No
progress at all can be made towards obtaining a skilled democracy
unless the democracy are willing that the work which requires skill
should be done by those who possess it. A democracy has enough to do
in providing itself with an amount of mental competency sufficient for
its own proper work, that of superintendence and check.
How to obtain and secure this amount is one of the questions to
taken into consideration in judging of the proper constitution of a
representative body. In proportion as its composition fails to
secure this amount, the assembly will encroach, by special acts, on
the province of the executive; it will expel a good, or elevate and
uphold a bad, ministry; it will connive at, or overlook in them,
abuses of trust, will be deluded by their false pretences, or will
withhold support from those who endeavour to fulfil their trust
conscientiously; it will countenance, or impose, a selfish, a
capricious and impulsive, a short-sighted, ignorant, and prejudiced
general policy, foreign and domestic; it will abrogate good laws, or
enact bad ones, let in new evils, or cling with perverse obstinacy
to old; it will even, perhaps, under misleading impulses, momentary or
permanent, emanating from itself or from its constituents, tolerate or
connive at proceedings which set law aside altogether, in cases
where equal justice would not be agreeable to popular feeling.
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