TWO POLITICAL MORALITIES
What are these two moralities? They constitute two contrasting values which the decisions of State authority in the good constitution must strive to deliver or uphold. They may be summarised as (1) the autonomy of every individual, and (2) the interests of the people as a whole. These are the moralities of law and of government. The first of them inheres in the notion that duties should be honoured and rights should be vindicated, whether the general welfare of the State and its citizens is thereby enhanced or not. But the second puts the general welfare of the State and its citizens centre stage: “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. It is obvious that they may very readily be in conflict.
The two moralities possess immediate and powerful echoes of Professor Ronald Dworkin's well known distinction between principle and policy 10 . More broadly they reflect two major and very familiar post-Enlightenment traditions of moral philosophy: the philosophy of duties and rights on the one hand, and the philosophy of utilitarianism on the other: Kant and Bentham. These traditions are intricate and difficult. There are for example many problems with the idea of Kant's categorical imperative, one version of which reads “Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” 11 . And the associated idea that every person is to be treated as an end and not a means is only telling if it is heavily *573 qualified. Utilitarianism is also beset by notorious problems leading to theoretical adjustments and the wobble between what is called rule-utilitarianism and act-utilitarianism.
One reason why, in elaborating these opposing theories, the philosophers have faced formidable difficulties is their insistent quest for the Holy Grail of uniformity - the search for a single moral theory that can be shown to be correct for all cases. Thus in his recent book On What Matters, already acknowledged as a work of great philosophical importance 12 , Derek Parfit seeks to synthesise the three major normative traditions of Kantianism, contractualism and consequentialism (of which utilitarianism is a variety) into a unified whole which he calls “Triple Theory” 13 . However, since I do not propose to follow the quest for the Sangreal of uniformity, I need say nothing about the conceptual challenges encountered by those who do. It is enough for my deployment of the two political moralities to recognise the practical contrast between the two values to which they give substance, the autonomy of every individual and the interests of the people as a whole. Whatever the problems of either as an all-embracing moral theory, as distinctive values they are perfectly coherent and the contrast between them, though not absolute, is perfectly real.
 
I am concerned to draw out the implications of these contrasting values for our understanding of the good constitution. The issues and debates at the first two levels of abstraction at which our initial controversies may be considered, that is to say human rights law and the progression from a parliamentary to a constitutional supremacy, are functions of the tension between the two political moralities. More than this: the tenor of our constitution, the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, is given by the relative weight our law accords to each. The good constitution requires that the two political moralities are in harmony; each of them served to the least prejudice of the other.