JB/044/031/001

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1823. March 17
U.S.

III. To the powers of a body chosen immediately by the great body of the people – by
the sharers possessors as they are of shares in the Supreme Constitutive authority –
added as to with coordinate powers of legislation, as also
powers belonging to the Executive Department.

The footing on which this institution stands is altogether
different from that on which the two preceding institutions stand.
In both those instances, the institution had for its final cause
the supposed happiness and in supposed interests of the persons by to in whose
whose hands the power is suffered to remain. But in the present instance
there seems sufficient reason to be assured that the institution had
for its end in view the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
In the two former instances, all abolition of the institution how
manifestly so ever as well as intensely mischievous, is except
it be by force of intimidation morally impossible. But in this
instance the institution being the work of the greatest number
acting in pursuit of their own greatest happiness, the consequence
is – that if no sooner are they of the mischievousness of it, their
agreement for concurrence in the abolition of it, and thence the abolition itself
is matter of certainty.

Consider in the first place the place it has occupies in
the business department of legislation: consider the effect of it.

In the instance of the Assembly of Representatives, a body
is formed which is in such sort framed that in respect of unity of interest, and affections
with the body of its constituents, members of the Supreme Constitutive, in a word in respect of appropriate moral aptitude
it is regarded as affording th its aptitude is regarded as
being at a maximum. To this consummately apt body
another is now linked in – a body so framed that whatsoever
to the degree of its appropriate moral aptitude it can on no principle
be considered as standing at so high a point of the scale, as
the one first mentioned, but to this less apt body a power is given
of reducing to nothing on every occasion the power of the more apt body.

⊞ If the frame of its
structure presented a
greater probability of
appropriate moral aptitude
than that of the House of
Representatives, that is the
structure that and cut
that of the House of Representatives
that ought to
have been adopted.
So if it presented an
equally probability: it being
less numerous, and thence better adapted to dispatch, and also less expensive.

Identifier: | JB/044/031/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 44.
Date_1	1823-03-17	Marginal Summary Numbering	or 3 - or 4
Box	044	Main Headings	constitutional code
Folio number	031	Info in main headings field	constitut. code i enactive or iii reason giving us
Image	001	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	d6 / e2 / f18
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	j whatman turkey mill 1822
Marginals	jeremy bentham	Paper Producer	jonathan blenman
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1822
Notes public		ID Number	13816
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