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Untitled Article
quired that all should be present , either at the debate or at the division , all would attend . But these occasions , though of freq uent , are not of daily occurrence ; and , at other times , he is good for very little who cannot serve his country to better purpose elsewhere , than by destroying his health and exhausting his spirits in a crowded assembly . The lives of several valuable Members of Parliament , and almost the whole usefulness of
niany more , have fallen a sacrifice to regularity of attendance . The main question is , not how often has a member attended , but what he has done when he did attend ? However irregular his attendance , he should be honourably acquitted if he can appeal to valuable services actually achieved , as a proof that his time on the whole has been well expended for the public benefit .
These remarks will no longer apply , or at least not in an e qual degree , when for the first time common sense shall be at length applied to the distribution of public business ; when the cumbrous machinery of a multitudinous legislature shall no longer be put in motion for purposes for which it is manifestly unfit , and to which it never would have been applied , but that the simple means w hich would be efficacious to the end are not in existence . Can there be a spectacle more like Smollett ' s vast machine for cutting a cabbage , than the two Houses of Parliament engaged in
passing a Divorce Bill , or a Turnpike Bill , or a Bill to enable a Joint Stock Company to sue and be sued in the name of an individual ? When the numbers of the House of Commons shall not exceed two or at most three hundred—when local representative councils , of twelve or twenty members each , shall be constituted for the transaction of local business—when the necessity of legislating for individual cases shall have been obviated , to the extent it easily might , by well-considered general laws enacted once for all—when statesmen shall arise whose logical habits shall enable them to foresee and provide for large classes of cases at once ,
instead of merely darning holes in the laws , or laying on , as at present , when they see a place uncovered , a little patch of law just large enough to cover it—and when the preparation of Bills for Parliament shall be the cluty of a responsible Minister of Legislation , aided by a standing Commission of the first jurists in the nation , an arrangement without which all the representative
Governments of Europe are in danger of making , in the words of General Lamarque , ' une haitc dans la boue ;—then , perhaps , and not till then , the business of Parliament will neither , in quantity or quality , be such as to justify any of the members in withholding constant attendance .
l ~ ) th February . —Lord AUhorp ' s Budget . —The prosperity of the country has better availed the Ministry than their own counsels . La » t year they squandered a considerable surplus revenue in remitting , not taxes , but halves and quarters and half-quarters of taxes . They seemed to have found tlie secret of giving
Untitled Article
Lord Althorp ' s Budget * 169
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 169, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/9/
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