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 AN OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY
 
 AN OUTLINE SKETCH OF 
 
 ENGLISH CONSTITUTIONAL 
 HISTORY 
 
 GEORGE BURTON ADAMS, Lrrr.D. 
 
 NEW HAVEN 
 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 MDCCCCXVIII
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918 
 BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 First published, February. 1918 
 
 '
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It is very likely that the task which I have undertaken 
 in this little book is an impossible one. Even to sketch 
 so long a history in so few words seems hopeless, and I 
 am sure that I have left out many things which other 
 students of the English constitution will think should 
 be found here. I have tried to keep in mind in writing 
 chiefly the desire to show how modern liberty came to 
 be what it is and what foundations our institutions have 
 in the past history of the race. 
 
 I am indebted to the Editors for permission to use 
 portions of an article which appeared in the American 
 Historical Review for July, 1915. 
 
 G. B. A. 
 
 New Haven, 
 
 January 22, 1918.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Introduction ..... 1 
 
 I. To the Great Charter .... 12 
 
 II. From Magna Carta to Parliament . 42 
 
 III. The Beginning and Growth in Power of 
 
 Parliament ..... 57 
 
 IV. Constitutional Government and Royal 
 
 Reaction ..... 80 
 
 V. The Tudor Strong Monarchy . . 96 
 
 VI. Parliament versus the King . . . 108 
 
 VII. The Victory of Parliament ... 126 
 
 VIII. The Victory Confirmed ... 141 
 
 IX. The Making of the Cabinet . . . 152 
 
 X. The Rise of Democracy ... 168 
 
 XI. The Progress of Reform ... 189
 
 Where freedom slowly broadens down 
 From precedent to precedent. 
 
 Tennyson
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 In the course of history there have been two peoples 
 whose public law and institutions have formed the basis 
 of many constitutions besides their own and who have 
 exerted a wide influence upon government almost 
 throughout the world. In ancient times the Romans 
 built up by force a great empire which included the 
 whole civilized world, as they knew it from actual con- 
 tact, and large regions which they considered barbarian. 
 Even before their empire was completed the Romans 
 began to look upon it as divinely founded, preordained 
 to be the one rule under which all mankind were to be 
 permanently united. Later Christian teachers adopted 
 the same philosophy of history, and the idea of the 
 Roman Empire, eternal and holy, became for centuries 
 a strong bond of union in Christendom at a time when 
 most other tendencies were towards disruption. Partly 
 from this influence and partly from their own intrinsic 
 worth, Roman law and institutions came to prevail in 
 almost all Christian nations and in extensive regions 
 which were never Christian, and even today they in- 
 fluence more or less strongly the government and law 
 of nearly half the human race.
 
 2 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 It was in modern times, long after the fall of any real 
 Roman Empire, that the British Empire began. In the 
 course of three centuries, partly by conquest and partly 
 by expansion it occupied the whole of two continents, 
 North America and Australia, and considerable portions 
 of two others, Africa and Asia. Into these regions in 
 natural course English public law and institutions were 
 carried. One portion of the original empire, the United 
 States, set up for itself as an independent state at a 
 time when the constitution had not reached its present 
 stage. It was an inevitable result that it began a 
 development of its own, distinct from that of the mother 
 country, a development of the constitution as it existed 
 at the point of separation. In consequence the United 
 States does not possess some of the features of later 
 growth which we now consider to be most striking in 
 the British system of government. This fact cannot 
 obscure, however, the origin of our constitution in the 
 past history of England, and to the student the depend- 
 ence historically of our public law upon that of England 
 is as close as that of our private law. 
 
 A fact even more remarkable than the practical uni- 
 formity of institutions throughout an empire so widely 
 scattered is the spread of the constitution outside the 
 boundaries of the empire. In this case by intrinsic 
 merit and not by physical conquest, almost the whole 
 world has been brought into the sphere of influence of
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 3 
 
 the British constitution. Curiously enough it is the 
 republics of the world which owe the least in form to 
 this constitutional model, but even among them the 
 indebtedness is not slight. Among monarchies the way 
 of borrowing has been made easy by the treatment of 
 the sovereign in the British constitution, as will be later 
 more fully explained, and there is scarcely one to be 
 found which has not drawn upon it for more or less 
 essential details. 
 
