that the opening of the poll do not depend upon the executive, which by mere omission might prevent the entire election in order to exclude a distasteful citizen from the house.

The beginning of an election, the appointment of managers, the protection of the minority in this matter, and the conscientious counting of votes, where the ballot exists, are always matters of much interest and of great practical difficulty, to all those who have not traditionally learned it. Collections of election laws are therefore very instructive; and the labor of giving birth to an election with nations unaccustomed to liberty is very great. Mr. Dupont gives some instructive and amusing anecdotes, relating to the first French elections, in his Memoirs of Mirabeau.

The English law is that all the military must leave the place where an election is going on, and can only enter it when called in by the town authorities or the justices of the peace, in case of riot.

The British house of commons is the sole judge of the validity of elections, and the same is declared for the house of representatives by the American constitution.*

One of the gravest charges against the duke of Polignac and his fellow members of the cabinet,

4 A full statement of all the laws relating to these guarantees in England will be found in Stephens's De Lolme, Rise and Progress of the British Constitution; and Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States gives our constitutional law on these subjects.

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when they were tried for their lives after the revolution of 1830, was that they had allowed or induced Charles the Tenth to influence certain electors, by letter, to elect government candidates; while the government under the late so-called republic openly supported certain persons as government candidates, and bishops wrote then and have since sent solemn pastoral letters, calling on their flocks to elect men of certain political color. It is wholly indifferent to decide here whether peculiar circumstances made this interference necessary. I simply maintain that it is not liberty.

31. Representative legislatures cannot be truly the organisms through which public opinion passes into public will, nor can they be really considered representative bodies, if the members, or at least the members of the popular branch, be not elected for a moderately short period only; if the legislature does not sit frequently; if the elections for the popular branch are not for an entire renewal of the house; and if the member is made answerable for what he says in the house, to any one or any power besides the house to which he belongs.

What a moderately short period, or the frequency of sessions means, cannot, as a matter of course, be absolutely stated. Fairness and practice, as well as the character of the times, must necessarily settle these points. It was enacted under Charles the Second, the unworthy king under whom parliament established many of the best supports of liberty, that new parliaments should be held at least once in three years, and the commons be elected for

that time. In 1716, sir Robert Walpole, the whig premier, carried the septennial bill, forced to do it by the intrigues of the tories, who were for bringing back the Stuarts. This law has ever since prevailed, but even Pitt called it, in 1783, one of the greatest defects in the system of popular representation. Chatham, his father, had expressed himself against its before him, and it would really seem that England will return, at no distant period, to a shorter period of parliaments.

When count Villêle, in 1824, was desirous of diminishing the liberal spirit of the French charter, he introduced and carried a septennial bill, which was, however, abolished in 1830 by the "July Revolution." Parliaments for too short a period would lead to a discontinuous action of government, and unsettle instead of settling; hence, they would be as much against liberty as too long ones. In America, two years has become a pretty generally adopted time for the duration of legislatures. It is a remarkable fact that the people in America feel so perfectly safe from attacks of the executive that, in several states, where the constitutions have been revised, a fundamental law has been enacted that the legislature shall not meet more often than every two years. This is to avoid expense and over-legislation. The general principle remains true that "parliaments

5 Volume 14, page 174, of Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.

6 I have given a sufficiently long account of the Septennial Bill, under this head, in the Encyclopædia Americana.

ought to be held frequently," as the British Declaration of Rights and Liberties enacts it. The consti

tution of the United States makes the meeting and dissolution of congress entirely independent of the executive, and enacts that congress shall meet at least once in every year, on the first Monday of December, and that the house of representatives shall be entirely renewed every second year.

As to the irresponsibility of members for their remarks in parliament, the declaration of rights enacts "that the freedom of speech, and debates or proceedings in parliament, ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of parliament." This was adopted by the framers of our constitution, in the words that "for any speech or debate in either house, they (senators and representatives) shall not be questioned in any other place."

32. A farther and peculiar protection is granted to the members of the legislature, both in the United States and in England, by protecting them against arrest during session, except for certain specified crimes. The English house of commons "for the first time took upon themselves to avenge their own injury, in 1543,” when they ordered George Ferrers, a burgess who had been arrested in going to parliament, to be released, and carried their point. "But the first legislative recognition of the privilege was under James the First." The constitution of the

7 Hallam, Hist. of English Constitution, 5th edit. vol. i. p. 268. Ibidem, vol. i. p. 303.

United States enacts that senators and representatives shall "in all cases, except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective houses, and in going to and returning from the

33. It is farther necessary that every member possess the initiative, or right to propose any measure or resolution. This is universally acknowledged and established where Anglican liberty exists, not by enactment, but by absence of prohibition, and as arising out of the character of a member of the legislature itself. In most countries, not under the ægis of Anglican liberty, this right of the initiative has been denied the members, and government, that is the executive, has reserved it to itself. So has the so-called legislative corps of the present French empire no initiative. It has indeed not even the privilege of amendment; it has not even the right of voting on the ministerial estimates, except on the whole estimate of one ministry at once. In some countries, as in France under the charter of the July revolution, the initiative is vested in the houses and in government; that is to say, the government, as government, can propose a measure through a minister, who is not a member of the house. In England no bill can be proposed by the executive as such, but as every cabinet minister is either a peer or must contrive to be elected into the commons, the ministers

9 Why, indeed, it is called legislative corps does not appear. Legislative corpse would be intelligible.