s the name of the supreme legislature of Great Britain. The immediate derivation of the word is disputed, but that it has a common etymological source with the French *parler*, to speak, cannot be doubted. The term is not confined to Britain. It long designated in France a set of institutions which performed some administrative functions, but were properly the chief provincial courts of justice. The body, which for some time in France was the parallel of the English Parliament, and appeared to be marching on to the same high destinies, was called the States-General, or the three estates. These had many formidable contests with the Crown before they were suppressed, or rather dropped out of the rank of French national institutions. Their last ordinary meeting was in 1614, under Louis XIII., and much interest subsequently bore on the proceedings of that assemblage, as they formed the latest precedents for the guidance of that memorable re-assemblement of the states-general, which ushered in the dawn of the great Revolution. The Cortés of Spain were a parliament powerful and free, and at one time also promising a noble rivalry with that of England. In other countries the institution has been more or less developed, but the true object will best be served by adhering entirely under the article Parliament, to an account of the supreme legislature of the United Kingdom, the most illustrious development of representative government, and the model on which all other sound constitutions must necessarily be framed in spirit if not in detail, as being the great storehouse of legislative wisdom, in which all that has been ever devised by political philosophy, has been put to the test of practical application. This notice will therefore be confined, after a rapid history of its rise in the three kingdoms, to a statement of the existing constitution and practice of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

It has hitherto been an idle task to endeavour to prove that Parliament belongs either to "the institutions of our Saxon ancestors," or the feudal system. In its present state, it is as much the creation of a high social development, and perfected political science, as the railway and the electric telegraph are the developments of mechanical and chemical science. Whatever glimpses we have of the early progress of the institution, must be considered as the efforts of a practical people, making use of such established institutions as fell to their lot, towards the perfection of a free and strong system of representative government. It is far safer, in tracing the history of this progress, to take such palpable facts as occur from time to time, showing stages in the development, than to rely on theoretic views. It may perhaps be true, that the spirit of the institutions of our Saxon ancestors influenced the subsequent progress of Parliament, but very little satisfaction has come out of any attempts to show that the Saxons possessed an institution practically resembling our Parliament. The practices which are among the earliest, and are among the present characteristics of Parliament, cannot be traced into the Saxon period; because we cannot find there the royal summoning, the hereditary principle, and the representative principle; while the institution of slavery, which made a large portion of the community not only the inferiors, but the absolute property of the other, was antagonistic to the spirit of feudal gradation, which gave to the great lords individual power as legislators, and to the smaller people collective power as the choosers of representatives.

We know that the earliest Norman kings not only acted on the advice and consent of certain persons eminently powerful among their subjects, but stated the concurrence of such persons in the official promulgations of the royal will, as giving it strength and validity from their constitutional authority. Antiquaries have been much puzzled to identify the common or general council consulted by these early kings; but there is no doubt that there has been much confusion about the meaning of the word *consellium* or *consilium*, as employed in old documents; and thus it has been supposed to indicate a council or body of persons, when it meant in reality the advice or counsel given by those persons whether assembled or not. (See Municipal Corporation.) Sometimes, too, the act of a sovereign, or even so important a thing as the succession of a sovereign, does not profess to be merely sanctioned by the advice or by the consent of any limited assemblage of persons, however important, but bears to be by the assent or choice of the whole community; and, as in modern times, the universality of the assent or choice was often the more strongly asserted the farther it was from the truth. Whatever were the qualifications of the advisers who surrounded the early Norman kings, they must have been expected to be numerous, Parliament since Westminster Hall was built by Rufus for their reception. Their duties were as much judicial and administrative as they were legislative. The supreme courts, the English privy council, and other institutions, by degrees branched off from this great council, carrying with them the judicial and ministerial functions; and the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords, along with the general etiquette that all members of that House are among the sovereign's councillors, remain to us as relics of the judicial and ministerial functions of these early Parliaments. The term Parliament was first used towards them in the reign of Henry III. In the mean time traces are found of an important distinction. Whatever was the rank of the persons attending the Parliament or great council, they were all tenants-in-chief of the king—all immediately attached to him, and not under any intermediate superior in the feudal hierarchy. In the charter of King John a difference was made according to their rank in the method of requiring their attendance. The great barons were to be individually required to attend by special writ addressed to each; the other tenants-in-chief, not called barons, were called by a general summons—seeming to imply, that such of them as thought fit, or were delegated by their brethren, might attend. It is here that we have the germ of a House of Lords, consisting of men who are legislators by individual right, and of a House of Commons, consisting of chosen representatives. The marks of another significant distinction may be found in these early vestiges. The charters then so frequently issued were bargains by the monarch; among other things, assuring his subjects, that he would not take from them tallages or taxes, save such as were due. The promise not to take did not involve a promise not to ask; and the chief early function of Parliaments was to receive royal appeals for money. Now, by the great barons or tenants of royal demesnes, considerable taxes were due to the Crown by feudal law, and did not require to be asked; and we find the monarch taking his dues from them, and craving more from those tenants of knights' fees, or portions of them, who had enriched themselves with other kinds of property, and who possessed wealth, which, unlike that of the tenants of the great demesnes of the Crown, was not legally taxable. When we find these consenting to share in the burden, we have the foreshadowing of a Lower House asserting and jealously maintaining the exclusive right of dealing with all matters of supply. Another peculiar mark of distinction tends in the same direction. The ecclesiastical lords, the bishops and abbots, sat, like the first temporal lords, as the tenants of baronies or estates; and it is said that the bishops are still a living relic of this primitive system of ennoblement. Like the other great barons, these ecclesiastics were liable to pay feudal dues and taxes without being specially asked for an aid. When the king, however, wished an aid from the clergy at large, irrespective of their baronies, they granted it sitting in a separate assembly or convocation of their own.

Originally, as is well known, the tenure of a baronial fief from the king made a baron or lord of Parliament. Whoever legally possessed that estate, was, in virtue of it, a lord of Parliament without any separate title. In the course of time, however, the monarch began to create higher dignities of his own special grant. The dukedom, taken from the practice of the Roman empire; the marquisate, or margravate, copied from a later institution of the empire, which appointed great lordships, partaking of the nature of monarchies, on the marches for the protection of the empire; the earldom, a revival of an old Saxon title; and the viscounty. The mere barons by tenure not unwillingly accepted of these dignities, which naturally overshadowed, Parliament and at length superseded, the humbler barony by tenure.

The title of baron fell at last to be conferred in the same manner by royal writ or patent; and the peers of England of England came to be virtually peers by writ and not by tenure. The question, whether the old ennobling by tenure still exists, though latent, has curiously enough just reappeared, as we shall presently see.

With regard to the Commons, the earliest summons of a limited number of the lesser freeholders has been assigned to the year 1213, when King John, citing his barons, required the sheriffs at the same time to cause to come to the king at Oxford four discreet knights from each shire to talk with him about the affairs of his kingdom. To see, however, how the representative system was brought out, we must turn to another and not a naturally obvious source.

The municipalities which arose throughout England became part of the feudal hierarchy—they were chief tenants of the Crown. (See Municipal Corporations.) However its position in the hierarchy might be theoretically adjusted, there was no possibility of calling the community of a city, like an individual baron, to attend the king's court. But in the old Roman constitution of the municipality there was a remedy for the difficulty. Although a community, it had a head,—a representative of its several members for the management of its internal affairs. The idea had to be but slightly extended, and the same, or another, selected head might represent the municipality in the king's Parliament. There can be no more emphatic reproach to those who insist on founding our parliamentary system solely on Saxon, or solely on feudal usages, than thus to find that it took one of the most valuable of all hints for its development from that Roman law which was professedly so much detested in England. It is well known, that the municipalities or burghs were first called to Parliament by the renowned Simon de Montfort in 1264; and there can be little doubt that the very apt method of representation which they found to their hand immediately reduced to symmetry the vague and undefined arrangements by which a few of the freeholders appeared for themselves and their brethren in the Lower House. How Parliament from this time onward grew in strength and efficiency is matter of history, and will in some measure be explained when the functions of Parliament are treated of in this article. The juncture at which the principle was established that the assent of the two Houses is necessary to every legislative act, has been assigned by Hallam and others to the reign of Edward IV. It was very soon afterwards that they asserted the right to inquire concerning grievances, and demand their redress. The feebleness of the Crown has ever been the opportunity of Parliament. During the reign of Richard II., England, as well as Europe at large, was swept by a revolutionary outbreak of the oppressed serfs of the soil, who, in France, rendered themselves ever memorable as the Jacquerie. In England there was an intermediate body, powerful to keep order, but at the same time not negligent of the opportunity for augmenting its own strength; and while the cause of order and the law triumphed over Tyler's rebellion, a part of the power for their enforcement was found to have changed hands from the king to the Parliament. In this reign the Commons achieved the important function, in addition to the granting of the supplies, of assigning them to their destined uses. Soon afterwards, but not without a stubborn resistance, they accomplished a material change in the order of business. They used to present their

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1 In this and the immediately preceding statements, the best general reference that can be made is to the somewhat voluminous Reports from the Lords' Committees appointed to search the Journals of the House, Rolls of Parliament, and other Records and Documents, for all matters touching the dignity of a Peer of the Realm,—an enormous mine of information on matters connected with the early history of Parliament. Parliament grievances, then grant their supply and receive the redress of the grievances—not always satisfactory—at the end of Parliament session. They now insisted that the redress should be obtained before the supply was granted. In this, and in other instances, the disputes between the English monarchs and their Parliaments, exhibit in their bold outline the one party relying on the mighty power of money, and using it in utter distrust of the honesty of the other, who, in his turn, exercises every wile to obtain possession of the money, without performing the condition of which it is the price.

