The Sun.
London, England, 1833-06-06 00:00:00

as completely at the feet of the Minister
of the Crown as if it were only a tinselled
puppet-show of which he pulled the strings.
The notion of a House of Lords without a
legislative will of its own, and confined to the
passive and humiliating duty of registering the
decrees of the King's servants, when sent up to
them from an equally submissive House of Com-
mons, is repugnant to the British constitution,
which only recognises a Legislature of three
parts, each independent of each other, each
checking the other by virtue of that very inde-
pendence, and all invested with co-ordinate power.
Reduce the House of Lords to a cypher, and
instead of the British constitution of King, No-
bility, and Commons, we have only a mere
democracy, with a crowned President. Reduce
the House of Commons also to a cypher, and
we have a tyranny, by whatever name it may be
called, established upon the ruins of the triple
constitution of England. We live in' strange
times, when it is openly propounded that the
independence of either House of the Legislature
is a defect in the constitutional machinery of
Government which ought to be got rid of, lest
any expression of that independence should em-
barrass the Ministers of the Crown. The pre-
serving the legislative power separate from the
executive, used to be considered one of the ad-
mirable principles of our free system of Govern •
ment. Those who were accustomed to profess the
utmost veneration for that and other sound prin-
ciples, and who were ever ready to point the indig-
nant jealousy of the people against an act of undue
influence exercised by the executive over the
legislative authority, • are now recommending,
through that portion of the press which is de;
voted to their service, the total merging of the
will of Parliament in that of the King's Mini-
sters. It is this dangerous and unconstitutional
doctrine which the organs of the Whig party
now advocate. But they will not find it an
easy matter this time to fool the people into
unreflecting excitement, for the sole purpose of
preserving the sweets of office to their patrons,
v,ho have broken so many promises, and vio-
lated so many principles, by which they once
found favour in the eyes of the country. The
most enlightened writers upon the Constitution
have regarded the check which one branch of
the Legislature exercises upon the other, and
both upon the Crown, as a great and distin-
guishing excellence of our scheme of civil policy.
But whenever both Houses of Parliament shall
have surrendered their independence to the
King's Ministers, those checks are gone, and
that excellence is no more. It will then become
a fiction, what Blackstone, De Lolme, and other
able writers upheld to admiration. The former,
in his Commentaries says, " And herein consists
the true excellence of the English Government,
that all parts of it form a mutual check upon
each other. In the Legislature, the people are a
check upon the nobility, and the nobility a check
upon the people, by the mutual privilege of reject-
ing what the other has resolved, while the King is
check upon both ; and this very executive power
is again checked and kept within bounds by the
two Houses, through the power which they have
of inquiring into, impeaching, and punishing
the conduct of the King's evil and pernicious
counsellors. Thus every branch of our civil
policy supports, and is supported, regulates and
is regulated, by the rest, for the two Houses
naturally drawing in two directions of opposite
interest, and the prerogative in another still dif-
ferent from them both, they mutually keep each
other from exceeding their proper limits, while
the whole is prevented from separation, and arti-
ficially connected together by the mixed nature
of the Crown, which is a part of the legislative,
and the sole executive authority. Like three
distinct powers in mechanics, they jointly impel
he machine of Government in a direction dtf:.

ferent frotn what either, acting by itself, would
have done ; but at the same time in a direction
partaking of each, and formed out of all—a
direction which constitutes the true line of liberty
and happiness of the Commonwealth." With-
out any reference to who are, or who may
be hereafter, the Ministers of the Crown,
but looking only to the question as one
of principle, we say it is a doctrine
fraught with the most pernicious consequences
—a doctrine absolutely destructive of our free
Constitution—which inculcates the propriety of
blending those three distinct powers into one—
impelled by one will, and that the will of the
Minister of the Crown ! The experience of the
present session, but more especially the rescind-
ing of the vote on the malt tax at the Minister's
command, has shown that the House of Com-
mons is one of the most obsequious that ever
walked in the leading-strings of a Minister. But
not content with that, Ministers, if their syco-
phants are to be believed, wish to create such a
number of Peers as will make them as secure of
the decisions of the other House as if they had
its votes in their pockets. The plan is something
similar to that much-reprobrated practice of some
corrupt Corporations under the unreformed
system, of creating a crowd of freemen for the
occasion of an election, and thus swamping the
free exercise of the elective franchise. • It is a
practice that, if once exercised for agood purpose,
will be ten times exercised for an evil purpose.
Better far would it be to abolish the House of
Lords at once than degrade it in something
as servile and contemptible as a Turkish Divan.
Supposing such a couperetat as a creation of Peers
to carry any particular question be once fami-
liarized to our notions of Government in this
country, what becomes of the salutary power of
impeaching delinquent Ministers Of the Crown,
which the Constitution has set up as one of its
great defences against corrupt or arbitrary en-
croachments ? In such impeachments, when
the Commons accuse, the tribunal is the House
of Lords—but a Minister who has committed
treason against the State or any other high crime
or misdemeanor, and who fears impeachment,
has only, according to this doctrine, to create a
batch of Peers large enough to overwhelm the
independent will of the House of Lords, and he
is safe! He has only to appoint his own
Judges, and he is sure of their decision in his
favour; fur, of course,, he would take care to
raise to that ‘e‘
agrneisty '
only the most vile and
abject
who, while they degraded
of
hise
rdt
ui
the Peerage, would be sure to strike the balance
and the rod from the hands of justice. But
there is another consideration connected
with this subject well worth attending to.
There are more noblemen in this country
now than can respectably support them,.
selves. Those who cannot are quartered,
as well as tnanY that can, upon the public
taxes, wrung from the sweat and toil of
the industrious population. By increasing the
number of Peers this evil will be increased. We
augment the
privileged class, already too exten-
sive,l and whose connections, too idle and vain
to take to any course of regular industry, must
have pensions or sinecures provided for them,
or must be put into offices which they are un-
qualified to fill, to the injury of persons pos-