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27 June 1802 7 late N. S. Wales
6 Conduct
1 No Legislation
3 Causes
Rather in New South Wales this power of legislation
if vested any where if created by law, and by law must have been vested in a
single hand.
6
Arbitrary power
they saw would arise
out of necessity and
that necessity they
trusted to for their
justification.
Arbitrary power was therefore to be established in the
Colony: but as arbitrary power, however convenient to for use
exercise is not neither pleasant nor becoming nor alwa
perhaps always even safe to speak of ask for nothing was to be said
about the matter. With How soever Necessity has no
law: and as it can not only strong enough even to vanquish
even an opposing law — must more will it be to supply
the place of law where there is none. Howsoever it
even with other plants — arbitrary power was a plant
that was to overspread the country colony In the situation
in which they placed
their Governor, power
compleatly arbitrary — legislative
power with single
hand joined to executive
and both to be exercised
in a single hand would
be matter of necessity:
and that necessity,
they saw would be palpable
and incontestible. There was no fear
of its not doing so. With a very little encouragement it
is a weed ready enough to spring up and establish
itself any where. Thus convinced, gentlemen left it to
spring up in the way of equivocal generation, out of
the necessity of the case, without their appearing to have
a any hand in planting it.
7
But though the
necessity was real
and natural in
the instance of the
Governor: it
was factitious and
on the
part of the founders
here at times
The necessity was indeed incontestable: and the plea it
afforded was in a moral point of view at any
rate (for as to what would have been adjudged
to be
law upon the subject, having no fixed basis to argue upon, I look upon
it set it down as matter of cross and pile) in a moral point of
view I say at any rate a compleat justification to
those who acted under it. But the with them the justification
begins and ends: because with them commences the necessity.
It was Necessary on their part, the system of that unlegalized
and it so far illegal government was compleatly voluntary
on the part of those who sent them out. It was the will on
the one part that gave enacted birth to the necessity on the other.
Identifier: | JB/116/188/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 116.
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1802-06-27 |
6-7 |
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116 |
panopticon versus new south wales |
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188 |
n. s. wales |
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001 |
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text sheet |
1 |
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recto |
d7 / f44 |
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jeremy bentham |
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37721 |
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