The power of Parliament gradually increased through the despotic reigns of the Tudor kings. It is well known that these princes had a wise aversion to trying constitutional conclusions. It was otherwise when the Stewarts came. The lamentable conflict which then broke out, whatever we may say of its origin, became at last a struggle for entire supremacy between Charles I. and his Parliament. To this end the chief object of each was to get possession of the militia or military force of the kingdom. The question had ever before been left open, but each was determined that it should no longer remain so, by arrogating entire possession. How the conflict ended is too well known to be here stated. But it is almost necessary to remind readers that the Protectorate was still a parliamentary government, not a despotism. A succession of scattered notices of the debates and proceedings in the Parliaments held under Cromwell are preserved in the curious Parliamentary Diary of Thomas Burton. They show, when compared to the memorials we have of other Parliaments immediately before and after, no lack of independent discussion. They exemplify distinctly, however, the inconveniences of throwing such a body as a Parliament, by revolutionary explosions, out of its fixed routine. By the junction of the two Houses into one, and the abolition of some offensive tribunals, such as the Star Chamber, a quantity of judicial business was thrown on the Parliament to which the procedure in the House of Commons was not adapted. It would be difficult to name at any other period a measure which occupied so much time, and involved so many heavy debates, as the disposal of Naylor, the insane Quaker. At the end of each denunciatory debate came the question, whether there was any law infringed by Naylor; and if so, whether the House were the proper persons to apply it by punishment; and the perplexing debates occasioned by this subject show the wisdom of the House of Commons in having kept clear of all judicial functions both before and since that period.

On the Restoration, Parliament kept to its old traditions. There was little change in its forms until the Revolution. Some important proceedings, affecting its power and constitution, are part of the history of the period. Among these was the repeal of an act passed in 1641, which provided for the assembling of a fresh Parliament within three years after a dissolution, whether the king might call it or not. It was not, however, the failure to call Parliaments, but their too long continuance when called, that became the constitutional vice of the reign. The Parliament which met in 1661 lasted for seventeen years, becoming subservient by long continuance, as its predecessor, called the Long Parliament, had become self-willed from the same cause.

The Revolution of 1688 was, in form, a piece of parliamentary procedure, but it essentially belongs to the general history of the country. In 1694 an act was passed for limiting the duration of Parliaments to three years. The union with Scotland, which soon followed, renders it appropriate to give a sketch of the separate progress of representative government in that kingdom.

In Scotland the history of all political institutions is broken in upon by the "War of Independence," in which the country successfully resisted the attempt of the Norman monarchs of England to extend their conquest northwards. Before this epoch there was a close resemblance in the institutions of the two countries, and the vestiges of early parliamentary history in each are in their character identical. There are the same convocations of Scotland's principal subjects to attend and advise the king, land, without any rule from which we can at this day establish the criterion on which they were selected; the same dubious use of the expressions "common assent" and "general council;" and the same professions that certain acts were done by the universal consent of the community. The functions of such assemblages like those of England, involved a mixture of the legislative, the judicial, and the administrative. There are several capitularies of laws of considerable antiquity, but it is doubtful how far they were sanctioned either by a Parliament or by any less formal assembly. After the death of Alexander III., an arrangement was made for marrying Margaret, the heiress of the Scottish throne, with Prince Edward of England. It was agreed to by a small Scottish Parliament, which, of course, assembled without any royal warrant. The place of meeting was at Brigham, on the English side of the border; and the assemblage "consisted of the four guardians, two of whom were bishops, of ten other bishops, twelve earls, twenty-three abbots, eleven priors, and forty-eight barons." (Innes's Preface to Acts of Scotland, §7.) The marriage was frustrated by the shipwreck of the princess, so well known as the "Maid of Norway," on her way to Scotland. The claims of Edward, and the selection of Balliol from among the competitors to the throne, as the one most complacent, followed. We are told that "The Parliament assembled by John Balliol at Scone, on the 9th of February 1292, was probably the first of the national councils of Scotland which bore that name in the country at the time, although later historians have bestowed it freely on all assemblies of a legislative character. We have no reason to believe that any change in its constitution occasioned the adoption of the new term, which soon became in Scotland, as in England, the received designation of the great legislative council solemnly assembled." (Ib.) Balliol had afterwards a treaty with France, which, along with those of certain bishops, earls, and barons, bore the attesting seals of six burghs,—a fact which would show the admission of this order to Parliament were it certain that there was an assembling on the occasion of those who appended their seals to the treaty. "Finally, in the famous Parliament at Cambuskenneth, held on the 15th day of July 1326, when Bruce claimed from his people a revenue to meet the expenses of his glorious war, and the necessities of the state, the tenth penny of all rents, according to the old extent of King Alexander III., was granted to the monarch by the earls, barons, burgesses, and free tenants in full Parliament assembled. The change had taken place silently and perhaps gradually; but henceforth, undoubtedly, the representatives of the burghs formed the third estate, and an essential part of 'all Parliaments and general councils.'" (Ib.)

It is from this point that we find the forms and character of the Scottish Parliament gradually diverging from those of the English. But before describing the nature of these divergencies, it may be proper to mention a constitutional change copied directly from the Parliament of England, and not on that account throwing any doubt on the divergence in question, but rather establishing it by the marked and specific character of the exception. An early statute of the reign of James I. abruptly enacts, "That the small barons and free tenants need not come to Parliament nor general councils;" and these were appointed in their several counties to choose representatives,—two for every county, with the exception of a few small counties, which were to have but one. These representatives are called in the act the "speakers;" and their constituency being spared attendance, were bound to contribute to the necessary ex- power of the Church of Rome, and virtually carried the Reformation—had no royal sanction. There was no solemn form for administering the royal assent to a measure. A practice had grown up of touching acts of Parliament with the sceptre, but it was often maintained that this was a mere formal courtesy, by which the sovereign acknowledged the existence of an act passed by the Estates, and announced that he had no objection to it. Some of the older acts were passed with so little deference to the sovereign's will, that it was considered immaterial whether he touched them with the sceptre or not. So lately, however, as Queen Anne's reign, when the Act of Security was passed for severing Scotland from England, it was maintained by some of the members that, if the policy then prevailing in England should continue, when the touching of the sceptre was refused, the States had the inherent right of making it law without any royal assent, and would do so.

This was one of the events which brought on the Union. The Estates had in the meantime been freed from the Lords of the Articles, and other restraints, by the Revolution, which had at once converted them into a body possessed of all the English freedom of debate, without those rules of parliamentary action which had made the conduct of business so strict in England while debate was free. Many causes of fierce dispute arose between the two nations, among which not the least formidable were proceedings by the English Houses of Parliament for inquiry into matters which occurred in Scotland. The Scots were denied participation in the English shipping and colonial privileges; and when they endeavoured to establish a colony of their own, its promoters—members of the Scottish Estates—were called before the English Parliament to answer for an invasion of the privileges conferred on English commercial companies. The Scottish Estates threatened to form alliances and connections of their own; and it was obvious that nothing but their union with the Parliament of England could keep peace between the two countries.

A union had not only frequently been discussed, but had twice been deliberately attempted,—in 1667 and in 1703. In both instances, the insuperable impediment was, the peculiar commercial fanaticism long peculiar to England. The Scots were by the Navigation Act as incapable of participating in the trading privileges of the English as any other foreign nation, and Parliament refused to admit them to advantages for which it was alleged that they could give no equivalent. The necessity, however, of making both nations one in all respects was now felt, and the leaders of the English Parliament were prepared, with reluctance, to remove the great impediment to a fusion. The terms of a treaty were first adjusted by commissioners appointed for either country by the Crown. When their labours were ended, the far more difficult process began of passing two acts of union which should be identically the same,—one in the Parliament of each country. A process so thoroughly constitutional, and so indicative of the flexibility as well as power of representative government, was never attempted or conceived in any other country. The matter was first taken up in the Parliament of Scotland; and it was some gratification to the national pride to be in a manner laying down the terms of the joint measure to England. In Scotland it is well known that the measure was passed only after a long and stormy contest; in England it was carried more rapidly and easily.

The first Parliament of Great Britain met on October 23, 1707. The members for Scotland, who had been accustomed to rule in a smaller assembly, suffered from a consciousness of insignificance, which naturally merged into a suspicion that they and their nation were subject to the contempt of their great partner. The government and the English members were neither skilful nor successful in removing this impression, and the united Parliament be- Two events in parliamentary history followed quickly on the Union. The high Tory government of Harley and St John, being weak in the House of Lords, got a sufficient number of peers created to afford them a preponderance; twelve were created at once, and, in the year 1711, nineteen in all. The effect of this operation was little anticipated. It was remembered as a precedent in 1831; and a threat to repeat it is believed to have carried the Reform Act. The other great constitutional measure was the passing of the Septennial Act. It immediately followed the rebellion of 1715, and its avowed object was, to keep in power the party and the Parliament which had steadily supported the Hanover interest. When the seventh session of that Parliament was near its end there were serious proposals still to prolong its existence, but they were fortunately abandoned.

