To all these considerations, at
least theoretically, I fully anticipate a general assent: though,
practically, the tendency is strong in representative bodies to
interfere more and more in the details of administration, by virtue of
the general law, that whoever has the strongest power is more and more
tempted to make an excessive use of it; and this is one of the
practical dangers to which the futurity of representative
governments will be exposed.
But it is equally true, though only of late and slowly beginning
to be acknowledged, that a numerous assembly is as little fitted for
the direct business of legislation as for that of administration.
There is hardly any kind of intellectual work which so much needs to
be done, not only by experienced and exercised minds, but by minds
trained to the task through long and laborious study, as the
business of making laws. This is a sufficient reason, were there no
other, why they can never be well made but by a committee of very
few persons. A reason no less conclusive is, that every provision of a
law requires to be framed with the most accurate and long-sighted
perception of its effect on all the other provisions; and the law when
made should be capable of fitting into a consistent whole with the
previously existing laws. It is impossible that these conditions
should be in any degree fulfilled when laws are voted clause by clause
in a miscellaneous assembly.
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