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bay tree: universal end (though not so expressed) greatest
happiness of greatest number; universal means (tho' not so expressed) – operatively
ruling functionaries placed & at short intervals displaceable
immediately or unimmediately by greatest number who thus are constituent & in that sense
ruling functionaries.
Thus far such in words, & such perhaps in design, is
this your Spanish Constitution; but, at the next step come those
details which render it in my eyes – can you forgive me for saying so?
a tissue of circumstances. Whether in the circumstances
in which it was made it could have been made better is what I have no adequate means
of judging of: nor to any future practical purpose does it
seem material: but now let is see what is is, that is made.
System of election instead of the simple fabric exemplified
in England & the Anglo American United States, not
to mention so many other countries, three or four stages of election
I dont know very well which, heaped upon another: consequence
no immediate or surely operative, control, exercisable by constituents over Representatives:
& at, any each succeeding stage, corruption (as Dr Rocha the Editor of Portugueze be as well observed) may do away
the good effect of uncorruption at every one of the preceding
ones. Thus much for the Legislative Department. But, then therein from comes
a practicably irremovable & hereditary Executive: the Executive & an essentially
implacably & unchangeable adversary, whom the
ever changing Legislative after having overthrown him, has
reinstated in much more than half his power:⊞ ⊞ giving to him, the faculty to be enjoyed without disturbance as soon as ever the Constitution experiences a settled obedience the faculty of deposing rendering the a legislature compleatly ineffective rendering their legislature completely ineffective. On the instruments,
of whom with scarce are exception this unchangeable enemy
has the choice, depends all the execution & effect, capable
of being given to the laws & other arrangements made
by the Legislature: say the neither the fragment of a Legislature: for no more than one half is it, of the Legislative power,
that belongs to the Representatives of the people: the other
half it has given back to the enemy whose endeavour it
cannot but be to get back whatever he has been forced to give
up: & to that end, lay by all imaginable means, to consume
the new phoenix, that the old one may rise out of its ashes.
Identifier: | JB/013/290/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 13.
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richard doane |
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letter 2857, vol. 11 |
4739 |
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