The people feared not any ill consequence to liberty from the authority of the criminal courts, because these were nothing but very numerous juries, chosen by lot from among the people; and they considered themselves justly as in a state of perpetual pupilage, where they had an authority, after they came to the use of reason, not only to retract and control whatever had been determined, but to punish any guardian for measures which they had embraced by his persuasion. The same law had place in Thebes, and for the same reason.
It appears to have been a usual practice in Athens, on the establishment of any law esteemed very useful or popular, to prohibit for ever its abrogation and repeal. Thus the demagogue who diverted all the public revenues to the support of shows and spectacles, made it criminal so much as to move for a repeal of this law; thus Leptines moved for a law, not only to recall all the immunities formerly granted, but to deprive the people for the future of the power of granting any more; thus all bills of attainder were forbid, or laws that affected one Athenian without extending to the whole commonwealth. These absurd clauses, by which the legislature vainly attempted to bind itself for ever, proceeded from a universal sense of the levity and inconstancy of the people.
II. A wheel within a wheel, such as we observe in the German Empire, is considered by Lord Shaftesbury[38] as an absurdity in politics; but what must we say to two equal wheels which govern the same political machine without any mutual check, control, or subordination, and yet preserve the greatest harmony and concord? To establish two distinct legislatures, each of which possesses full and absolute authority within itself, and stands in no need of the other’s assistance, in order to give validity to its acts, this may appear beforehand altogether impracticable as long as men are actuated by the passions of ambition, emulation, and avarice, which have been hitherto their chief governing principles. And should I assert that the state I have in my eye was divided into two distinct factions, each of which predominated in a distinct legislature, and yet produced no clashing in these independent powers, the supposition may appear almost incredible; and if, to augment the paradox, I should affirm that this disjointed, irregular government was the most active, triumphant, and illustrious commonwealth that ever yet appeared on the stage of the world, I should certainly be told that such a political chimera was as absurd as any vision of the poets. But there is no need for searching long in order to prove the reality of the foregoing suppositions, for this was actually the case with the Roman republic.