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but perhaps you will allow, that to no case can they be so applicable, in no case are they so absolutely essential, as in that of the active use of the royal negative. The object of these fictions is, to prevent the Sovereign from coming into personal collision with his people: to provide that popular indignation shall fall on ministers, who can be changed without a convulsion, not on kings, who cannot. They are provisions for the general good of the community, and surely not less for the ease and convenience of the Sovereign than for the tranquillity of his people.

You seem to imagine that our constitution gives the Sovereign a power of permanently resisting any legislative measure; in short an effectual veto. This would make him supreme in legislation, whereas the constitution gives him no legislative power whatever. He may recommend, but he cannot originate a law. It is on all hands agreed, that he cannot constitutionally interfere during the progress of a law through parliament. The royal negative is merely a cautionary power, placed in his hands, to enable him to prevent the evils which might ensue during the interval which must elapse, before he can collect the suffrages of the people on any questionable measure as to which he thinks that parliament does not speak their sentiments. The royal negative is a caution against the errors, haste, or corruption of parliaments. It is a

power, placed in the King's hands, of keeping the law in its present state, until he has had time to enquire pointedly of his people, by dissolving parliament, whether they wish for the proposed alteration. The people return by the hands of the new parliament their deliberate answer. The negative is analogous to the power in our law courts which suspends a verdict, and orders a new trial. The constitution vests the whole right of legislation ultimately in the people, through their constitutional representatives.

A very little reflection will show us, that this must be the case. We have only to consider the powers with which the constitution arms the King and the Parliament respectively, when they are at variance as to the enactment of a law. Parliament presents a law to the King-he refuses his assent-they address him to remove those persons from his councils who have advised that course-he refuses-they stop the supplies-he dissolves parliament.* The peo

* A dissolution of parliament is not a necessary consequence of the exercise of a royal negative. Where opinions are divided in parliament, or that body is submitted to management, it may on reconsideration reverse its former decision. If parliament is determined, the King has no other resource than an appeal to the people. King William, in the early part of his reign, was in the habit of using his negative, and certainly his example gives very little encouragement to any other monarch to follow the same course. He was not only forced before the end of his reign to give

ple thus appealed to return another parliament determined on the same course. They again

his assent to every law to which he had previously refused it ; but, imperious as he was he was compelled to pass a bill for sending his Dutch guards out of the kingdom, and to submit further to the indignity of having a coaxing request, made by him to his subjects for leave to retain them, contumeliously refused. He was forced by parliament to recall a grant he had made to the Earl of Portland; to disown the Scotch Company of which he was a partner; and to pass a bill revoking all the grants which he had made to his favourites of estates in Ireland. After all this, when he had discovered the real limits of his power and consented to abide within them, he lived in excellent harmony with his later parliaments. King William did not dissolve his parliaments when he refused their acts. He knew that an appeal to his people would not suit him. In some points his early parliaments and he understood one another admirably. They voted him large sums of money which he employed in buying their votes. There was a special instance of this in Placemen's Bill in 1693. The King refused his assent-parliament remonstrated the King gave an evasive answer-on a motion to address him for one more explicit, the King was found to have a large majority, and the motion was rejected. Eventually he passed the bill as part of the Act of Settlement. But in spite of all management and corruption, the legislative supremacy of the people did always ultimately prevail, and by constitutional means. William refused his assent to the Triennial Parliament Bill in 1693. The next year

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majority in both houses was already secured; and in all

probability he bargained for their condescension, by agree"ing to the bill for triennial parliaments. This Mr. Harley "brought in, by order of the lower house, immediately after "their first adjournment; and it kept pace with the consi"deration of the supplies."--In the working of the constitu

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present the law. The King has no alternative but to give his assent, or to raise supplies without parliament: that is, compliance or a breach of the constitution. And, as the constitution cannot provide for a breach of itself, it does provide, that the people in every case in which they are deliberately determined shall, through their representatives, be supreme in legislation. The constitution arms the people with means of enforcing their legislative purposes; it arms the King with none of resisting them. No reasonable man can doubt, that to the people the constitution gives supreme power in legislation; to the King no power whatever. Neither is the case altered if the people are considered to stand in a sort of mixed relation of ownership and trusteeship of the constitution. This may vary the obligations they lie under, but it connot change the party in which the constitution vests the power.

If the people answer the King's appeal by sending him a parliament which coincides in his views, they impart their force to his negative. They declare that the dissolved parliament did not speak their sentiments. The King may repeat his appeal, but this power is limited by the necessity of supplies. The experiment would

tion, the deliberate determination of the people is as omnipotent in legislation as in its theory. Royal negatives have not been used since King William's time in the English parliament.

be absurd; but suppose, that after several trials he should get a docile parliament, my argument is not affected. The King has not overcome the people; he has merely by constitutional means changed their determination. Still the constitution, when all its appeals are run through, vests the supreme power of legislation in the people. The royal negative enables the King to suspend a law for a limited time, and for an especial purpose; but not ultimately to prevent it.*

The King, therefore, who declares by anticipation, that he always will, whatever may be the advice of his responsible servants, and whatever may be the determination of his people, interpose with his negative to prevent the enactment of a certain law, commits two breaches of the constitution: first, in that he sets aside those constitutional provisions for the general security, which you are pleased to call little convenient fictions, and brings himself, contrary to the constitution, into personal collision with his people:

* I merely mention the Lords to show, that I have not overlooked them. I have supposed them to coincide with the Commons. When they do not the Commons have constitutional means of compelling them. The Lords do constantly throw out bills which have passed the Commons, Catholic bills among others, but this can only be in cases where from want of importance in the matter at issue, or want of unanimity among themselves, the Commons are not resolute. When they are, the Lords cannot resist them without producing a. breach of the constitution.

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