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life, demonstrate to be, and always to have been impossible, and every attempt to realize which, either by the Jacquerie in ancient France, the Wat Tylers and Jack Straws in England, or the modern Jacobins, has proved as pernicious and destructive, as to suppose the possibility of its actual existence, is foolish and absurd. The fatal consequences of such attempts to restore, as it is called, to the people the sovereignty they are imagined to have farmed out, as it were, to their rulers, subject to divers claims of forfeiture and re-entry, has indeed been too well illustrated by the late eventful history of a neighbouring kingdom, for us here, or our

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*It has been unfortunate for the world, that so great and upright a man as Mr. Locke (led astray by the circumstances of the times in which he lived, and the zeal of controversy) should have been the patron and advocate of this baneful, but, in his hands, too plausible and specious doctrine. Locke's fate has indeed been singular. He was a good subject and a pious Christian. Yet, as his theory of government has served for a basis to the destructive systems of the Condorcets, Priestleys, and Paines, so his metaphysical principles have become the ground-work of the vain wisdom and false philosophy which began by denying the existence of the material world, and proceeded, in the writings of the late Mr. Hume and others, to extend that wild scepticism of an ingenious and well-intentioned prelate (bishop Berkeley) to the disbelief of spirit also, of the immortal nature of man, and the being of God himself. This remark has been, in a great measure, occasioned by my recollection of a truly great philosopher, to whose early lessons and kindness I look back with tenderness and pride, who was among the first to prove that the system adopted by Locke concerning ideas, tended, by its natural consequence, to those of Berkeley and Hume; but who, in announcing that opinion to the world, anxiously disclaimed every wish or intention to disparage the talents of those, the fallacy and danger of whose doctrines he thought he could demonstrate, and every view of arrogating to himself any peculiar sagacity and discernment on that account. Indeed, those who remember him, know that there never was learning and wisdom more free from arrogance and presumption than his. "A traveller," says he, "of good judgment, may mistake his way, and be led unawares into wrong track; and, while the road is fair before him, may go on without suspicion, and be followed by others; but when it ends in a precipice, it requires no peculiar degree of wisdom and penetration to know he has gone wrong, nor perhaps to find out what misled him."---Dr. Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, p. 23.

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fellow subjects in Ireland, to require much argument to convince us of its folly and wickedness. It has in that country overturned the throne of the monarch and the altars of God: it has sanctioned murder, parricide, and regicide; and has taught every illiterate peasant to consider himself as a fit candidate for supreme power, the sovereign of his sovereign, and the lawgiver of mankind—

"Ergo, regibus occisis, subversa jacebat Pristina majestas soliorum, et sceptra superba Res itaque ad summam fæcem turbasque redibat."*

I agree with a person justly eminent, when he says, "that it is dangerous in a popular assembly to state that there are points where the powers of the legislature end, and those of the people at large begin."t Indeed, I know of no point where a legitimate constitutional power in the people at large begins: there may be some very special cases to which that of the legisla ture cannot reach: and in which, according to my conception, when any measure becomes necessary and unavoidable, not the power, i. e. any rightful power of the people, but the dissolution of the constitu tion and government, will begin; from which anarchy it must be left, in such cases, to chance, to the circumstances of the times, and to the prudence and virtue of individuals possessing influence, either personal or from situation, to extricate the nation. It is indeed delicate and dangerous wantonly to moot such sort of cases; no judge of human nature, who is a friend to his country, ever will; whatever may be his particular creed and party on matters fairly debateable, and open to a safe difference in opinion.

There are, however, cases of another description, which may be more freely discussed, to which also the supreme power of the legislature (in our constitution of the parliament) cannot extend; but which, being of a negative kind, and not requiring any measure to be taken or act done, do not connect themselves with the notion of any necessary dissolution of the frame of the government. They are, in truth, of such a sort, that, on their correct analysis, it will be found, that the idea of the application of that power involves either physical or moral impossibility, or a natural contradiction in the terms of the

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poration of new parts, the incompetency of parliament to decompose them is, I think, abundantly obvious, without adopt

tent, which I by no means do, with regard to the dismemberment of some original fraction, or district, of what had always constituted one and the same state. The essential condition of such a union is the combination of each of the constituent parts into a new whole, in which the identical characters and qualities of those parts are so lost as that they can no where afterwards be found or restored. The contracting parties cease to exist, and become incapable of being revived. It is as impossible to replace them in statu quo, as it would be to recover the identical parts of two images of the same me tal, which may have been melted together, and cast into one new figure made up of both. Physically, or even morally and politically speaking, Scotland, as a country, might be again disjoined from England: it might again have parliaments, as England might have; but this must be by a process exactly the same with that which should separate Cornwall, Norfolk, Caithness, or Sutherland, from Great Britain. It would not be a redintegration or restoration of Scotland to her former state, as she existed before 1707: that state has been melted down, and indissolubly mingled with that of England, which, in like manner, can never become a separate kingdom, as of its ancient right.

