Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
Thus deputed by his country to many successive senates, he has acquired an unrivalled degree of knowledge in the methods of our proceedings, and an eminent dexterity in digesting them with that order and perspicuity by which only the transaction of great affairs can be made expeditious, and the discussion of difficult questions be disentangled from perplexity; qualities which are now made particularly necessary by the importance of the subjects to be considered in this senate: so that I doubt not but you will unanimously concur with me in desiring that the chair may be filled by a person eminently distinguished by his knowledge, his integrity, his diligence, and his reputation; and therefore I move, without scruple, that the right honourable Arthur ONSLOW, esquire, be called to the chair.
Yet the great charter contained no establishment of new courts, magistrates, or senates, nor abolition of the old. It introduced no new distribution of the powers of the commonwealth, and no innovation in the political or public law of the kingdom.
If one were expecting to be judged by a few scholars only, one might hope somehow to cajole them; but it is this vast, unimpassioned, unconscious tribunal, this average judgment of intelligent minds, which is truly formidable, something more undying than senates and more omnipotent than courts, something which rapidly cancels all transitory reputations, and at last becomes the organ of eternal justice and infallibly awards posthumous fame.
Conflagrations; rate wars; eruptions of idiotic and ruinous legislation adopted by state senates and assemblies composed of meddlesome agriculturalists, saloon keepers, impractical young lawyers, and intensely practical old politicians; all these he had lived through not once, but often, and had always piloted the Guardian's bark to port in safety.
Arrogant, overbearing, self-concentrated, accustomed to lead senates and to guide the councils and share the secrets of kings, familiar with and almost an actor in every event in the political history not only of his own country but of every important state in Christendom during nearly two generations of mankind, of unmatched industry, full of years and experience, yet feeling within him the youthful strength of a thousand intellects compared to most of those by which he was calumniated, confronted, and harassed; he accepted the great fight which was forced upon him.
All the great people you see make considerable figures on the exchange, in court, and sometimes in senates, are such as in reality have no greater faculty than what may be called human instinct, which is a natural tendency to their own preservation, and that of their friends, without being capable of striking out of the road for adventures.
Yet the effect of those troubles was that schemes of political and religious reform were generally regarded with suspicion and contempt. During twenty years the chief employment of busy and ingenious men had been to frame constitutions with first magistrates, without first magistrates, with hereditary senates, with senates appointed by lot, with annual senates, with perpetual senates.
Senates are like to have little regard for any proposals that come from without doors; though, under a due sense of my own inabilities, I am fully convinced, that the unbiassed thoughts of an honest and wise man, employed on the good of his country, may be better digested than the results of a multitude, where faction and interest too often prevail; as a single guide may direct the way better than five hundred, who have contrary views, or look asquint, or shut their eyes.
The government would have been entirely in patrician hands. The House of Lords, constantly drawing to itself the first abilities in the realm, would have become the most august of senates, while the House of Commons would have sunk almost to the rank of a vestry.
But Guiscard was still inflexible. His deep eye flashed with a light which I never could have looked for under those projecting brows. His cheek was visited by a tinge which argued a passionate interest in the subject; and, as he spoke, his tongue uttered a nervous and powerful eloquence, which showed that Guiscard was thrown among camps, while he might have figured in senates and councils.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking