II. A wheel within a wheel, such as we observe in the German Empire, is considered by Lord Shaftesbury38 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.
The legislative power was there lodged in the comitia centuriata and comitia tributa. In the former, it is well known, the people voted according to their census; so that when the first class was unanimous, though it contained not perhaps the hundredth part of the commonwealth, it determined the whole, and, with the authority of the senate, established a law. In the latter, every vote was alike; and as {p103} the authority of the senate was not there requisite, the lower people entirely prevailed and gave law to the whole state. In all party divisions, at first between the Patricians and Plebeians, afterwards between the nobles and the people, the interest of the aristocracy was predominant in the first legislature, that of the democracy in the second. The one could always destroy what the other had established; nay, the one by a sudden and