But probably the fullest statement of the doctrine of the rule of law occurs in the work of William Paley, the “great codifier of thought in an age of codification.” It deserved quoting at some length: “The first maxim of a free stale,” he writes, is, that the laws be made by one set of men, and administered by another; in other words, that the legislative and the judicial character be kept separate. When these offices are unified in the same person or assembly, particular laws are made for particular springing often times from partial motives, and directed to private ends: whilst they are kept separate, general laws are made by one body of men, without foreseeing whom they may affect; and, when made, must be applied by the other, let them affect whom they will… When the parties and interests to be affected by the laws were known, the inclination of the law makers would inevitably attach to one side or the other; and where where were neither any fixed rules to regulate their determinations, nor any superior power to control their proceedings, these inclinations would interfere with the integrity of public justice. The consequence of which must be, that the subjects of such a constitution would live either without constant laws, that is, without any known pre-established rules of adjudication whatever; or under laws made for particular persons, and partaking of the contradictions and iniquity of the motives to which they owed their origin.
“Which dangers, by the division of the legislative and judicial functions, are in this country effectually provided against Parliament knows not the individuals upon whom its acts will operate: it has no ease or parties before it; no private designs to serve: consequently, its resolutions will be suggested by the considerations of universal effects and tendencies, which always produce impartial and commonly advantageous regulations.”
With the end of the eighteenth century, England’s major contributions to the development of the principles of freedom came to a close. Though Macaulay did once more for the nineteenth century what Hume had done for the eighteenth, and though the Whig intelligentsia of the Edinburgh Review and economists in the Smithian tradition, like J. R. MacCulloch and N. W Senior, continued to think of liberty in classical terms, there was little further development. The new liberalism that gradually displaced Whiggism came more and more under the influence of the rationalist tendencies of the philosophical radicals, and the French tradition. Bentham and his Utilitarians did much to destroy the beliefs that England had in part preserved from the Middle Ages, by their scornful treatment of most of what until then had been the most admired features of the British constitution. And they introduced into Britain what had so far been entirely absent—the desire to remake the whole of her law and institutions on rational principles.
The lack of understanding of the traditional principles of English liberty on the part of the men guided by the ideals of the French Revolution is clearly illustrated by one of the early apostles of that revolution in England, Dr. Richard Price. As early as 1778 he argued: “Liberty is too imperfectly defined when it is said to be a ‘Government of LAWS and not by MEN.’ If the laws are made by one man, or a junto of men in a slate, and not by common CONSENT, a government by them is not different from slavery.” Eight years later he was able to display a commendatory letter from Turgot: “How comes it that you are almost the first of the writers of your country, who has given a just idea of liberty, and shown the falsity of the notion so frequently repeated by almost all Republican Writers, ‘that liberty consists in being subject only to the laws?’” From then onward, the essentially French concept of political liberty was indeed progressively to displace the English ideal of individual liberty, until it could be said that “in Great Britain, which, little more than a century ago, repudiated the ideas on which the French Revolution was based, and led the resistance to Napoleon, those ideas have triumphed.” Though in Britain most of the achievements of the sev-enteenth century were preserved beyond the nineteenth, we must look elsewhere for the further development of the ideals underlying them.
1.Concerning William Paley's main vision of the rule of law, which of the following is NOT true?
2.According to Paley, what would happen to a person living in a country where the judiciary and legislative powers aren' t kept separate?
3.Complete the following sentence: "The Whig intelligentsia（ ）. ”
4.Which of the following best expresses the author’s opinion of the Utilitarians?
5.Which of the following is true?