We now come to a period when the British legislature stands charged in history with the weight of heavy accusations of corruption. But it is, at the same time, the period when parliamentary government made its greatest and its steadiest progress. The House of Commons is indebted for its transcendant power to no one man so much as to Walpole. He encouraged no attempts to grasp at functions which were not constitutionally its own. The prerogatives of the Crown were scrupulously respected, and so were the special functions of the Upper House. But year by year throughout his long administration the representative portion of the constitution increased in importance and power. This increase of influence naturally gave much temptation to corruption. Both the Crown and the aristocracy found it of more avail to wield an influence in the House of Commons than to exercise what remained of their own legitimate authority. Decaying corporations had been wont listlessly to drop the privilege of representation as too heavy for their custody, but now any village or ruined wall, around which the shadow of old electoral rights continued to cling, was sedulously looked after and protected in its franchise by powerful hands. Soon after the middle of the century the influences thus created were loudly condemned, and parliamentary reform was demanded by a large body of statesmen, foremost among whom was Chatham's ambitious son. How the French revolution frightened them from the field, and postponed the question, are matters well known in history.

Meanwhile the position of Ireland, as a separate country, with a separate legislature, created uneasiness. It is necessary to trace the constitutional progress of the Parliament of Ireland, as it was shaped on the model of the Parliament of England. Having shown a strong partiality for the cause of the White Rose, the Irish Parliament was, on the accession of Henry VII., subjected to a condition of humiliation and dependence by the act called Pawning's Law, or the statute of Drogheda. It provides, among many minor restraints, that no legislative proposals could be brought before the Irish Parliament unless they had previously received the approval of the king and his council in England. While this restraint on independent legislation was in full force, the English Parliament claimed and carried into effect the right of legislation for Ireland within the walls of St Stephen's. These tests of dependence lasted until they were swept away by the organized force of the Irish volunteers. The independent Irish legislature became then a very formidable body. It was adorned by the eloquence of several men, whose high genius only served to raise party ferocity, and the stormy debates of the evening Parliament were often concluded by bloody duels in the morning. A spark from continental conflagrations, among such materials, might at any moment be fatal; and the Irish leaders, taking example by the tactics which had been so effective in Scotland, spoke of regulating the succession to the crown of Ireland, and about separate alliances with powers hostile to England. All the energy of the government of the day, both in England and Ireland, was brought to bear on the emergency. A union was carried amid a storm more formidable than that of 1707, and the United Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland began with the nineteenth century.

The next great epoch in parliamentary progress is that of the Reform Act. The substance of the measure will be dealt with in the pages which follow; and the events connected with its passing enter too largely into the general history of the period to be recorded here. The principal portion of the measure—the bill to amend the representation of the people in England and Wales—received the Royal assent on the 7th of June 1832. It is not becoming to indulge in political discussion in a work of reference, but the Reform Act is no longer a matter of politics but of history. It receives the acquiescence and homage of all parties, and therefore there is nothing invidious in saying of it, that no one legislative measure ever did so much to secure good government, official honesty, general freedom, and national prosperity.

The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland consists of the Sovereign,—king or queen,—the United House of Lords, and the House of Commons. Sometimes these are called the Three Estates of the Realm; but it is more usual, as it used to be in France and in Scotland, to speak of the Bishops or Ecclesiastical Estate, the Lords, and the Commons, as the Three Estates. Each of the three departments of the parliamentary constitution has, as will be more specially explained, separate rights and powers. The Sovereign has his prerogative; the House of Lords has its judicial power; the House of Commons —the least endowed with any authority separate from its legislative combination with the others—has, as the House of Lords also has, powers for the maintenance of its privileges, for compelling the appearance before it of persons whom it desires to examine, and, generally, for extracting the information necessary for conducting the national business. In the functions which are purely legislative, however, all the three powers must act together.

The House of Lords is usually divided into lords spiritual and lords temporal, and both again are divided into lords who sit there by absolute right, and lords who are selected. The English bishops, though called lords spiritual, are believed to sit in virtue of their temporal baronies; and one of them, the Bishop of Sodor and Mann, whose see was beyond the bounds of the old Norman baronies, has hence no seat in the House. Four bishops are selected to represent the Church of Ireland, in terms of a rotation established at the Union. The temporal lords who sit by their own right are the peers of England, the peers of Great Britain, created since the union with Scotland, and the peers of the United Kingdom, created since the union with Ireland. There is no limit to the royal prerogative in the creation of hereditary peers of the United Kingdom. It has been, however, questioned whether the Crown can create a peerage merely for life, and the question created so grave a controversy when that honour was conferred on Lord Wensleydale, that the patent was altered to the usual form.

We have seen that the first members of the House of Lords sat by tenure of their lands. The question of the right to sit by tenure alone, is still in one sense undecided. It is true that since the peerage came virtually to consist of titles Parliament by writ, no claim to membership has been admitted on the ground of tenure. But it is equally true, that there is no law or solemn decision declaring that tenure forms no title. It is a popular belief that certain great feudal domains—as Arundel and Berkeley—still possess the virtue of conferring peerage on their owners. The question has slept, owing in many instances to this obvious cause, that the person who would be baron by tenure, is an earl, or something still higher, by writ. Various accidents, not unaided by design, have prevented the question from demanding a decision in some special cases. In the instance of one family—the Berkeley’s—it appeared to draw an issue more than once, but has always been incidentally checked; and it has been just again opened by the owner of the ancient domains of that family, who has presented a petition claiming his right to sit as a baron by tenure. The elder children of the last lord who held the title were found to be in law illegitimate, and incapable of succession to the peerage by writ. He, however, bequeathed to the eldest and the second of these children successively the castle and domains. The exclusion of the elder children of course opened the succession of the peerage to the eldest son born in wedlock; but, from an honourable homage to the memory of his parents, that son, holding, it would seem, that the decision which legitimated his elder brothers was unjust, has refused to assume the title.* When the eldest son succeeded to the domain, the question whether he could sit as baron by tenure might have arisen, but was obviated by his being raised by patent to the peerage as Earl Fitzhardinge. On his death this title became extinct. The second son succeeded to the estates, and the family title by writ still remained unclaimed. In these circumstances, the owner of the estates demands to be admitted as a baron by tenure. The claim involves the principle of territorial nobility in its simplest form; for the conditions which deprive him of succession to the earldom of Berkeley by writ, would also disqualify him as the representative of the previous owners; and the title by which he holds the estate is not more hereditary in its legal character than that of any stranger obtaining it by bequest or purchase might be. In this case the applicant has stated to the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords, that the lordships of Berkeley could be traced as a tenure by barony to the reign of Henry I.; and that the muniments of the lordships were so well preserved, “that he should be able to bring before the House almost every one of the barons of Berkeley, and make them declare that they held their titles by tenure; and it was by tenure they were entitled to sit as lords of Parliament.” He has offered to prove that, before passing into the present family, the estates had been appropriated by the Crown; that, consequently, those who had possessed them then ceased to be lords of Parliament; and that there were lords of Berkeley in Parliament at all times when those lands were in the possession of a subject, and none when the lands were in the hands of the Crown. He was further prepared to show that, during the Tudor dynasty, the estates having been entailed, went to an heir of entail who was not the lineal descendant of the former holders; and that, by reason of the possession of the property, that heir of entail sat in the House of Lords as owner of the barony. If this case be brought to its legitimate conclusion, it will settle the question whether lordship by tenure is an existing right under the British constitution.

The old peerage of Scotland is represented by sixteen of that body, chosen for each Parliament. The peers entitled to elect them are those who, whatever other dignities they may enjoy, are in the possession of titles acknowledged in “the Union Roll” made up at the time of the union with England. The Irish peerage sends to the House twenty-eight representatives, chosen for life.

The House of Commons consists, besides the representatives of the universities, of the members for counties and the members for towns. In England and Ireland the House of former are technically called knights of the shire, and the Commons latter burgesses. In Scotland both classes were, by old custom, called “commissioners;” but this peculiarity has been, in practice, dropped.

The following short statement of the several kinds of franchise throughout the empire is intended not so much to furnish a technical legal definition of the different qualifications to vote, as to convey a general notion of the classes who possess the franchise.

In the English counties the forty-shilling freeholders are the foundation of the constituency. Freehold estates, as chise in distinct from other kinds of landed property, are those held England directly of the Crown. The expansive character of this qualification was limited by the Reform Act, which requires occupancy if the freehold interest be only for life, unless it has come by marriage or settlement, or is attached to an office. The absolute freeholds which confer the franchise are called freeholds of inheritance. The virtual meaning of this is, that they have either descended as property to the holder, or that they are absolutely vested in himself and his heirs—in short, that he is owner of the freehold; for although, technically, that is not a freehold of inheritance which does not go to the heir, of course the conveyancer who completes the title for a purchaser will see that it is so adjusted as to convey to him an available freehold. Those who were in possession of freehold at the time of the passing of the Reform Act retained the franchise, but their number must now be much reduced, and gradually becoming extinct. Of the large class specially enfranchised by the Reform Act, the more important are, the possessors of land worth L10 a year on any title not freehold, such as copyhold, or on lease for sixty years; and the possession of leases for twenty years of lands worth L50 a year. The franchise derived from the possession of lands of the annual value of L10 and L50 respectively must be an actual interest to that extent, and therefore must be clear of all rents and charges; such are the qualifications by ownership not necessarily inferring occupancy. Another large class consists of those who are the tenants and occupants of lands paying a rent of L50. No one can hold a county vote on the freehold of a tenement, which would give him a right to vote in a town whether he exercise that right or not; and no one can vote for a county on property other than freehold, if it give the right of voting in a town.

