SIR JOHN HERSCHEL ON CONSTITUTIONAL SAFE GUARDS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TES "SPECTATOR."] occurs to me as a reader of your able articles on the political crisis that the following words of a great thinker and mathematician may be quoted at the present time, setting
forth as they do the convictions of a great intellect as to the true safeguarding of our Constitution :— " Extensive and unexpected fluctuation of every description, as it is opposed to the principle of divided and independent risks, so it also, by consequence, stands opposed to the most immediate objects of social institutions, and forms the element in which the violent and rapacions find their opportunities. Nothing, there-
fore, can be more contrary to sound legislative principle than to throw direct obstacles in the way of provident proceedings on the part of individuals (as, for instance, by the exorbitant taxation of insurances), or to encourage a spirit of general and reckless speculation, by riding unreservedly over established laws of property, for the avowed purpose of affording a clear area for the development of such a spirit on a scale of vast and simultaneous action. The sobering influence of an upper legislative assembly, refusing its sanction to the measures demanded, or spreading it over time, can alone repress or moderate these epidemic outbreaks of human cupidity, and its mission is abandoned, and its functions pro tanto abdicated, if it retreat from the performance of this duty."—Essay by Sir J. F. W. Herschel, Bart. [1850], on " The Calculus of Probabilities."
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