 This borrowing is true even of those monarchies 
 which approach most nearly the absolutist type and 
 assert most loudly their independence. In the consti- 
 tution of the German Empire, for example, while the 
 essential features of the English constitution are not 
 expressly affirmed in the written document, they are 
 nevertheless tacitly implied and in practical operation 
 even more directly allowed though without true minis- 
 terial responsibility. The entire English constitution 
 with all its details of public law and practice could be 
 carried into effect under the present German constitution 
 with only one amendment of importance, the constitu- 
 tion of the upper house and its relation to the lower, and 
 a really democratic government could be secured by a 
 new regulation of the right of suffrage. A progress 
 somewhat similar in the interpretation of the constitu- 
 tion in practice actually has taken place in the case of 
 Japan, whose constitution was based originally on that
 
 4 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 of Germany, but which in practical operation has be- 
 come during the past generation more and more of the 
 English type. The change has gone so far that an 
 American scholar who has closely observed Japanese 
 politics for more than twenty years can say that Japan 
 now has a fully responsible ministry. 
 
 It hardly remains to point out the interest which the 
 history of such a constitution, the mother of such a 
 progeny, has for every student, or the special appeal 
 which it makes to the American. The history of the 
 formation of the British constitution is a part of our 
 own history. If it be asked where the history of our 
 institutions is to be found previous to the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, there is only one answer to the 
 question which the historian can give. It is to be found 
 in England. The history of the long struggle by which 
 the way was prepared for the clear formulation in the 
 seventeenth century of those ideas which lie at the 
 foundation of all the later development is as much our 
 history as it is of any Englishman. There is to be found 
 historically the origin of many of those ideas, institutions 
 and practices which we regard as primarily our own 
 because they were first worked out into practical form 
 among us. And it is as justifiable to claim for our 
 present constitution an origin in the English constitution 
 of 1399 as it is to claim it for the British constitution 
 as it now exists. The creation and establishment of our
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 5 
 
 judicial institutions and common law, of the supremacy " 
 of law over the government, of our representative 
 system, of the popular control of taxation, of the respon- 
 sibility of ministers of government to the legislature, 
 and finally of the principle, fundamental to all else, of 
 the sovereignty of the people, were the work of our 
 English ancestors. 
 
 It may be that we shall not remain an Anglo-Saxon 
 nation in blood, though the fact should not be over- 
 looked that down to a generation ago the various race 
 elements which were mingling here were the same as 
 those of which the Anglo-Saxon race was originally 
 composed: Celtic Irish, Gaelic, and French; and 
 Teutonic German, Scandinavian, and Dutch. In re- 
 cent years many have come to us from nations far 
 removed in relationship from either of these groups and 
 they may contribute largely to the making of the future 
 American. But it must not be forgotten that, in the 
 active carrying on of history, race does not mean un- 
 mixed blood; nor identity of race, identity of blood. 
 The great history-making races have been of mixed 
 blood, and if we would find the pure races, if indeed 
 there are any, we must seek them on the outskirts of 
 civilization whither they have been pushed by the 
 stronger races of mixed descent. The tests which 
 determine race in history are the characteristics of a 
 civilization : common ideas and institutions, law and
 
 6 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 literature and language, religion and art, a common past 
 of some significance and common aspirations for the 
 future. In all these things we are still Anglo-Saxon and 
 are likely to remain so, the absorptive force is now so 
 great among us. The constituent elements of our blood 
 -.may change, but race will not. Our descendants cen- 
 turies hence are as likely to find their earliest history 
 in England as we are. 
 
 In this sense and upon the constitutional side our 
 history on English soil begins in the Norman Conquest 
 of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. He set 
 up a monarchy the most absolute in Western Europe 
 at that time and introduced, as the ruling class under 
 himself, a feudal baronage bound by contract to assist 
 in the government. His immediate successors in their 
 effort to carry farther the centralization of the state 
 in their hands, and to give it constitutional form, 
 developed institutions and practices, which had existed 
 for a long time in more primitive form, into our judicial 
 organization, with its characteristic peculiarities of cir- 
 cuit courts and jury trials, in which began to form at 
 once our common law and our equity system. The 
 success of this royal centralization was so great that it 
 invited tyranny and under John, near the beginning of 
 the thirteenth century, a successful baronial insurrection 
 compelled the king to make concessions. Acting upon 
 the fundamental idea that the feudal contract limited
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 7 
 
 the rights of the king, the barons insisted that he should 
 promise in a series of particulars, embodied in the Great 
 Charter, that he would keep the law and that, if he did 
 not, he should recognize their right to force him to do 
 so in arms. Within a generation or two, while the special 
 provisions of the Charter lost their importance, the fun- -v 
 damental principle that the king must keep the law and A 
 may be rightfully compelled to do so became the ruling 
 principle of constitutional development. 
 