proposition. Two examples, material for the present purpose, especially the last of them, will illustrate the distinction to which I have wished to draw the attentioning the foregoing opinion to its full exof the House. 1. Parliament cannot pass a law which a subsequent parliament shall not be able to repeal. The plain reason of this is, that the supposition of such a power is contradictory to itself. It is to suppose the parliament of next year less absolute and supreme than the parliament of this. 2. I have heard it contended, not without plausibility, that the parliament cannot dismember the kingdom, or circumscribe the sphere of its own authority; and consequently that, on that account, it cannot dissolve any union which, by treaty or otherwise, has blended into one state, subject to its authority, parts which existed, previous to such treaty, in a separate and distinct condition, with separate legislatures; that to suppose it capable of doing this, is also a contradiction in terms; that the nation and its parliament are each indivisible in tegral parts, the one governed, the other governing, and forming together one indivisible aggregate or body politic; that if you detach any part of this body, what remains is no longer the same state, the same nation, the same legislature or parliament; that the two parts may form themselves again, each or either, into a similar constitution to what before existed, or into other constitutions; but that the dismemberment will have effected that sort of resolution of the aggregate into its elements, which is known to happen in our municipal law, when, by the loss of an integral part, an ordinary corporation is dissolved, and loses its corporate existence; that it is universally true, that the dismemberment of any legitimate state cannot be a legitimate act of that state; but necessarily supposes, even on cessions in virtue of conquest, exchange, &c. a disruption of the integrity of the state; that it might be difficult to argue his position on the history of those ill-constructed constitutions where dismemberment has in fact often taken place, or with regard to extreme cases, of the cession of small insignificant portions of a large dominion; but that nobody will say that the actual state and constitution of Great Britain would remain, if the county of Northumberland or Cornwall, the ancient kingdom of Scotland, or the principality of Wales, were detached from it.

But, in the case of an union, and incor[VOL. XXXIV.]

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If this reasoning is as just and correct as it appears to me, all apprehensions and alarms must necessarily vanish (alarms sometimes attempted to be raised when it has been thought they might assist a little dearth of argument), of Great Britain assuming a right to break through, and set aside, at her pleasure, any incorporation of this kingdom and that of Ireland, which the wisdom and patriotism of the two parliaments may adopt. After a union, Ireland may again be separated from Great Britain, as England may be torn asunder from Scotland, by domestic faction and civil war, or by foreign hostility; but they never can be disjoined by any regular act of the united government and legislature. In short, it appears to me that a common parliament, such as was formed on the Scotch union, and must be in contemplation now, must have the power of altering or repealing any of the former acts of either of the local legislatures, i. e. either English or [ 3 H]

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Scotch, British or Irish, a power daily exercised in regard to English and Scotch acts made previous to 1707; but that such common parliament cannot legitimately repeal or alter any of the fundamental and essential clauses, articles, or conditions of that treaty, by which the union shall be constituted; since the treaty authorised by each legislature, concluded by commissioners, and then again ratified by each legislature, when carried into effect will render it impossible, upon any breach, for either party to resume its former situation, and avail itself of the nullity thereby occasioned; and of course impossible, consistently with moral right and duty, for the united parliament, i. e. beyond its legitimate powers, to commit such a breach.

Before I proceed, the House will permit me to explain what may otherwise be liable to misrepresentation or misconstruction. Though I have denied the strict right of the constituent body to deliberate and decide on political questions, and either to limit or extend, by special commission and instructions, the powers vested by law in their representatives, yet I am very clearly of opinion, that the representative does not perform his duty, or consult the true interests of his country, who does not pay a due and respectful attention to the sentiments, and even, in many cases, to the inclinations and wishes of his particular constituents. and of the proprietors and inhabitants of the place he represents (with whom he commonly has the easiest means of communication), as well as to the opinions which prevail in general among the different classes of his fellow-subjects. It is very true that there neither exists, nor can exist, any legal or formal method of -collecting the individual opinions and suffrages of a whole nation: still, however, the predominant sentiment will force its way to the observation and understanding of the legislators, and will be in many, perhaps in most cases, the best and most prudent guide for them to follow. If they neglect it, the period of re-election enables the voters (the majority of whom, even as now constituted in this kingdom, taking the whole country over, will, I believe, always be found to accord with the majority of the nation itself) to select others who think more as they do on those subjects of public concern which they have nearest their hearts.

