Chapter 5
Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies.
IN TREATING of representative government, it is above all
necessary to keep in view the distinction between its idea or essence,
and the particular forms in which the idea has been clothed by
accidental historical developments, or by the notions current at
some particular period.
The meaning of representative government is, that the whole
people, or some numerous portion of them, exercise through deputies
periodically elected by themselves the ultimate controlling power,
which, in every constitution, must reside somewhere. This ultimate
power they must possess in all its completeness. They must be masters,
whenever they please, of all the operations of government. There is no
need that the constitutional law should itself give them this mastery.
It does not in the British Constitution. But what it does give
practically amounts to this. The power of final control is as
essentially single, in a mixed and balanced government, as in a pure
monarchy or democracy. This is the portion of truth in the opinion
of the ancients, revived by great authorities in our own time, that
a balanced constitution is impossible. There is almost always a
balance, but the scales never hang exactly even. Which of them
preponderates is not always apparent on the face of the political
institutions.
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