 In the meantime from another source, more purely 
 institutional, the representative system in germ had 
 been introduced. It began at once a rapid growth, 
 largely because of its practical usefulness in govern- 
 ment, into the English Parliament. At the end of the 
 thirteenth century Parliament established its exclusive 
 right to grant taxes though the right was not maintained 
 in the future without struggle. In the fourteenth 
 century from this beginning, Parliament grew in power 
 by leaps and bounds. It perfected its control of taxa- 
 tion, secured its right to a voice in all making of laws, 
 and began its supervision of government policy by 
 enforcing the responsibility of ministers of the crown 
 to itself. A brief reaction at the close of the century 
 towards irresponsible monarchy was checked by revo- 
 lution, and there followed a period of more than fifty 
 yeajs of constitutional government almost of the modern 
 type.
 
 8 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 The sixteenth century was the scene of another 
 reaction towards despotism, in spirit but not in form, 
 for the sovereigns found it easier to accomplish their 
 will through the constitution than against it. And one 
 great constitutional advance was made in bringing the 
 church under Parliamentary control. "With the acces- 
 sion of James I, in 1603, two ideals of government, each 
 of which had dominated some portion of the past, were 
 brought into conflict with one another for final pos- 
 session of the future, the ideals of the supremacy of the 
 king and of the supremacy of law. This conflict soon 
 led to the formulation of the doctrine of the sovereignty 
 of the people, first as the necessary foundation of right 
 on which to rest the supremacy of law which should bind 
 the king, and soon after to its practical recognition as 
 the basis of the constitution. 
 
 At this point the constitutional histories of our two 
 states separate. In England the experiments in the way 
 of republican institutions which the revolution at the 
 middle of the century had imposed upon the nation, 
 outgrowths of past English history developed by Puritan 
 religious ideas, were abandoned when the historical 
 monarchy was reestablished. In the simpler conditions 
 of the small American colonies, democratic institutions 
 were easier to operate and republican government be- 
 came the universal rule. In these republics the consti- 
 tutional experiments of the Puritans, which England
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 9 
 
 had abandoned, were continued and developed under 
 the same influences but with the added influence of new 
 experiences. By these influences, old and new, our 
 national government was formed a century later, reveal- 
 ing on every side its English origin, but at the same 
 time making important contributions of its own to the 
 final government of the world, as for one example in 
 the formation of a nation by the federal union of 
 separate states. 
 
 The English government after 1660 necessarily shows 
 at any point of time important differences to that which 
 was developing in America, for England dropped the 
 Puritan experiments out of its constitutional history. 
 Its progress after 1660 linked itself on rather with the 
 constitution as it existed in 1603, plus however the secure 
 establishment of the sovereignty of the people and the 
 supremacy of law. The great problem of the future, 
 as England then faced it, was to work out practical 
 institutions for carrying on a government in which real 
 sovereignty should be vested in the representatives of 
 the nation while in form, for form was unchanged, it 
 should be vested in the king. This problem America 
 did not have to face in its little republics, and its solution 
 in England in the British cabinet system has given us 
 one of the most striking differences between the two 
 states. America has the older English cabinet not under 
 direct legislative control, removable by the legislature
 
 10 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 only through the medieval process of impeachment, 
 while England solved her problem by dropping impeach- 
 ment and devising the responsible ministry the cabinet 
 virtually appointed by the legislature and removable by 
 it, though in legal formalities all is done by the will and 
 act of the king. 
 
