Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky

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CHAPTER 2

The power given in England to a simple majority of a single Parliament to change, with the assent of the Crown, any portion of the Constitution is not a common thing among free nations. Italy and Hungary, it is true, appear in this respect to stand on the same basis as England. In Spain there is a written Constitution that makes no special mention of provision for its own reform, and it is a disputed question whether the text of the Constitution can be modified by a simple legislative measure of an ordinary Cortes, or must be submitted to a Constituent Cortes specially summoned for this purpose. But in most constitutions there is a distinct line drawn between organic constitutional changes and ordinary legislation, and careful provisions establish the manner in which alone the former can be carried into effect. In a large number of constitutions, of which those of the Austrian Empire, Belgium, and Bavaria may be cited as examples, two-thirds majorities are required for constitutional changes. In several constitutions it is necessary that such changes should be sanctioned by two successive Parliaments. In the Netherlands they may be demanded by a simple majority in one Parliament, but must be sanctioned, after a dissolution, by two-thirds majorities in its successor. In the German Empire there is a provision that fourteen hostile votes in the Federal Council constitute on these subjects an absolute veto. In France, constitutional changes, after being voted by majorities in each of the two Houses, must be approved by a majority in a National Assembly consisting of the two Houses sitting and voting together. In Switzerland they may be proposed by either Legislative Chamber, or by 50,000 vote-possessing citizens, but they cannot become law until they have been sanctioned by a direct popular vote taken in the form of a Referendum.¹

      Probably none of these provisions are as really efficacious as those which are contained in the Constitutions of the United States. None of them exist in the British Constitution, or in the constitutions of the great colonial democracies that are growing up under the English sceptre. One remarkable attempt to introduce the American principle into an English colony was, indeed, made by the great Australian statesman, Wentworth, who, in 1853, introduced into his scheme for the Constitution of New South Wales a clause providing that alterations in the Constitution could only be carried by two-thirds majorities. Unfortunately, this clause ultimately miscarried in England, and in this, as in the other Colonies, the power of an upper Chamber and the small measure of restraint involved in connection with the mother country alone restrict the power of unbridled democracy.²

Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable in our constitutional history than the small stress which has been placed in England upon mere legislative machinery, upon Constitutional laws definitely tracing the respective limits and powers of different institutions. The system of checks and counterchecks which it has been the object of written constitutions to maintain has been roughly maintained in England by the great diversities that long existed in the constituencies; by the powerful organisation of many distinct, and sometimes conflicting interests; by the great influence and essentially representative character of the House of Lords. It has been supported by a network of usages, traditions, compromises, and understandings which have no real or sufficient basis in the letter of the law, but which have long been universally accepted. Many of the most important working elements in the Constitution—the nature of the Cabinet, the functions of the Prime Minister, the dignity and the attitude of the Speaker, the initiative of the Government in matters of finance, the extent to which the House of Lords may use its veto—rest essentially on the foundation of custom. It is absolutely indispensable to the working of the whole machine that it should be in the hands of honest and trustworthy men, of men determined to subordinate on great occasions their personal and party interests to the interests of the State; imbued with a genuine spirit of compromise, and cordially in harmony with the general spirit of the Constitution. As long as such a spirit prevails in Parliament and governs the constituencies, so long the British Constitution will prove a success. If this spirit is no longer found among rulers and Parliaments and constituencies, there is no constitution which may be more easily dislocated, and which provides less means of checking excesses of bad government.

      ‘Upon the power,’ wrote Adam Smith, ‘which the leading men, the natural aristocracy of every country, have of preserving or defending their respective importance depends the stability and duration of every system of free government.’³ This truth has been always strongly felt in England, and it has sometimes been pushed to very extreme consequences. Thus, in the debates upon the abolition of the Corn Laws, some of the most considerable defenders of these laws refused to argue the question on merely economical grounds. They maintained that the preponderance of the landed interest was a political end of the first magnitude. They argued that it secured for the nation a governing class whose interests were indissolubly connected with the permanent prosperity of England; whose class standard of honour placed them above all suspicion of personal corruption, and who, by living among their people and conducting the local government of their counties, had acquired in a high measure the kinds of knowledge and of capacity that are most needed in political life. Long after the sceptre of power had passed from the landed gentry to the middle classes, the old belief, or prejudice, or superstition that the administration of government ought to be chiefly entrusted to gentlemen, prevailed, and, in spite of all democratic agitations, it is certainly very far from extinct.

      As I have already intimated, this belief, like many others which are now often very disdainfully treated, is by no means incapable of defence. The position of a public man is essentially that of a trustee, and interests of the most enormous importance depend largely on his character. To place the direction of affairs in the hands of honest, trustworthy, and competent men, though it is not the sole, is certainly the most important end of politics, and an immense proportion of the calamities that politicians have brought upon the world are due to the management of great political interests having passed into the hands of mere scheming adventurers. Honesty and dishonesty belong to all ranks and to all grades of fortune, but in dealing with masses of men we must judge by averages and probabilities, and chiefly by the strength of temptation and the pressure of interest. ‘How easy it is,’ as Becky Sharp said, ‘to be virtuous on 5,000l. a year!’ The fact that a trustee who is entrusted with vast money interests is himself not a needy, struggling, embarrassed man, but the possessor of a competent fortune, is generally recognised СКАЧАТЬ