In the English towns the right of voting was infinitely varied—in some instances comprising a closely limited body, in others indefinitely expansive, and sometimes comprehending a great part of the least educated and least orderly classes of the community. The most comprehensive class of these electors has been well known by the name of freemen. (See Municipal Corporations.) In those towns which were not disfranchised by the Reform Act, the freemen on the list immediately before the passing of the act were, under certain restrictions, allowed to retain their right to vote. None could afterwards acquire the right to vote as freeholders unless through birth or servitude; and no one can derive it by birth unless his predecessor held it before the passing of the Reform Act, or acquired it by servitude. Another class of voters in the English towns were the holders of freeholds and burgage tenements; a class capable, like the freemen and the county freeholders, of being sometimes fictitiously extended. This class of voters was retained under conditions for preventing the creation of fictitious votes. These required that the voter should be in receipt of rents and profits for a year, unless when the property had come by descent or settlement, and likewise that he should reside for six months in the town or its neighbourhood. To these a Parliament large distinct class of voters was added by the Reform Act, who, while they form the majority in many of the old constituencies, are the entire constituency of the newly enfranchised towns. They are the now well-known ten-pound householders—the occupants, whether as owners or tenants, of premises worth L10 a year. There are provisions requiring that the qualification shall have been enjoyed for a whole year before it is acted on, and for residence for six months in the town or its neighbourhood.

The franchise in Scotland is far more a fundamental creation of the Reform Act than that of England. It is hence naturally much more simple. Of the old county constituencies of freeholders, those only who had the qualification when the act passed are now entitled to vote on their freeholds; and of course their number must be much reduced. The fresh constituency consists of—1st, Owners of heritable or landed property worth L10 a-year, clear of charges. Every kind of title, implying ownership of land, or its profits, is, by the spirit of the definitions in the act, capable of conferring a qualification, with the exception of those rights which, though nominally of a proprietary nature, are in reality only securities over the property for debt. 2d, Tenants on leases not shorter than the old customary period of "three nineteen years," or fifty-seven years—who have a proprietary interest in the leaseworth L10 a-year. Though the law of Scotland strictly separates this class of holders from feudal proprietors, in relation to whom they are mere tenants, yet their position has a virtual analogy with that of some of the English yeomen or peasant-proprietor class, and, like them, the Scottish tenants on long leases are qualified without occupancy. 3d, Tenants in occupancy, paying a rent of L50, or who may have paid the sum of L300 in the shape of "a grassum"—nearly equivalent to a "fine" in England—as the consideration apart from any rent. The town constituencies of Scotland were entirely framed by the Reform Act, as the old arrangement was not a system of direct representation—the elections being made by the corporations, as a sort of electoral colleges, representing the citizens. There is but one source of qualification—an urban tenement worth L10 a-year, whether it be a dwelling-house or place of business. Such a tenement gives a qualification, either on occupancy as proprietor or tenant, or on ownership without occupancy. There are conditions of a year's possession, and a half year's residence in the town or its neighbourhood, similar to those in England. One peculiarity has been retained from the old system, which, though it does not affect the qualifications of the electors, makes the Scottish burghal representation differ materially from the English and the Irish. The small towns are grouped together in districts—for instance, the St Andrews district embraces seven small towns—an arrangement which obviated the two alternatives of giving an undue preponderance to small burghal constituencies on the one hand, and on the other absorbing them in the counties.

In Ireland, the forty-shilling freehold system having been a means by which a landlord could give a vote to all his adult male tenants, was restrained as a condition of the Catholic Emancipation Act; and, saving some existing rights to the individual holders, the qualification was then raised to a ten-pound freehold. The Reform Act added to this constituency a similar amount of property held by copyhold, a ten-pound interest in a lease for a term of sixty years, or a twenty-pound interest in a lease for fourteen years if terminable on a life, a ten-pound interest in an absolute lease of twenty years, and the occupancy of such a tenement by sub-lease. In the Irish towns, a residue of freemen and voters holding under other consuetudinary franchises, had to be curtailed by the Reform Act, and the staple of the qualification for voting became the ten-pound occupancy.

There are arrangements in the several divisions of the Parliament United Kingdom for preserving an authentic register of those entitled to vote. An explanation of these arrangements would lead to technical details. It need only be stated that the establishment of certainty in this matter, with the requisite expedition, has been attended with great difficulty. If analogy had been taken from the law of private rights, the voter claiming a disputed interest in property, might be dragged through a litigation as long as any that is necessary for establishing a disputed title. On the other hand, so long as a patrimonial interest is counted the proper foundation for a vote, it could never be permitted to every one to claim the right without becoming liable to challenge. To accomplish a practical medium suitable to the purpose, the lists are made up on the statements of each applicant, supported by ordinary documents, such as leases, receipts, &c., which give a colour to his claim, and, if it be objected to, there is a summary judicial settlement or revisal. While professional judges have been employed in this function, care has been taken to bar all cases of disputed qualification from entering the courts as regular litigations. Party zeal is generally sufficient to make this ordeal pretty stringent, and the purgations of the roll have in some measure the aspect of a litigation between two sides, to which the rights of individual claimants of the franchise are in the position of items in accounting, which are struck off or kept on, on either side respectively, according to the success of the attack or the defence.

It need scarcely be said that none are qualified to hold the franchise but males twenty-one years old. Insanity and idiocy are good grounds of objection to claims for enrolment, and so are convictions of perjury or bribery. A large body of persons in the government employment—chiefly embracing those connected with the revenue—are disqualified by Act of Parliament, and so are the holders of government contracts. The official persons connected with the metropolitan police force are likewise excluded from voting within the metropolitan districts. In the cases not thus specially provided for, government employment is no disqualification. No alien can vote for a member of Parliament, at least in England or Ireland. Practically the same exclusion extends to Scotland, but it has been questioned whether there is anything in the law of Scotland to support it.

As to the qualifications of candidates: In the first place, no member of the House of Lords is eligible to the House of Commons. The representative peers of Scotland and Ireland are of course excluded. No peer of Scotland can, however, be elected; and it may be said that a Scottish peer, not one of the representatives in the House of Lords, belongs to the only class of men in the British empire who are ineligible to the House of Commons. Their heirs were formerly excluded, but this disqualification was removed by the Reform Act. The judges of the supreme courts are ineligible. In England their exclusion is attributed to their restricted privilege of presence in the House of Lords. The Scottish judges are excluded by a statute passed by Walpole to keep out of Parliament a judge of the Court of Session, the notorious Erskine of Grange, whom he expected to be troublesome to the government. The holders of all government offices created since the year 1705, are by statute ineligible. The great offices of the ministry which date from before that year are of course not within the exclusion, but their holders, if in Parliament when they take office, require to be re-elected. When the war department was lately re-constructed, a special act was necessary to enable the under-secretary-at-war to sit in the House. The clergy of the Church of England and Ireland are excluded in a body. The absolute character of this exclusion was tested in a resolute contest by Horne Tooke, Parliament whose commentary on the result was, that a man once admitted to orders could only get admission to the Commons by leading a life which might procure his degradation from the priesthood. There prevails a sort of traditional doctrine that the clergy are excluded from Parliament as the lay council of the kingdom, because they are represented in convocation—the clerical council. The exclusion does not, of course, apply to the clergy of Protestant dissenting bodies. Whether there could be any ground for preventing a clergyman of the Established Church of Scotland from sitting in the House of Commons, is a question which does not appear to have been put to a practical test. There would perhaps be no opportunity of deciding it in the case of a minister ordained to a charge, because his removal to such a foreign field of duty as the legislature would doubtless be a ground of deposition. But a licentiate or a retired beneficed clergyman would be excluded were the strictness of the English rule applicable to the Presbyterian Establishment. By the Catholic Emancipation Act, no Roman Catholic priest is capable of being elected a member.

The disqualifications which operated formerly against lay Roman Catholics, and till lately against Jews, were of a different kind. There was nothing to render them ineligible, but certain oaths which they required to take before sitting and acting stood in their way after they were elected. The Emancipation Act removed this barrier from the Roman Catholics, by repealing the provisions which required members of Parliament to abjure some of the fundamental principles of that church. The oath of fidelity, which required to be taken on the faith of a Christian, had still the effect of restraining honest members of the Jewish persuasion from sitting. The removal of this impediment has been the object of a long and arduous contest, in which it was maintained on the one hand, that if the legislature meant to exclude Jews from Parliament they should so enact specifically, instead of leaving them to suffer from the accidental effect of a provision not directed against them; while those who thought that Jews ought to be excluded from the legislature were not of course inclined to give up the practical hold which the accidental effect of the clause gave to them. Repeated measures of relief, in various shapes, were passed by the Commons and rejected by the Lords. At length the friends of Jewish emancipation followed the example which the sagacity of O'Connell had set in the battle of Catholic emancipation, when he got himself returned for Parliament for the county of Clare, and was excluded by the oaths. For several years an eminent member of the Jewish persuasion has been one of the members elect for the city of London. A large constituency deficient in its full complement of representatives through the working of a law which can be altered, would naturally be the most powerful method of bringing home a great principle to the practical mind of British statesmen. It prevented the question from ever falling asleep. Various efforts were made, virtually to effect relief within the House of Commons itself, as a question between the House at large and an individual member. These brought out some curious points in the constitutional practice of the House, but did not effect their object. The House got so far as to permit the Jewish member to take the oath on the Old Testament, as being more binding on his conscience than the whole Bible; but no means were found for safely dispensing with the terms of the oath which were laid down in an act of Parliament. Had the way through other legal difficulties been quite clear, the sitting and acting without having taken the oath involved legal penalties which the courts of law could enforce, and from which the House of Commons could give no protection. In the summer of 1858, the House of Lords submitted to a compromise of a peculiar character on this point. The restraining clause in the oath was not removed, but power was given by statute to the House of Commons to dispense with it by resolution in those cases where it thought fit so to do. The same act gave the House of Lords the same privilege towards Jews raised to the peerage. This act came into operation in July 1858.