 England is really a democratic republic. If the theory 
 upon which its cabinet system is based, that changes in 
 the House of Commons are going to reflect immediately 
 changes of national opinion in the country, operates in 
 actual practice, its government is even more directly 
 under popular control than ours. There would be no 
 gain for political democracy in a change from a mon- 
 archy in form of the British type to a republic in form. 
 On the other hand, the retention of the monarchy in 
 England as in theory still supreme, as, so far as actually 
 formulated law is concerned, almost absolute, has been 
 of the greatest value in the spread of democratic insti- 
 tutions throughout the world. It has made it easy for 
 many states to establish true republics without the 
 necessity of extreme revolution. The sovereign has 
 found it easier to yield because in form he retains so 
 much. In the march of the world towards democracy, 
 the responsible ministry and the resulting position of 
 the sovereign is probably a contribution of greater 
 practical value than all else England has done, save 
 perhaps the idea of the limited monarchy itself and the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 11 
 
 impressive lessons and examples that are so numerous 
 throughout her history. 
 
 These paragraphs sketch in the barest outline the 
 history which we are to follow in more detail. It is 
 impossible in any outline sketch to present all of even 
 the important details of the history of English consti- 
 tutional growth. I can hope in this essay, however, to 
 give some definite idea of its beginning and of the great 
 epochs which shaped its growth and to indicate in the 
 most essential particulars how it came to be what it is, 
 and to suggest incidentally the bearing of the different 
 stages of its development upon modern constitutions.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 TO THE GREAT CHARTER 
 
 The word "constitution" when applied to a state has 
 in ordinary usage two distinct meanings. In one we 
 include in our idea all the institutions of the state 
 general and local, all the organs of government. The 
 constitution of a state in this sense is the entire bodily 
 organization through which it performs its functions 
 as a state. In the other meaning we refer to the central, 
 or national government only, and in actual usage, for 
 about a hundred years, we have meant by the term a 
 national government of a liberal, usually of an English 
 type. It is in this sense that we may say of a people 
 that they demanded a constitution, or that a constitution 
 was granted them or adopted by them, or that they have 
 or do not have constitutional government. It is in this 
 sense that I shall use the word in this book, in the sense 
 of the central or national government only. 
 
 If we use the term in its broader sense, including 
 every phase of public or community action, then the 
 English constitution like the English nation and the 
 English language is a composite product. The two chief
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 13 
 
 elements which united to form the language are also the 
 two chief elements which united to form the constitution, 
 Saxon and Norman French. The invading tribes of 
 Saxons and Angles who crossed over from the coasts of 
 Northern Germany in the fifth century to occupy the 
 abandoned province of Britain found there a population, 
 mostly Celtic in blood, which had been to a considerable 
 extent Romanized during three centuries of Roman 
 occupation. Opinion inclines rather strongly at present 
 to the belief that a large amount of Celtic blood was 
 absorbed into the future race, even in those parts of 
 England which remained in appearance the most Teu- 
 tonic. However this may be, no amalgamation took 
 place either in language or in political institutions. In 
 the end the language became half Latin and borrowed 
 many Celtic roots, and strong Roman influences modified 
 and enlarged law and institutions in ways that are still 
 apparent, but in neither case did this take place during 
 the age of German conquest and settlement. 
 
 We have in this book to do with the character and 
 constitution of government, and with regard to it the 
 body of original material, law codes, formal legal docu- 
 ments, and chronicle writings, from which opinion must 
 be formed, is happily so large that the facts in regard to 
 non-Teutonic influence are not open to question. In 
 some minor matters the influence of the church brought 
 over from Roman usage things which the Saxons lacked,
 
 14 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 the charter as judicial record or land conveyance and 
 wills, but these did not affect methods of government 
 nor the content of the law. The written will was bor- 
 rowed from the Romans, but not the law of inheritance. 
 The law which grew up and the constitutions which were 
 formed during the more than five centuries of the Saxon 
 period were purely Teutonic, modified only by natural 
 development during so long a time. 
 
 The German conquerors of Britain were not at the 
 time of their invasion in an advanced stage of political 
 development. At home they were divided into little 
 "county" states, without common organization, having 
 no kings and no national or tribal government. The 
 shock of the conquest, the necessity of constant defence 
 and even of constant conquest from the Celts or from 
 their German neighbors, if they were to survive, forced 
 upon the colonies established in Britain the creation of 
 the office of king and the formation of more compact 
 governments. From this beginning a period of slow but 
 steady growth and of improvement in the institutions 
 both of general and local government extends to the 
 Norman Conquest in 1066, characterized by an increase 
 of royal power and to some extent of centralization. The 
 development of the general constitution of the Saxon 
 state, however, had not kept pace with the similar change 
 which had taken place in the contemporary Frankish 
 state upon the continent. It is this comparative back-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 15 
 
 wardness of the Saxon constitution which accounts for 
 the natural and unnoticed substitution of the Frankish 
 for it when the Norman Conquest occurred. That the 
 substitution was unnoticed implies that the lines of 
 development in the two states had been closely parallel, 
 and that the Saxon was only a somewhat earlier phase 
 of the Frankish. 
 
