The parliaments were not wholly free from faction, I admit; but this
evil was exterior and accidental, and not so much the vice of their
constitution itself as it must be in your new contrivance of sexennial
elective judicatories. Several English commend the abolition of the old
tribunals, as supposing that they determined everything by bribery and
corruption. But they have stood the test of monarchic and republican
scrutiny. The court was well disposed to prove corruption on those
bodies, when they were dissolved in 1771; those who have again dissolved
them would have done the same, if they could; but both inquisitions
having failed, I conclude that gross pecuniary corruption must have been
rather rare amongst them.
It would have been prudent, along with the parliaments, to preserve
their ancient power of registering, and of remonstrating at least upon,
all the decrees of the National Assembly, as they did upon those which
passed in the time of the monarchy. It would be a means of squaring the
occasional decrees of a democracy to some principles of general
jurisprudence. The vice of the ancient democracies, and one cause of
their ruin, was, that they ruled, as you do, by occasional decrees,
_psephismata_. This practice soon broke in upon the tenor and
consistency of the laws; it abated the respect of the people towards
them, and totally destroyed them in the end.
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