Under the head of qualification, it may be stated that there are arrangements for vacating the seats of members who are convicted of crimes, or become insane, or come under the bankruptcy acts. The method of procedure in disqualification by bankruptcy is carefully laid down by statute. Any power assumed by the House itself to exclude the member whom a constituency choose to have as their representative, has always been contemplated outside the walls of Parliament with a jealousy which has been responded to by a corresponding caution within. However offensive any member may become in the House, to deprive a constituency of their representative, duly elected and legally qualified, is a far more serious arrogation of independent power than the refusal to repeal a law which may prevent him from acting. The last instance in which a member was expelled, on account of the general disgust felt towards him by the members, was the notorious case of Wilkes, and the proceeding was vitiated as a precedent by its subsequent revocation, and the admission of its object to the House. Formerly in England and Ireland a candidate required to qualify himself by declaring, if he stood for a county, that he had an estate of L600 a year, and if for a town, that he had an estate of L300 a year. This part of the statute was repealed in 1858.

The number of members at present eligible to the House of Commons is 654. It need scarcely be remarked that, from the pressure to obtain seats, vacancies are seldom allowed to remain longer than the time necessary for filling them, and population, whatever the attendance may be, the House is always, in brief and limited exceptions, complete. The numbers are thus distributed:—In England, including Wales, there are 159 members for the counties, 4 for the universities, and 338 for the towns. These last, until lately, amounted to 337, but the disfranchisement of Sudbury and St Albans by statute, for corruption, has reduced the number. In Scotland there are 30 members for counties, and 23 for towns. In Ireland there are 64 members for counties, 2 for the University of Dublin, and 39 for the towns.

It was one of the objects of the Reform Act to render the proportion of representatives to population in the different constituencies of the empire less unequal than it had been. Still, it is not professed that either the extent of population, or the number of electors, has been made an absolute criterion in the distribution of representation. That there should be a closer proportion between population and representation; that the proportion should be rendered practically absolute by a flexible plan for adjusting the representation from time to time to the relative changes in the population; these are among the political questions of the day. As such it would be inappropriate to deal with them in a work of reference, farther than by the statement of any facts which may show the extent of ground covered by the controversy. The greatest inequalities are in the town department. In England, Harwich, Knaresborough, Marlborough, Ludlow, Thetford, and Tenness, with fewer than 6000 inhabitants, have each two members; while Glasgow, with a population of 350,000, has also two members. London, though divided into seven electoral districts, one of them with four representatives, sends only 16 members to Parliament from a population exceeding two millions. In fact, nowhere else in the United Kingdom is there an area containing within it so large a population with so narrow a representation; for while Scotland is on the whole not so fully represented for its numbers as England, yet for a population not quite three millions there are 53 Parliament representatives. The area making the nearest approach to London for greatness and density of population is perhaps the manufacturing district of Lancashire. The population of that county (including the trifling rural population on its moorlands) just exceeds two millions, and for these there are, including the four county members, twenty-six representatives. In England, indeed, it will be found that where the proportions of the populations of towns to each other would be indicated by an enlargement according to geometrical progression, the increase of representation would have a nearer ratio to arithmetical progression, and among the small English boroughs a population of 50,000 might be found returning as many members as the metropolis. The inequality in the English counties is not nearly so great. It is true that none of the large counties, Yorkshire excepted, has more than four members, but the smallest county returning two members has a population exceeding 20,000.

The relative proportions of electors and of members to population in the three kingdoms, as compared with each other, having sometimes been an object of discussion, the following general results may be stated in round numbers:—In the English counties there is 1 elector for each 20, and 1 member for each 66,012 inhabitants; in the counties of Scotland there is 1 elector for each 34, and 1 member for each 57,554; in Ireland there is 1 elector for each 40, and 1 member for each 93,127 of the population.

Taking the town constituencies, we find in England 1 elector for each 17, and 1 member for each 22,088; in Scotland 1 elector to each 23, and 1 member to each 49,897; and in Ireland, 1 elector for each 30, and 1 member for each 21,425. Even when the exclusion of the fractions is granted, this statement can only be taken as a general estimate of proportions, since the populations are taken from the census of 1851, and the numbers of members and electors are taken from a return ordered by the House of Commons to be printed in February 1858.

Summoning Parliament—General elections. The summoning and the dissolution of a Parliament, as well as the calling and adjournment of it from time to time, are among the undoubted prerogatives of the Crown. When a new Parliament is to be summoned, the lord chancellor receives a written command from the sovereign in council to that effect, and directs the clerk of the Crown in Chancery to issue writs to the several electoral districts. The writs, whether for county or town elections, used to be issued to the sheriff of the county. In England the return of the person elected in a town is generally made by some municipal officer, and by a late act the writs are immediately transmitted to that officer. There is necessarily some variation in the time within which elections must be completed in the different parts of the empire; but the general rule of late has been to abbreviate the time. In England, in counties, the returning officer must, within two days, fix a day, not less than ten, or more than sixteen, for the election. In boroughs it must be within six days, and on three days' notice. The day being fixed, the writ is read in public by the returning officer, and candidates are proposed and seconded by qualified electors. A show of hands is taken, and the returning officer declares the apparent result, without of course knowing whether those who have held up their hands are electors or not. If the parties are satisfied with this declaration the election is at an end; but if the partisans of any candidate proposed are determined on a contest, they crave a poll, and the return is not declared or made until this is over. Formerly the operation of polling used in England to be spread over a period which might amount to fifteen days. Opportunities were thus afforded for deadly contests and very corrupting practices. The opinion that has ruled the later legislation on election practice is, that when the operation is short and simultaneous, the chances of undue influence and violence are reduced, and those of a fair uninfluenced majority in numbers increased. The polling period was abbreviated by the Reform Act, and it is now in the general case limited to one day. There are, at the same time, arrangements for the multiplication of polling booths and stations, to the effect that all electors may give their votes in a free and orderly manner, without requiring to press forward in crowds. The qualifications of voters used in the days of long elections to be subjected to inquiries and discussions, which created small law suits at the polling places. The matters which may be inquired into and discussed, before a tendered vote can be recorded by the poll-clerk, are now strictly limited to the identity of the person voting as a voter on the roll, and his still possessing the qualification on which he was enrolled. A person who generally belongs to some legal body presides at the polling booth, where he is assisted by a recording clerk. If overpowered by a mob, the polling officer adjourns the polling, and resumes it when it can be carried on without disturbance. In pursuance of an old constitutional principle, any military force that may happen to be stationed in a town where there is an election must be removed till it is concluded. At the end of the polling the books are brought sealed to the returning officer, who sums them up. It rarely happens, however, that through the vigilant attention of the supporters of the candidates the result fails to be known to the public with perfect accuracy; and it is usual to post up the numbers in conspicuous places from time to time as the contest draws on. The result is declared at the hustings by the returning officer; and it is usual for the candidates, and sometimes their friends, to make speeches on the occasion. The election is returned to Chancery, but the candidate is considered to be a member of Parliament from the moment of the declaration, although he does not act as a legislator until he has taken the oaths.

The first important business of a new Parliament, as distinct from the opening of a new session of an existing Parliament, is the choice of the Speaker of the House of Commons. A commission, with the lord chancellor at its head, announces that the sovereign will state the cause of the calling of the Parliament, when the members are sworn in, and requests that the gentlemen of the House of Commons will proceed to the appointment of some proper person to be their speaker, and present him for the royal approval. The selection and confirmation of a speaker used to be attended with many ceremonious professions of urgency on the one part, and reluctance on the other; and it was even usual to place him in the chair by gentle compulsion, he all the while professing his unworthiness of the office conferred on him. Some faint vestiges of these practices still continue. The speaker elect goes to the House of Lords, where he receives the royal approval, making profession of his unworthiness, and stating that the faithful Commons are ready to make another choice if he be not approved of. It is still an undecided question whether this is a mere ceremonial of courtesy, or implies a real veto in the Crown on the election of a speaker. It is a question fortunately never likely to be decided, because like many others between the Crown and Parliament it is not likely to be tried. During the reign of Charles II. a memorable dispute occurred on this matter. On the opening of Parliament in 1679, the Court had one of its own followers to offer as speaker; but the Commons selected Sir Edward Seymour, a man of the first rank in their order, who professed to look down upon the Duke of Somerset as a cadet of his family,—pompous, haughty, and extremely jealous of the privileges and powers of the untitled aristocracy who were then, as now, to be found in the House of Commons. He was rejected by the Crown. There is more than one version of the shape in which he reported his election, The Parliamentary history gives it thus:—“May it please your Majesty, the knights, citizens, and burgesses, in Parliament assembled, in obedience to your Majesty's command, have made choice of a speaker, and have unanimously chosen me; and now I have come hither for your Majesty's approbation, which, if your Majesty please to grant, I shall do them and you the best service I can.” By other accounts, however, he is said to have anticipated the courteous declination of his services by saying,—"That he was unanimously chosen by the suffrages of all the Commons of England to be their speaker; and that he was resolved to serve his Majesty in that station to the utmost of his power.” The chancellor who had prepared a speech for the occasion was, it is said, somewhat discomfited by this device, and without the courtesy due to the solemn occasion, after some hesitation and hints from others to remind him of his duty, informed Seymour that his Majesty had other occasions for his service, and the House of Commons must make another choice, and attend next day to report it. The House was then entering on the impeachment of Danby, and this affair added to the prevailing excitement. There was a hot debate on it for a week, followed by a prorogation; and the House, content probably with having loudly asserted its rights, having again to make a choice, selected Mr Serjeant Gregory, who, whether he were really acceptable there or not, was not the person who had been pointed out by the court for their choice.