 The fragmentary character of the evidence from which 
 we must learn the constitutional history of the Saxon 
 state makes it impossible with any certainty to date the 
 beginning or describe the early forms and early changes 
 of even the most important institutions. For the pur- 
 poses of an outline sketch, it is not desirable to express 
 opinions upon questions in regard to which the most 
 authoritative scholars are in doubt, and the field of 
 permanent Saxon influence, local law and local insti- 
 tutions, lying outside our survey, falls almost necessarily 
 out of sight. 
 
 If then we leave the local government out of our 
 account and restrict the word constitution to the nar- 
 rower meaning of the national government, then we 
 must say that, so far as the elements are concerned 
 which grew to form any part of the final structure, the 
 origin is Norman and not Saxon. But this must be 
 understood to mean the very remote beginning merely. 
 The essential and distinctive features of the English 
 constitution, those which have given it its place in the
 
 16 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 world of today and which constitute its great contri- 
 bution to civil liberty, do not appear in its beginning 
 but were all the products of later English history, of 
 the development which took place on English soil. 
 They are due not to Saxon nor to Norman, but to 
 English endeavor only. 
 
 In historical fact, the beginning was of quite a differ- 
 ent type from the later constitution, for the government 
 which was set up in England by the Norman duke, 
 William the Conqueror, as a result of his conquest of 
 the country in 1066, was for that day a highly cen- 
 tralized absolute government. The king was all power- 
 ful even as compared with the powerful Norman 
 baronage which settled in England with him. The king 
 and these barons together constituted all government 
 above the merely local, and we must not imagine the 
 existence in the eleventh century of anything that we 
 should now understand by the term "the people," nor 
 indeed of the existence of a nation in our sense of the 
 word. As factors in the public life of the state, people 
 and nation were still in the distant future. The com- 
 munity was one of classes, though not of strict caste, 
 and only the upper classes, barons and clergy who them- 
 selves were virtually barons, had any influence upon the 
 general government. 
 
 These two features of the public life of England after 
 the Conquest constitute from our present point of view
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 17 
 
 the chief changes which resulted from that event, the 
 introduction of absolute monarchy and of the feudal 
 baronage. The Saxon state which was overthrown by 
 the Normans had been making for some centuries slow 
 progress towards both these results. The king had been 
 growing stronger, the country more united, and the 
 machinery for the government of all parts of it from 
 the center had been steadily improving. Kings like 
 Cnut and, potentially at least, Edward the Confessor 
 were powerful rulers. But with all the progress it had 
 made the Saxon was still some generations behind the 
 stage which had been reached by the Norman develop- 
 ment. It was the necessary result of this comparative 
 backwardness that in the change which took place the 
 monarchy which the Norman dukes had established at 
 home, not a monarchy in name but in all except name, 
 was transferred to England bodily and put in place of 
 the Saxon monarchy which disappeared. It might be 
 perhaps more accurate to say that there was put in 
 place of the Saxon monarchy another of the same type 
 but in a more advanced stage of development. But in 
 either case we are compelled to say that it was the 
 Norman conception of the office and practical operation 
 of the kingship, not the Saxon, which became funda- 
 mental in the English constitution. 
 
