It is curious to observe, that the administrative bodies are carefully
exempted from the jurisdiction of these new tribunals. That is, those
persons are exempted from the power of the laws who ought to be the most
entirely submitted to them. Those who execute public pecuniary trusts
ought of all men to be the most strictly held to their duty. One would
have thought that it must have been among your earliest cares, if you
did not mean that those administrative bodies should be real, sovereign,
independent states, to form an awful tribunal, like your late
parliaments, or like our King's Bench, where all corporate officers
might obtain protection in the legal exercise of their functions, and
would find coercion, if they trespassed against their legal duty. But
the cause of the exemption is plain. These administrative bodies are the
great instruments of the present leaders in their progress through
democracy to oligarchy. They must therefore be put above the law. It
will be said that the legal tribunals which you have made are unfit to
coerce them. They are, undoubtedly. They are unfit for any rational
purpose. It will be said, too, that the administrative bodies will be
accountable to the general Assembly. This, I fear, is talking without
much consideration of the nature of that Assembly or of these
corporations. However, to be subject to the pleasure of that Assembly is
not to be subject to law, either for protection or for constraint.
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