each other. In the legiſlature, the people are a check upon the nobility, and the nobility a check upon the people; by the mutual privilege of rejecting what the other has reſolved: while the king is a check upon both, which preſerves the executive power from encroachments. And this very executive power is again checked and kept within due bounds by the two houſes, through the privilege they have of enquiring into, impeaching, and puniſhing the conduct (not indeed of the king[1], which would deſtroy his conſtitutional independence; but, which is more beneficial to the public) of his evil and pernicious counſellors. Thus every branch of our civil polity ſupports and is ſupported, regulates and is regulated, by the reſt; for the two houſes naturally drawing in two directions of oppoſite intereſt, and the prerogative in another ſtill different from them both, they mutually keep each other from exceeding their proper limits; while the whole is prevented from ſeparation, and artificially connected together by the mixed nature of the crown, which is a part of the legiſlative, and the ſole executive magiſtrate. Like three diſtinct powers in mechanics, they jointly impel the machine of government in a direction different from what either, acting by itſelf, would have done; but at the ſame time in a direction partaking of each, and formed out of all; a direction which conſtitutes the true line of the liberty and happineſs of the community.
Let us now conſider theſe conſtituent parts of the ſovereign power, or parliament, each in a ſeparate view. The king’s majeſty will be the ſubject of the next, and many ſubſequent chapters, to which we muſt at preſent refer.
The next in order are the ſpiritual lords. Theſe conſiſt of two arch-biſhops, and twenty four biſhops; and, at the diſſolution of monaſteries by Henry VIII, conſiſted likewiſe of twenty ſix mitred abbots, and two priors[2]: a very conſiderable body, and in thoſe times equal in number to the temporal nobility[3].