After all, some may think I might have spared the House and myself the trouble of the foregoing discussion, as few, very few, within these walls, have gone so far as directly to maintain the general incompetence of parliament to such a measure as a union. But several, by expressions of doubt and surmise, by ambiguous words, scattered abroad at the risk of misleading the vulgar, the ill-informed, or ill-disposed, among his majesty's subjects in Ireland, have set out with involv ing their opinion on this material point in oracular obscurity, and have then gone on to assert, that whatever may have been the right of the English or of the Scotch parliament in 1707, a union between Great Britain and Ireland, or, at least, such a union as is supposed to be intended, cannot be lawfully agreed to or carried into effect by either of the parlia ments of those respective kingdoms. They assume, as the case I think must be, that in the minds of those who have proposed, or are friends to the measure, the proportion of members to be sent by Ireland to the united parliament is meant to be considerably less than the number of British members: which, if the example of the Scotch union shall be followed in this particular, will remain as at present.

This," it is said, "would, in effect, amount to a total surrender of the legis lative authority of Ireland to Great Bri tain.

But the constituents of the Irish parliament delegated to their representatives the powers with which they invested them, for the purpose of exercising, not of surrendering, those powers, for the purpose of maintaining a supreme, independent, and exclusive legislature for Ireland, not to enable them to betray and destroy the independency, or rather the existence of the Irish legislature. This," it is alleged, "must be the case, if the members for Ireland are in a great disproportion to those for Great Britain. Though the British parliament, therefore, should be supposed competent to receive, in accession to its legislative authority over Great Britain, the like power over Ireland, the Irish parliament can have no right to bestow that power, and subject their country, in that manner, to the government of a foreign legislature. The addition of one-sixth, one-fifth, or onefourth, to the present aggregate number of British members, will leave the British parliament as exclusively supreme over Great Britain as before, and will, at the

In stating this sort of argument, which I have endeavoured not to weaken or misrepresent, the case of Scotland seemed to militate so strongly both against the conclusion of incompetency, and the assumed fact from which that conclusion is drawn, namely, the exercise of exclusive power by the greater over the lesser country, that every effort of ingenuity has been used, though unsuccessfully, to find out some intelligible ground of distinction between that transaction and the measure now in agitation.

same time, communicate to Great Britain | in its commencement, was a mere nullity; as entire a supremacy over Ireland as she especially where the acts by which this formerly claimed (before the epoch of nullity has been turned into a right, must, 1782) when that country was totally un- if the argument is well founded, have represented in Great Britain." been throughout equally null and void. If the Scotch parliament could not, in 1707, legally ratify the treaty of union, the act by which they purported to do so was void: and the royal assent which was given to that act, having nothing on which it could operate, was void also; as much so as it would have been if given to an act by which the parliament had attempted to legislate for France or Italy. But the ratification of the treaty by the Scotch parliament was the essential condition on which that of England ratified it. If, therefore, the act of the Scotch parliament was a nullity, so also must have been that which was only passed on the faith of its supposed validity. The one was the consideration for the other; and if England could receive nothing, neither could she mean to give, nor could give any thing; and the whole business resembled, on her part, what the lawyers call a nudum pactum. Thus this doctrine necessarily leads to the inference, that the present legislature of this country has no legitimate authority; that the powers it exercises are mere usurpation; and that no man, either in Scotland or England, is bound to submit to any of the laws which have been enacted for near a century.

1st. With regard to the fact. It is a matter of such acknowledged notoriety, that in questions of a local nature, or which nearly concern the northern division of this united kingdom, the members returned by Scotland have generally influenced the opinion and vote of the whole House of Commons, that the gentlemen on the other side have not been able to deny it. They have, therefore, been obliged to content themselves with the hope that this, like other circumstances relative to the Scotch union, may may be ascribed to something of a mysterious and undefinable nature, peculiar to the character and situation of that people; and they insist, that whatever may have in practice counteracted the natural consequence of the superiority of numbers in that case, it is not less certain that the whole legislative authority over Scotland is vested in the English members, than that 513 is a larger number than 45.

2nd. As to the conclusion, they argue, that if the surrender (as they insist on terming it) which was made by the Scotch parliament has not vitiated the whole transaction, it is either because the lapse of time and long acquiescence on the part of that country have, by a sort of prescription, confirmed the authority of the parliament now denominated British, but still, in effect, only English, over Scotland; or because the Scotch parliament was expressly empowered and commissioned by the constituents in that kingdom to agree to an union.

