Never was the great problem more securely solved, which
recognizes the necessity of a paramount power in the body politic to
enable it to move, but requires for it a depository such that it shall
be safe against invasion, and yet inhibited from aggression.
The old theories of a mixed government, and of the three powers, coming
down from the age of Cicero, when set by the side of the living British
Constitution, are cold, crude, and insufficient to a degree that makes
them deceptive. Take them, for example, as represented, fairly enough,
by Voltaire: the picture drawn by him is for us nothing but a puzzle:--
"Aux murs de Vestminster on voit paraitre ensemble
Trois pouvoirs etonnes du noeud qui les rassemble,
Les deputes du peuple, les grands, et le Roi,
Divises d' interet, reunis par la Loi."[15]
There is here lacking an amalgam, a reconciling power, what may be
called a clearing-house of political forces, which shall draw into
itself every thing, and shall balance and adjust every thing, and
ascertaining the nett result, let it pass on freely for the fulfilment
of the purposes of the great social union.
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