 So also in case of the feudal baronage. During the 
 Saxon centuries great progress had been made towards
 
 18 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 those elements of the later feudal system which were 
 economic in character. The economic conditions which 
 had favored and even induced the growth of these 
 institutions through a great part of the Roman Empire 
 existed in England also and had there produced similar 
 results. Protection of weaker men and of smaller land- 
 holdings by the more powerful landlords, some features 
 of dependent tenure and of private jurisdiction, even 
 the passage of local public courts into private possession, 
 were to be seen before the Norman Conquest. But those 
 - political elements of the feudal system which had 
 resulted from the transformation of the duties which 
 the subject owed the state, military service, judicial 
 obligation, allegiance even, into private duties to an 
 overlord, those elements which constitute the essential 
 character of the feudal baronage in the great political 
 role which it played in the medieval history of Western 
 Europe, had no existence in England before 1066. Nor 
 did that which resulted from the growth of political 
 feudalism, the feudal organization of all public life, the 
 feudal air and atmosphere which embraced everything, 
 the feudalization of the state machinery and the position 
 of the baron, because he was a baron, as the operative 
 unit in that machinery. 
 
 This kind of feudalism was introduced into England 
 by the Normans, and the government which they set up 
 was marked by these two somewhat opposed character-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 19 
 
 istics, an absolute and centralized general government 
 on one side and on the other a powerful baronage. 
 These two elements of the feudal state were closely 
 bound together as well as opposed, for it was the 
 baronage through whom the general government must 
 be administered, out of whom even the organs of cen- 
 tralization had to be formed; but also the barons' per- 
 sonal interests were all bound up with the local instead 
 of the general, and he might at any moment yield to the 
 constant temptation of feudalism to emphasize and 
 enlarge his local independence at the expense of the 
 state. For two centuries after the Conquest there was 
 a constantly recurring rivalry and conflict between 
 these opposing tendencies, the centralizing tendency of 
 the monarchy and the dividing and limiting tendency 
 of the baronage. 
 
 As yet the powerful Norman monarchy was practical 
 rather than constitutional. It was not absolute because 
 law and institutions made it so, for they did not, but 
 because in military and financial resources it was 
 stronger than the baronage and because tradition and 
 prestige and a kind of general support sustained its 
 power. The problem of immediate constitutional growth 
 in the following age was the question whether this 
 practical absolutism could be transformed into the con- 
 stitution of the state and securely embodied in law and 
 institutions or whether the limiting and, one must say
 
 20 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 from the point of view of government in the twelfth 
 
 century, the crippling tendency of feudalism should be 
 
 the one to obtain permanent expression in the English 
 
 constitution. 
 
 As yet neither king nor baronage had any wide out- 
 look on the future nor any clear conception of constitu- 
 tional progress or specific rights. The king had more 
 regard for the present exercise of power than, for laying 
 the foundations of its future permanence. The indi- 
 vidual baron was not prone to regard his share in 
 public affairs as privilege or opportunity for the exercise 
 of influence on the conduct of government, but rather 
 as a burden. He had entered into certain obligations 
 of public service, in the army, in the central council 
 which was at the same time legislature and court, and 
 of money payments on certain infrequent occasions, all 
 in return for the land which had been granted to him. 
 These obligations seemed to be personal between himself 
 and the king. He received his lands from the king. 
 He promised the king to render these services in return 
 when he should be called upon to do so. If he was not 
 called upon in any particular case, he might congratulate 
 himself on escaping a part of his burden. The relation- 
 ship between king and man was merely a contract which, 
 though not often stated in definite legal terms, was 
 nevertheless definitely understood and regulated by 
 custom. Under such a contract, a business quite as
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 21 
 
 much as a political arrangement, being really a process 
 of getting government carried on by renting land, these 
 services of the barons taken together furnished the state 
 with its military, legislative and judicial machinery, and 
 with a small part of its revenue. The working classes, 
 agricultural and commercial, might be occasionally 
 called upon to pay, but there was no place for them as 
 classes in the national government. 
 
 In such a community ideals of public service were not 
 high, and the individual would naturally escape gladly 
 with as little share in public affairs as possible. Nearly 
 everything was left to the determination of the king. 
 The state machinery, the state itself, was his private 
 property. If order and security were maintained 
 throughout the land, the government was good, the king 
 was a good king. No one demanded anything more and 
 the king, fulfilling this duty, might look upon the 
 kingdom as his own, as the baron did upon his manor. 
 