In the seventeenth century, when the House of Commons had so many contests with the Crown, it was essential that the man who was set by them in front of the battle should not only be possessed of learning, sagacity, and integrity, but of great firmness and courage. Not only as the representative of the House, but within its walls, he had many opportunities either of compromising or of promoting the principles of representative government; for it is evident from Clarendon's admissions, and the general tenor of parliamentary history, that the nature of the House's proceedings could be much influenced by the man who, for the time, occupied the chair. In the present century the utmost that could be said about the influence of a speaker was, that he might occasionally let his eye be caught by a weak member of the opposite party, when there was a speech by a strong member of his own party to be answered. In the peculiar circumstances, however, in which the Whig party were placed by their abrupt and still not fully explained dismissal from office in 1834, they deemed the crisis so important, that it was essential for them to have a speaker from among themselves. They therefore fought the first division of the session on this point, although it was not their strongest, and they had many difficulties to contend with in the position of the government candidate, who had long filled the chair with approval, and had many warm friends. The result of an extremely exciting contest was, that Mr Abercromby was chosen by a majority of ten.

The proper position and functions of a speaker of the House of Commons could not be more emphatically told than in the words of Lenthall, when Charles I., supported by some armed followers, entered the House of Commons, and demanded that “the five members” should be given up. Lenthall, to whom he addressed himself, bent on his knees, and said, “May it please your Majesty,—I have neither eye to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House, whose servant I am, is pleased to direct me.” In adjusting the proceedings and in preserving order, the speaker issues his own directions and commands, but they are in reality those of the House. He is the great depository of the precedents which have been established in former Parliaments; and armed with these, he is prepared to state what the House, in the natural order of things, will require to be done. In the enforcement of his authority, he looks to the support of the House; and if on any point Parliament a majority of those present should be against him, his own personal voice would be ineffective. In practice, however, such discussions never arise; and as no man is ever chosen er, The Speaker who is not endowed with temper, firmness, and a knowledge of the practice of the House, the speaker's directions are taken as law. The speaker naming a member to the House, is an old established form of censure for disorderly conduct. The only light which Hatsell, in his great work on the precedents of Parliament, can throw on the effect of this mysterious punishment is rather ludicrous. He says,—"A story used to be told by Mr Onslow, which those who ridiculed his strict observance of forms were fond of repeating; that as he often, upon a member's not attending to him, but persisting in any disorder, threatened to name him (Sir Sir, I must name you'), on being asked, what would be the consequence of putting that threat into execution, and naming a member, he answered,—‘The Lord in Heaven knows,' from whence they collected that it was merely a threatening expression of his own, that would have no consequence at all. He might have referred them to the journal of the 5th of May 1641, or of the 22d of January 1693, where they would have found, ‘that if the speaker is compelled to name a member, such member will thereby incur the displeasure and censure of the House.” (P. 237.) The last occasion on which this ceremony was performed, was when Fergus O'Connor, having become insane, grew disorderly, and struck the member sitting beside him; but it does not appear to have had much effect.

The necessity of the speaker's presence at the opening and at the conclusion of all pieces of business counted as proceedings of the House, has been observed with an almost superstitious pertinacity until a very few years ago. The immense accumulation of detail business in the House had, in the meantime, rendered necessary the responsible office of permanent chairman of committees. In the year 1853 the chairman of committees was made a sort of deputy-speaker, and it was only then that the country was free from the risk of the public business being interrupted by the illness of one man. How seldom this occurred during the long period when the speaker had no substitute is very remarkable. We read the histories of political movements developed in the parliamentary policy of great statesmen, and in the exciting debates of great orators, without ever being reminded by a sudden pause in the progress of events that their continuance depends on one man's health. The thoroughly practical character of parliamentary proceedings has indeed, from an early time, relieved the speaker of a considerable portion of his attendance. The committees have carried off the greater proportion of the increased business, and even when it is necessary that matters should be transacted by the whole House and their speaker, this officer may be relieved from the greater portion of his attendance, by the House resolving itself into a committee, which reports its proceedings for general adoption.

The House of Lords has no speaker, in the sense in which the term is used in the Commons, as the representative of the corporate existence of the House, whose presence is necessary to the validity of the business accomplished. By a standing order of the House, the lord chancellor, or lord keeper, acts as speaker or chairman when present. When the great seal is in commission, a speaker is appointed by the Crown, generally from the heads of the courts of law; but, in the absence of the regular speaker, the House may appoint a member to that function. It is a curious fact that the speaker does not require to be a member of the House, and that he may be, and on occasion has been, a commoner. He has few duties but those connected with the putting of questions to the House, and he has no Parliament right to enforce order,—such a function not being deemed necessary in the decorous assembly over which he presides. A chairman of committees is appointed for each session. He is a highly responsible and generally laborious officer, having the superintendence of all the procedure in private bills, and the function of checking all irregularities and undue practices by their promoters.

Parliament meets annually, generally in the month of February, but sometimes for a short session, if emergencies render it necessary, before the close of the year. This annual assemblage of Parliament used to be frequently demanded without success, but it is now as firmly established as any human institution can be. The army exists only from year to year through the annual passing of the Mutiny Act, without which there would be no power of military discipline, and soldiers would no more be subject to command than the rest of the community. The funds for the army, as well as for the administration of justice, and the whole civil service of the country, are voted in Parliament annually. In short, unless the whole complicated structure of our national institutions and our civilization were first to disappear, it is impossible to suppose the assembling of Parliament in any year not absolutely necessary.

To the two Houses, and especially to the House of Commons, there is a general responsibility on the part of every authority in the country. It would be difficult now to point out any method of exercising power over the subject, on which responsibility may not be exacted in Parliament. It is long since the sovereign has been represented by a cabinet of ministerial officers, all of them members of one or other House, and the channels through which their subordinate officers are made responsible. The hereditary revenues of the Crown are now accounted for as public property. The "civil list," which used to be a large sum placed in the hands of the Crown for the expenses of the civil institutions of the country, is appropriated to its several purposes. While Parliament has power over the existence of the army, as supplying the funds by which it is maintained, the Crown has hitherto kept the command of the forces. This is exercised through a commander-in-chief, who is not a member of the cabinet, and is not considered to be responsible to Parliament in the same manner as a cabinet minister. It has sometimes, indeed, happened that the commander-in-chief belongs to the party opposed to the existing government. Gradually, however, this authority has lately been coming more and more within the sanction of ordinary parliamentary responsibility, and this process has been greatly quickened by the appointment, in 1855, of a principal secretary of state for war as a member of the cabinet, with an under-secretary, who finds a seat in Parliament. The navy is nominally entirely in the hands of the Crown, and its discipline is conducted, not under a temporary act annually passed, but under a permanent act of the reign of Charles II. Its administration, however, has long been under parliamentary control, by being vested in a commission, the chief, and generally other members of which, are in Parliament.

On the other hand, the power of the Crown has nominally been enlarged in various directions, with the ultimate effect of increasing the responsibility to Parliament. Almost all the public boards, and other minor administrative departments, are responsible to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, who may be called upon to make explanations regarding their conduct in his place in Parliament. Where the functions of any public department have become very important, it has been found expedient to place at its head a minister of the Crown, who has a seat in Parliament. This course was adopted, for instance, towards the English Poor Law Board, and the Board of Health. The British empire in Hindustan arose under the auspices of an irresponsible trading company. It was connected with the general government by the appointment of a Board of Control, and recent events have brought it still more within the nominal power of the Crown, and the real influence of Parliament.

The increase of parliamentary power, during the last half century at least, has almost entirely fallen to the House of Commons. It is there that administrations are annihilated or confirmed, and all great measures are tried. The House of Lords never was the natural birth-place of great popular questions, but it has of late been gradually assuming, to an increasing extent, the characteristics of a committee of revision on the measures passed by the Commons. It has, in this capacity, to perform the unpopular function of rejection. The long and formidable resistance of the Lords to the passing of the Reform Bill called forth a deal of acrimonious criticism, and the various instances in which it rejected measures passed by the Commons were remembered against it. Since that event, if the Lords have not in any way abdicated their function of revision, they have come less prominently forward as the rival of the House of Commons. Great debates have become less frequent; and large measures, which the House of Commons and the country eagerly promoted, have not been resisted with the old party determination. The Lords who transact the business of that House are generally veteran statesmen, who have acquired legislative experience by a long career in the House of Commons, and their procedure has become more that of a deliberative council of patriarchs or ancients, than of a legislative body divided into two parties, who are bound to conduct a perpetual contest against each other.

