[p. 104]
|104| notion of examining commissions, consisting themselves of men of insight and experience, who as officials would have duties, instead of a multitude of individuals who have only the quality of the ten-pound rental, as well as [the] notion of proofs of capacity which would be demanded from the candidates for legislating and administering the state, is indeed too far removed from the unconditional sovereignty of those entitled to decide on these matters.
If now, for the material interests of rational right touched upon and for others, which have already been carried out in many civilised states of the Continent, above all in the German countries, the need in England still seems almost to slumber, it is not from experience of how little or nothing has been accomplished in this direction by the Parliaments, according to the hitherto existing manner of the rights of their composition, that the necessity of a reform is demonstrated; England will agree with the Duke of Wellington in what he said recently in the House of Lords, that “from the year 1688 (the year of the revolution which overthrew the Catholic-minded House of Stuart from the throne) until now, through the union of wealth, talents and manifold knowledge which represented the great interests of the kingdom, the affairs of the country have been conducted in the best and most glorious manner”. National pride in general keeps the English from studying and getting to know the advances which other nations have made in the development of the institutions of right; the pomp and noise of the formal freedom to discuss the affairs of the state in Parliament and in other assemblies of all classes and estates, and to decide upon them in the former, as well as the unconditional entitlement to do so, hinders them from, or does not lead them to, penetrating in the stillness of reflection into the essence of legislation and government (among few European nations prevails such a developed facility of ratiocination in the sense of their prejudices and so
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