lence; or that casual and intermitting, and brief attendance on their duties, which is all that professional practitioners can bestow, they would make their legislative functions the business of their lives. Strenuous intellectual exertion, except in the case of a few extraordinary minds to which it is a pleasure, as severe corporeal exercise is to a man of great muscular strength, is irksome, and seldom habitually undertaken without a powerful external motive. It is surely policy in a nation to furnish this motive for due application to national affairs*.

To set against these advantages there appears to be nothing but the expense. On the most liberal calculation, less than half a million sterling would effect the object; and every one must own that this would be mere dust in the balance, when placed against the benefits to be derived from substituting masterly legislation for the deplorable work which has too often passed under that name.

Another qualification has been prescribed by the constitution of the United States of America, namely, that the representatives should be resident in the state for which they are elected. This is doubtless a desirable qualification, but scarcely of

* See Note D.

that clear and decisive benefit which calls for the aid of an enactment. In America, where every state forms a sort of independent political body, and might, in extreme cases, detach itself from the confederacy, and is capable from its magnitude of erecting itself into a separate republic, there is more reason for such a regulation than there could possibly be in our own country. With us, a restriction of this nature would limit the choice of the electors, without any adequate counter benefit, and would be attended indeed with a peculiar sacrifice of advantage. Many of our distinguished characters, although of provincial origin, reside in the metropolis, and would thus be precluded from all chance of a seat. Nor would such a restriction be needful for the purpose of securing a due attention to the local interests of the places represented. On the plan of district legislatures, the possession of local knowledge would be no longer necessary in members of the national legislature. The representatives deputed to the supreme assembly would then have to deal solely with questions of general interest and importance, and might be chosen from the pre-eminent men of the whole empire wherever they are to be found.

It may be noticed, too, that in the United States

they exclude from Congress all the members of the executive department, which appears to be a regulation affording no advantage to compensate for the loss of that quick and close communication between the legislative and executive powers, which is effected in England by the admission of the ministers of state *.

As there are few of the qualifications requisite in a legislator which can be determined beforehand, or the possession of which is ascertainable

*It may be right to add, however, that on the American plan of conducting legislative business, the presence of the executive functionaries seems less requisite. "Here," says an American journal, "no part of the work of legislation is performed by the executive. The business is distributed at the commencement of the Congress among a variety of standing committees of the two Houses, who regularly prepare all the Bills these Committees commonly meet every day at ten o'clock, and remain in session till twelve. At that hour the sitting of the two Houses commences, and, as a general rule, the members are all in attendance. They regularly remain together till four; and towards the close of the session, when business becomes pressing, they return and sit several hours in the evening." North American Review, No. 82, page 252. In France they proceed on quite an opposite system. There, all cabinet ministers, whether peers or commoners, have the right of being present, and of speaking in both Houses, although they have not the right of voting, unless they are regularly members. It is the common practice, nevertheless, for such ministers as are not peers to obtain seats in the representative chamber, so as to be able to vote.

with the precision necessary to make them subjects of positive enactment, it is the more incumbent on the members of the constituent body to exercise with careful deliberation the large discretion unavoidably confided to them. If they are duly impressed with the importance of making a proper choice, they will see how indispensable it is to understand something of those qualities which are desirable in the man who is to watch over their interests. In showing that freedom from all other serious occupation is an essential requisite, we have already had occasion to describe some of the intellectual faculties and attainments by which the statesman ought to be distinguished. It would be vain to attempt to enumerate or expatiate upon the various moral and mental endowments which would find scope and employment in that important office, and equally vain to erect any precise standard of excellence. Men cannot be created for the purpose; they must be taken as they happen to be found, varying with endless diversity of faculties, acquirements, principles, and passions; and the electors will have to decide, not according to what ideal model of perfection they will have their representative fashioned, but which of the actual men proposed to their choice is the likeliest, on the whole, to promote the public good.

SECTION VII.

On the Duration of the Trust.

The responsibility of the representative, according to the view of the subject exhibited in a former chapter, is in the main constituted by the liability to which he is exposed, of being dismissed from the office, or rather of not being reappointed at the expiration of the trust. The intenseness of the responsibility must obviously depend on the length of the term for which he is elected. If it were the sole object to carry the sense of accountability to its greatest height, the direct and most effectual expedient would be, to subject the representative to instantaneous dismissal at the pleasure of the electors, coupling it with the fixed and absolute cessation of the trust at the distance of a very short period.

But to enhance the responsibility of the representative, is not the sole object to be regarded in fixing the term of service. Responsibility is only one of the conditions necessary for good legislation; and it may easily be pushed to an extreme incompatible with others for which it is equally essential to provide, in regulating the duration of