The forms of procedure in the British Parliament have not received, as a matter of constitutional study, the attention due to them. Instead of involving mere matters of technical and unimportant detail, they are found, when looked at in their general bearings, to be a machinery bringing to wonderful perfection the art of obtaining collective judgment on any matters, however vague and general on the one hand, and however complex in their practical details on the other. It is remarkable that, while the forms of procedure in the law courts have often been acknowledged on all hands to be foul with abuses, and have been assailed as cumbrous and imperfect after the most accomplished practical jurists have reconstructed them,—the procedure of Parliament has gone on unassailed, but ever silently tending towards perfection, by the application to every difficulty as it occurs of the best practical means of overcoming it. One reason for this curious contrast is, that in the courts of law the opposing and contending parties—the litigants and their lawyers—who have no concern in the making of the forms, are yet entitled to take advantage of every flaw and dubiety in their interpretation, and to plead every available quibble; while Parliament makes its forms solely for the use of its own members, the minority as well as the majority; and both are content to fight their battles on their own numerical strength, without founding on technicalities or quibbles. Still, with all this advantage over the practice of the law courts, the forms of Parliament are a wonderful triumph of the practical genius of the nation. In their substantial features they have long remained unaltered. They appear, indeed, to have been brought almost to their present perfection in the great contest of the Long Parliament, where a larger number of able practical men were engaged than perhaps in any other arena known to history. The people of this country are familiar with the forms of Parliament, because they are adopted or imitated in every corporation or collective body, among whom they appear to be the natural way in which collective bodies of men must necessarily transact their business. Their true aptitude can only be estimated by a comparison with the efforts from time to time made by popular assemblages on the European continent to transact legislative business. The great leading principle in the transaction of business in the British Parliament, and the one which most other assemblies have flagrantly missed, is, that there shall be but one question at a time before the House, and that that question shall simply be yea or nay. However hot and confused may be the debate; however seemingly inextricable the views and the projects of the numerous speakers; yet all resolves itself, through a skilful arrangement, into a simple question of affirmative and negative. Thus, at the conclusion of that memorable debate in which the Reform Bill was carried in the House of Commons, on the 22nd of September 1831, the conclusion is recorded in the following brief but very distinct terms in the journals of the House:

"The question being put 'that the bill do pass,' the House divided—

'The yeas went forth—

Tellers for the yeas—Mr Kennedy Mr John Wood 345 Tellers for the nays—Mr Crocker Sir George Clerk 236

"So it was resolved in the affirmative. Ordered—that Lord John Russell do carry the bill to the Lords, and desire their concurrence." Although the division-lists of the members are now published, the taking and recording of their votes are still in the same simple form. Before this point was reached, there were of course many previous divisions, and a still greater number of debates, in which resolutions were adopted by concession without division. But, however complex may be the measure or the series of motions before the House, every clearing away of its portions is on a question of affirmative or negative, and can be accomplished in no other form. Although it may sometimes appear, from the tenor of a debate, that one substantive motion is pitted against another, or that an amendment competes with a motion, yet this can never be so in reality. If it were so, it might involve the necessity of members voting for a resolution as at all events preferable to its competitor, when they would not vote for it if it stood before them on its own naked merits.

As there cannot be two questions voted on, so, of course, there cannot be three or more; although in the debate any number of amendments may be brought up against the original motion. These are disposed of one by one on the vote, if a vote be come to, whether such and such words are to stand part of the question. If there be a majority for any words standing part of a question to be put to the House, then a vote of yea or nay is taken on the question with these words in it. If the amendments are all lost by negatives on their being part of the question, then the original proposal, whatever it be—motion or bill—is stripped of all the counter proposals and variations which the debate has called forth, and a vote of yea or nay can be taken on it. No member can thus be driven to vote for what he does not approve of; for down to the last he may start any other proposition that may please him, and take a vote on it, and he may in the end vote against the original proposal.

A memorable incident in a foreign political assembly may perhaps illustrate the value of this method. In the French revolutionary Convention, each member, when there was a question before the House, stood up and stated in his own words, with or without an oration, what view he took, and what resolution he would vote for, and the officers of the House made up the votes and stated the motion carried, according to the best of their judgment. After the trial of Louis XVI., the sense of the House was thus taken on the sentence to be pronounced, and the voting occupied forty hours. As all the world knows, the decision was death, carried by a large majority. It was often maintained, however, that the votes of many members were recorded for death who did not explicitly pronounce that Parliament doomed, but were prevented by timidity from expressly declaring against it. In English practice there could have been no such dubiety. A proposition would have been laid before the House, and a vote taken of simple affirmative or negative. The timid might have abstained from voting, but never could have recorded equivocal votes.

The records of Parliament show that this method did not always prevail, and that it was deliberately adopted to remedy the evils of a more slovenly practice. It was probably an improvement on the custom of gathering the resolutions of Parliament from the tenor of the debates after they were over. A practice thus arose, as Hatsell tells us, "for the speaker to collect the sense of the House from the debate, and from thence to form a question on which to take the opinion of the House." So early as 1571, however, it was resolved, as an improvement on this plan, "that from henceforth men making motions shall bring them in writing."

It is essential to the pure working of such a procedure, and is at the same time one of the most important distinctive features of the authority of Parliament, that no piece of composition adopted by a vote of either House can afterwards be subjected to even a verbal alteration. To carry out this rule in the case of bills, the House of Commons stood a protracted contest. In form, a bill always was, and still is, a petition by Parliament, and the act into which it resolves itself is the granting of the petition by the sovereign. Nothing was more natural, therefore, than that an official statement should be made by the sovereign of the nature and tenor of those petitions which he granted. In the fifteenth century there were many complaints by the Commons, to the effect that they had petitioned by bill for such and such enactments, and had been informed that their petitions were acceded to; but when they saw the statute for the session as drawn up and recorded, it contained totally different and sometimes adverse enactments. Nor are such discrepancies wonderful when it is known that the method of adjusting the statutes of a session was for the judges to take the petitions and the deliverances of the monarch, and make the acts of Parliament out of both. The remedy devised for this defect is so old, that Sir Matthew Hale, writing in the seventeenth century, is not sure of the reign in which it was adopted, but says "because sometimes difficulties and troubles arose by this extracting out of the petition and answer, about the latter end of Henry VI. and beginning of Edward IV., they took a course to reduce them, even in the first instance, into the full and complete form."

In pursuance of this policy, at the present day a bill, which has passed both Houses, contains all the sentences, and all the words to be found in the act of Parliament into which the royal assent converts it. The bill may contain a few words which are not in the act, but the act does not contain a word which is not in the bill. In its jealousy of any tampering with the precise tenor of its resolutions, Parliament has been indifferent to the illogical character of the form of an ordinary bill, which begins as a petition, and converts the substance of it into the shape of peremptory enactments.

There are some peculiarities of parliamentary procedure, partly embodied in rules, and partly enforced from a sense of courtesy and propriety, which tend materially to the fairness, and, at the same time, to the practical conclusiveness of parliamentary procedure. Desultory and incidental debates are obviated by the necessity, that when a member speaks, it must be to some question before the House, or his speech must introduce a question. Motions upon public questions require to be seconded—a good rule against interruption and annoyance from eccentric and impracticable members, which is followed in every public assemblage in this country. The mover of a motion is per- Parliament mitted to reply to those who have supported any amendment on it before it is put to the vote, but otherwise no one is entitled to more than one opportunity of speaking on a question, except when the House is in committee on a bill.

This is not the place for a discussion on parliamentary orators; but it seems appropriate to remark, that the tendency of the parliamentary, and perhaps of the public taste, has been to discountenance rhetorical efforts, and to listen only to facts, and close reasoning on them. For speeches, such as were delivered a century ago, the pressure of real business leaves no time. On the other hand, it has been said that the entire publicity now given to debates has had a tendency to make many members of the Commons address themselves rather to their constituents than to the House. There are some little peculiarities of old standing in parliamentary speaking which are supposed to be favourable to good order and calm discussion. For instance, no member is to call another by his name; if it is desired to call personal attention to him, he must be individualized by the place he represents. Naming the antagonist in the heat of debate is apt to foster irritation on both sides; and the very necessity for recollecting the constituency which the adversary represents, has a momentary tendency to allay excitement. The views of the proceedings taken by the other members of the constitution, as by the monarch or the House of Lords, must not be referred to; nor can a discussion be opened on a reported debate at a previous sitting.

In the House of Lords there is, of course precedence, but in the Commons all are on an official equality. There is a purposed jealousy of etiquettes, as if these were likely to lead to inequalities inconsistent with the character ever held by the Commons of Britain. For the sake of convenience, certain parties—ministerial, opposition, or any other—group themselves on benches which they appropriate to themselves; but this arrangement is carried out entirely by personal choice. There is no tribune such as that which used to be occupied by a member addressing the House in the French Chambers. The ministers of the Crown hold in Parliament a position which foreigners cannot easily understand. They have no special rights, but the conducting of the public business requires that, to a considerable extent, they should dictate the proceedings of the House. This they do through the influence of that majority which places and keeps them in power. The opposition sanction it, for it is not their object to upset the business of the country, but to get it conducted in their own way; and therefore they strive not to interrupt the operations of the majority, but to become the majority, and so conduct the business of the country themselves.

