SCHEME OF A LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. 



IF some facetious demon, seized with a desire to make a nation dig- 

 contented and its legislators ridiculous, were to set his wit to organize 

 a plan eminently calculated to produce both these results, he would 

 probably, in the first place, ordain that the highest legislative as- 

 sembly should be composed without any reference to the qualifica- 

 tions of its members. If he did not require the actual production of 

 a certificate of mental imbecility and moral turpitude as the condition 

 of a senator's election, he would at least insist that the moral and in- 

 tellectual fitness of the candidate should never be inquired into, and 

 that the business of selection should be entrusted to the care of blind 

 indiscriminating chance. It might enter into his whimsical brain to 

 decree that, in the first instance, a certain number of illiterate bar- 

 barians should be set apart from the herd of mankind for the purpose 

 of forming a house of senators; and that upon the body thus ob- 

 tained should devolve the labour of perpetuating the breed ; senator 

 ever being senator, from generation to generation, so long as no phy- 

 sical impediment occurred to interrupt the series. If he were a 

 demon gifted with prescience, and foresaw that in after times parti- 

 cular senators would be gathered to their fathers without leaving 

 issue to inherit the dignity, he would insert a clause in his constitu- 

 tion declaring that, in the event of such an accident, the void in the 

 muster roll of the senate should be filled up by the insertion of some 

 name, either obscure or conspicuous, taken not at random from 

 among the mob, for there might be village Hampdens but selected 

 with a cautious and vigilant disregard to the abilities and knowledge 

 of the owner. To secure this point (manifestly the keystone of the 

 system) it would be proper to specify the description of persons 

 which the lapse of time, the progress of society, and the accidents of 

 life would be most likely to leave, in that primeval state of mental 

 barrenness which would most admirably qualify the senator, and 

 ensure the success of the scheme. 



It seems not improbable that a preference would be awarded to the 

 personal favourites of the ruling monarch. Because if it should 

 sometimes happen that an individual of this description would escape 

 being an object of general contempt, yet it would rarely occur that 

 he could enjoy any considerable share of public esteem ; and the 

 fiendish speculator would not fail to foresee that, taken as a class, the 

 panders of monarchs would never be distinguished for their attain- 

 ments in political philosophy, or for their display of patriotic inte- 

 grity. Next to the Gavestons and Buckinghams of the sovereign, it 

 is not unreasonable to suppose the father of the charter would recom- 

 mend the servile tools the Doddingtons and Dundasses of a corrupt 

 minister. But whether the creation should be made from among the 

 poor or the rich tools might, without endangering the success of the 

 plan, be left to the caprice or judgment of the creating power. Be- 

 cause if the pauper tools should happen to possess talent and know- 



