “As for returning an answer, they have no power to write one line to any soul but as the Parliament directs; neither may they importune the Parliament for warrants to keep foreign correspondence. With what art and diligence that general one to all the churches was gotten, I know. You know this is no proper Assembly, but a meeting called by the Parliament to advise them in what things they are asked.” ”

“ Others laboured to have the supreme authority to consist of an Assembly chosen by the People, and a Council of State to be chosen by that Assembly, to be vested with executive power, and accountable to that which should next succeed, at which time the power of the said Council should determine. ”

“ During the eventful period I have had the honor to enjoy a seat in Parliament, I have never blindly attached myself to any Minister; but have, as the Representative of an important constituency, uniformly supported those measures which seemed best calculated to maintain the honour of our great country, and to promote the comforts of the people: at the same time I have been equally solicitous for the advancement of those great interests which are so closely identified with the prosperity of your populous and industrious locality. ”

“ This committee owed the extraordinary powers vested in it to the military genius of the ancient nobles, too impatient to submit to the drudgery of civil business. ... The lords of articles, then, not only directed all the proceedings of parliament, but possessed a negative before debate. That committee was chosen and constituted in such a manner as put this valuable privilege entirely in the king's hands. It is extremely probable that our kings once had the sole right of nominating the lords of articles. ”

“ You shall labour that Ministers deposed by the last Assembly, or Commissions flowing from them, for no other cause but the subscribing of the Petition or Declinator against the last Assembly, be, upon their Submission to the Determinations of this Assembly, reponed in their own Places; and such other Ministers as are deposed for no other faults, that they be tried of new; and if that cannot be, strive that Commissions may be directed from this Assembly for Trying and Censuring them according to the nature of their Process. ”

“ The assembly thus constituted shall consider the laws of their own and other states, and gather information relating to them. Anything of the sort which is approved by the elder members of the council shall be studied with all diligence by the younger; who are to be specially watched by the rest of the citizens, and shall receive honour, if they are deserving of honour, or dishonour, if they prove inferior. ”

“ No person shall be a member of the Chamber who is not a subject of the King, thirty years of age, possessing all civil and political rights and the other qualifications required by law. Article 41. Deputies shall represent the nation at large and not the several Provinces from which they are chosen. ”

“ Our Executive, no less than the English and French Executives, is selected by a representative, deliberative body, though in England and France the election is controlled by a permanent legislative chamber, and here by a transient assembly chosen for the purpose and dying with the execution of that purpose. ”

“ The nation, from which alone emanates all the powers, can exercise them only by delegation. The French constitution is representative; the representa- tives are the legislative body and the king.
3. The legislative power is delegated to one National Assembly, composed of temporary representatives freely elected by the people, in order to be exercised by it with the sanction of the king in the manner which shall be determined hereinafter. ”

“ Each member of the National Legislature should consider himself as their immediate representative, and should be the more ready to give attention to their interests and wants because he is not responsible to them. ”

“ So too the officers of the state derive their commission from the people, albeit the king, in conformity with law, decides the detail of their appoint ment, together with the other necessary arrangements of the executive government. Once establish the principle, and the consequences are easy to draw. ”