But what is still more characteristic of the British Parliament, when compared with popular assemblies in other countries,—the minority has its privileges as well as the governing majority, and fortunately they have always been deemed impregnable. The standing orders which require measures to pass through certain stages for the purpose of securing deliberation, and giving an opportunity for opposition, have sometimes, it is true, been suspended. On some occasions they have been so for the purpose of strengthening the hands of a government, and even conferring on it arbitrary powers, when it has professed to deal with dire emergencies, and made terror the excuse of precipitation. Such events are now looked back upon as the historical vestiges of evil times. In late years suspensions have rarely occurred, except with the view of mitigating or obviating some calamity, and conferring a boon appreciated by the minority as well as the majority, or else for the purpose of correcting some legislative blunder.

It is fortunate for the country that not only the privileges of weak parties in the House of Commons, but the privileges of individual members are preserved, not only in the letter, but in the spirit. Onslow, one of the most sagacious Parliament of the eminent men who have filled the speaker's chair, used to hold that a punctilious observance of the rules of the House was the great protection of the weak from the strong, procedure, and hence one of the safeguards of the constitution. Following the spirit of this rule, an individual member is never borne down in the exercise of his acknowledged privileges, though all the rest of the House may be against him, and may feel that he is only using them to their annoyance, and to the interruption of the public business. When the privilege of speaking is conceded, the duty of listening does not always follow. Members who are determined to speak when they have little to say worth hearing, or who continue to promulgate crotchets and hobbies in which their fellows have no sympathy, will empty the House, or even be made inaudible by the ebullitions of general impatience; but this never happens when a member, however little esteemed, has any important cause in his hands, or represents any considerable body of the people. On many occasions it has happened that the views or interests of a large portion of the population have had only one or two promulgators in the House of Commons; but these have hardly ever failed to command attention.

No bill is converted into a law unless it has received three readings—that is, has been at three stated intervals brought under consideration—in each House, has passed each House after the three readings, and has received the royal assent. There are some kinds of business peculiar to either House. The judicial function of Parliament is confined to the House of Lords, which alone has the inherent right to examine witnesses on oath. (See Appeal.) The supplies for the expense of conducting the business of the country are, on the other hand, exclusively the affair of the Commons. There are some kinds of legislation which it is the peculiar function of one of the Houses to originate. Measures affecting dignity and personal condition must, it is said, always begin in the Peers. All bills which affect taxes or duties, to the most trifling amount, can only begin with the Commons; and no peer's name must ever be mentioned in them as connected with the raising of the duties.

Acts of Parliament are of two kinds, public and private. The former are laws which it is the judge's function to enforce, whether they are brought before him or not; the latter are like private deeds, which must be pleaded by those benefited by them ere the court is bound to give them effect. The bills, before they pass, are also divided into public and private. But it is important to remember that the difference between a public and private bill and a public and private act are not quite parallel. The acts, in fact, are of three kinds—1st, The public general statutes, which apply to the whole kingdom, or one of its departments; 2nd, The public local acts, such as police or railway acts; and 3rd, Private acts. It has been the practice, however, to speak of the second class of measures, which, when passed, would become public local acts, as private bills. There are three kinds of measures which in the House of Commons can only be brought in by committees of the whole House,—those affecting matters of religion, matters of trade, and the granting of money. The House does not always profess to know what was intended by these restrictions; but as an error in their application might vitiate a measure in any stage, a pretty wide interpretation is given to them. The Roman Catholic and Jews Relief bills, and a bill for punishing persons disturbing Roman Catholic congregations, were brought in by committee. It was decided in 1852 that a bill for establishing a registration of fees of ballast-heavers, with regulations as to the mode of hiring and paying them, is a bill relating to trade. It was found that a bill relating to dogs employed in drawing vehicles is not a measure of trade requiring to be brought in by committee.

The functions of Parliament in the passing of what are Parliament termed private bills, according to the above definition, are peculiar and not easily explained. It has been said that they bear an analogy to the procedure in a court of justice; but they are in reality as distinct from these as they are from the proper functions of a legislature. In its purely public legislative capacity, Parliament enacts such laws as in its own knowledge it deems fit for the public, without waiting, so far as the proceedings bear, for any one to plead that they should be done, or any one to give evidence for or against them. In private business, Parliament lends its power for the fulfilment of objects desired by individual persons or by sections of the community, taking precautions for the assurance that such measures are just and proper. The promoters of a private bill appear as suitors for it, and may bring evidence and plead by council in its favour, as in a court of justice. Those who are opposed to it have the same privileges. So personal are the interests in a measure of this kind deemed, that when it is abandoned by its promoters it falls, however well it may have recommended itself as a just and useful measure to the good opinion of the legislature. "The solicitation of a bill in Parliament has been regarded by courts of equity so completely in the same light as an ordinary suit, that the promoters have been restrained by injunction from proceeding with a bill, the object of which was held to be to set aside a covenant; and parties have been restrained in the same manner from appearing against a private bill pending in the House of Lords. Such injunctions have been justified on the ground that they act upon the person of the suitor, and not upon the jurisdiction of Parliament." (May's Parl. Proc., pp. 513-14.)

On the other hand, however, there are fundamental distinctions entirely separating the proceedings of Parliament in passing private bills from those of a court of justice proper. The litigant who goes to a court points to some established public law, and demands that it may be enforced in his favour. The promoter of a private bill goes to a body which is above the law, and asks a special law to be made for the accomplishment of his own objects, or even desires that the fixed course of law shall be suspended, and that he shall obtain something which the law expressly denies to him.

It is true, however, that, by applying uniform principles of action to the several groups of cases which the multiplicity of this kind of business has brought before them, the legislature has done all that perhaps could be done to give their procedure the uniform, undeviating tenor of judicial operations, and to circumscribe the extent of their own discretionary powers. They have brought into operation a large machinery of conditions which are absolutely necessary to the passing of a private bill, and which, consequently, in a great measure define the legal conditions under which a private bill to obtain any object can be carried through, as the law of the land prescribes the legal conditions under which the courts of justice will grant what the litigant asks. The greater part of this machinery is known as "the standing orders." They have of late been continually varied, through repeated efforts to bring them to perfection; and although they are now in a highly improved condition, it would be to no purpose to offer any statement of their purport suited for practical guidance, as they are liable to be altered every session; and the practitioner is never safe in taking any guide but the latest standing orders as issued by authority. The standing orders of the two Houses were formerly prepared without any reference to each other. They are now nearly, but not quite, identical; and the trouble caused by their partial divergence is greatly modified by a late arrangement, through which both Houses choose examiners to report on the compliance with the standing orders; and the same persons were selected for that duty by each House.

There are of course wide differences in the character and importance of private bills. One perhaps affects a population of half a million in matters so important as the local administration of justice, the organization of the police, procedure, and the paving, lighting, and sewering of the streets; while another is intended for the reconstruction of a bridge, the passing of the drainage from one private estate into another, or the sale of an entailed estate for public purposes. Hence, for the purpose of preparatory arrangements, the standing orders divide private bills into classes. The general objects of the standing orders are, notices to persons specially interested, advertisements to the public at large, plans, specifications, estimates, and deposits of money. In general, it is necessary that these injunctions should be carried out, and the way cleared for legislative proceedings in the coming session, before the end of December. About ten years ago an opinion was entertained that much of the legislative time devoted to investigations connected with private bills, and consequently much of the expense attending on them, might be saved by substituting preliminary inquiries under authorized officers for a portion of the evidence taken in Parliament. Accordingly, a system of preliminary inquiries was devised as a preparation for private bills in which public interests were concerned. In one large class of cases the inquiry was committed to the Board of Works, whose function it was to send a commissioner to the spot to hear evidence. Where the works to be authorized by the measure were likely to affect any tidal harbour, a similar function was confided to the Admiralty. The commissioners were to hear parties, summon witnesses, and call for plans and documents, like a court of justice. It must be presumed that this arrangement was found in some respects to be a failure, since in 1851 it was abolished in the class of bills for which the Board of Works acted, but was retained in those affecting the interests of the Admiralty.

Some general legislative measures, which may be divided into two different classes, have of late years had a very material effect in reducing the amount of private bill business which would have been necessary to carry into effect the arrangements to which they refer. One class of these acts contains provisions which are to be incorporated in particular classes of private bills. This device promotes uniformity, and by absolutely settling beforehand a certain portion at least of the measure which is to be discussed in Parliament, obviates a portion of the discussion with the accompanying delay and expense. It seems to have suggested itself in one class of cases so early as the year 1801, when an act was passed containing clauses to be inserted in all subsequent inclosure acts. It does not seem, however, to have occurred to the legislature to extend this expedient to other classes of cases until a much later period. In the year 1845 several acts were passed, the object and function of which are explained by their titles, as, for instance, "An act for consolidating into one act certain provisions usually inserted in acts with respect to the constitution of companies incorporated for carrying on undertakings of a public nature;" "An act for consolidating in one act certain provisions usually inserted in acts authorizing the making of railways (8 and 9 Vic., caps. 16 and 20)." In this shape the legislature has, as it were, done once for all a certain proportion of its private bill legislation, affecting railways, canals, cemeteries, water supply, gas supply, and public companies generally. In 1847 an addition was made to this department of legislation by an act for the constitution and regulation of all bodies of commissioners appointed for public undertakings.

The other acts above alluded to as having abbreviated the amount of private bill legislation are of a different kind, since within their sphere they supersede legislation altogether, and organize another method of securing the objects