In answer to these refinements it may be observed.

1. That it is a new sort of prescription which can confirm or render valid, what,

2. When, perceiving that this argument of acquiescence fails by leading to such a dangerous absurdity, gentlemen resort to some supposed special delegation from the people or constituent body to the parliament of Scotland, it will be recollected, as I have already shown, that the electors could not, by the constitution-in this respect the same in that kingdom as in England-make any such delegation, so as to give it any force or validity; nor grant to the elected any peculiar powers, not incident to the mere character of representatives duly chosen. I will now prove, that in 1707 no such delegation was in fact attempted in Scotland. There is undoubtedly a passage or two in De Foe's History of the Union, which seems to indicate something special in the appointment, of the members of the parliament of Scotland, which concluded that treaty; and a supposed specific authority, in that instance has been much relied on, This circumstance induced me to bestow some pains in the investigation of the

matter, the result of which has been, that no such authority was in contemplation, much less required or conferred, at the time of electing that parliament. In the several treaties preceding that which so happily accomplished the object, from the accesssion of James the 6th of Scotland to the crown of England downwards, no idea of the necessity, expediency, or, I may say, constitutionally speaking, of the possibility of such a reference to and delegation from the freeholders and burgesses,-forming themselves, as they must have done, into what, in the modern French vocabulary, would be called primary assemblies,-ever seems to have been entertained by any projector, politician, lawyer, member of parliament, minister, or sovereign whatever.

by this dissolution of the respective parliaments, but to continue in force; and such treaty as the commissioners might conclude was to be ratified by the subsequent parliaments of each kingdom.

From the above deduction it is clear, that if those commissioners had in fact proceeded to the conclusion of a treaty, no surmise could ever have been made, that on the part of Scotland any special mandate had served as a foundation for the powers exercised on the occasion. A new parliament was soon afterwards called, in the usual way, in England, and met on the 20th Oct. 1702, a week previous to the meeting of the commissioners. On the 8th September a royal proclamation was published in Scotland, containing the following words: "Whereas the late parliament of that our ancient kingdom of Scotland is by our authority dissolved, and considering that we are engaged at present in a most just and necessary war: and that by acts passed both in the parliament of England and Scotland, we are

nated commissioners to treat of a union betwixt these our kingdoms, and of other things, matters, and causes relating thereto, conform to the tenors of the said acts, the conclusion of which union to be estar

will undoubtedly conduce to the lasting peace and welfare of both kingdoms; for which causes, and that we judge it neces sary there should be a parliament in being to meet on such occasions as may require it, we have thought fit to call a parliament of that our kingdom, to meet at our city of Edinburgh on the 12th of November

I will now, Sir, shortly state what really happened in Scotland on the occasion of the last and successful treaty. The Convention parliament, or estates, which had been assembled in that country on the abdication, or forfeiture, of James, and had met early in 1689, con-empowered, and have accordingly nomitinued undissolved through all the reign of king William, and were summoned to meet by queen Anne on the 9th of June 1702, a few months after her accession. The anomalous formation of those estates is well known; and it will not be pre-blished and ratified in both parliaments, tended, that any measure of union between the two kingdoms was, at the time of their nomination, either agitated by the represented, or given in charge to their representatives. The sixth English parliament of king William, which had been called by the usual process (no special authority being pretended as to England), was sitting on queen Anne's acces-next." sion; and on the 6th May 1702, had passed an act, enabling the queen to appoint commissioners for treating of a union between England and Scotland. As soon as the Scotch parliament met after king William's death, this circumstance was communicated to them in a letter from the queen, and a similar measure, on their part, recommended, and, in consequence thereof, a like act was passed on the 23rd June 1702. Commissioners were accordingly appointed on the part of each kingdom, and met at Westminster on the 27th Oct. 1702. In the mean time the Scotch parliament, or Convention, was prorogued (30th June), and soon afterwards dissolved, as was the English parliament on the 2nd July 1702. But the commissions were not to determine

This passage, in an instrument of which, after a good deal of research, I have been furnished with a copy by the obliging attention of the gentleman who has the care of the public records at Edinburgh, is the only circumstance and source to which I can trace the supposition of the alleged special authority of which I have been speaking. I think it is no injustice to the gentlemen who have pleaded that special authority, to suppose they had conceived it to rest upon some more solid and tenable ground. Indeed, I have not met with any evidence that they, or any writer or compiler, on the present occasion, had taken the pains I have been prompted to do (in order to sift every point of this great question as thoroughly as I could), with regard to the proceed.

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