 Such was the exceedingly simple constitution of the 
 feudal .state. For carrying on the ordinary operations 
 of government, for conducting the public business of the 
 country and looking after all the relations between the 
 individual and the state, there were in reality but two 
 regular and permanent institutions. One of these 
 emphasized decidedly the local side of things and was 
 the organ through which the central government exer- 
 cised its functions and secured its rights in the terri-
 
 22 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 tonal subdivisions of the state, the. sh.griff. The other 
 was especially concerned with the central government, 
 indeed we may almost say that it was in itself alone the 
 central government, for it was through this institution 
 that chiefly, though not in absolutely every case, the 
 king's prerogatives were exercised. This was the central 
 or national assembly, occasionally meeting and called 
 often the great Council, together with its smaller and 
 more permanent form called simply Council. To either 
 form the name curia, or curia regis, was occasionally 
 applied. 
 
 We do not know just how, nor at what point in Anglo- 
 Saxon history, the office of sheriff originated. It may 
 very possibly have begun as an economic office only, a 
 kind of stewardship of the royal domains in the local 
 divisions of the state, as the name "shire-reeve," steward 
 of the shire, implies. Afterwards by degrees, with the 
 increasing power of the king, it may have been made to 
 represent him for local purposes in more and more of 
 the functions of government. That is what tha sheriff 
 was at any rate at the date of the Norman Conquest: 
 the representative of the king in executive and adminis- 
 trative, judicial and military matters, and in all his 
 financial interests, in the shires into which the state was 
 divided. Such an office hardly seems to us to constitute 
 a sufficent bond of centralization, but it was effective in 
 the state of those days, and the Normans had nothing
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 23 
 
 better of their own to put in its place. They had an 
 office of their own in fact almost identical in character 
 which had been developed in the Frankish kingdom and 
 which they called "vice-comes," vice count or viscount, 
 because the chief executive which this office represented 
 locally in their country was the count. The duke of 
 Normandy, as he came to be called in the next genera- 
 tion, was count under the king of the Franks, the count 
 of Normandy, an office in the Frankish kingdom not 
 very unlike that of sheriff, and the viscount was his 
 deputy in the local subdivisions of Normandy. It was 
 therefore easy for the Normans to continue the English 
 sheriff in his office and functions as they found him at 
 the Conquest. In fact the stronger kingship which they 
 established increased the importance and power of the 
 sheriff, and the century which followed 1066 was the 
 great age in the history of that office, which began to 
 decline when more effective means of centralization were 
 brought into use. In language the Saxon term "sheriff" 
 survived in popular use, while the Norman word 
 "county" took its place beside the Saxon "shire." 
 
 The Anglo-Norman central Council was an institution 
 of quite a different type, and yet it shows even more 
 clearly perhaps the undifferentiated character of the 
 government. In form and appearance, and in the main 
 in the functions it performed, it seemed, as clearly as 
 in the case of the sheriff, identical with the Saxon
 
 24 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 national assembly which had preceded it. It was like that 
 an assembly of the great men of church and state, of the 
 household officers of the king, and in exceptional cases 
 of any whom he might wish to summon. But in reality 
 the Norman Conquest had introduced into the assembly 
 a new controlling principle of composition which makes 
 a decided institutional change and compels us to find its 
 true ancestor in the Frankish, not in the Saxon state. 
 That new principle of composition was feudal. The great 
 Council was feudalized, not in function but in structure. 
 The great men of church and state in attending it per- 
 formed a duty which they owed no longer to the state, 
 nor to the king as sovereign, but to the king personally 
 as the lord of vassals, just as their own vassals attended 
 their exactly similar councils. The rare exceptions 
 which we find in individual cases to this feudal principle 
 in the membership of a given assembly were survivals 
 not of an earlier characteristic of the assembly but of 
 an earlier function of the king and a sign of his preroga- 
 tive power in the government of the state. The same 
 institution in both the essential and the exceptional 
 characteristics, with of course occasional local peculiari- 
 ties, is to be found in all the contemporary feudal states 
 which formed within the Frankish empire, and to deny 
 the feudal character of the Anglo-Norman great Council 
 because of its similarity in superficial appearance and 
 function to the Saxon assembly would be to deny the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 25 
 
 feudal character of every institution of the kind in 
 Europe and the Latin Orient. 
 
 Before trying to get an idea of the part which this 
 institution played in government, it is necessary to 
 understand as clearly as possible the difficult fact that, 
 to the men who were acting in it, its two forms, the great 
 and the small Councils, were identical in everything 
 except size. The small Council was the active body in 
 the intervals between the meetings of the great Council, 
 but it was not a committee which the larger body had 
 clothed with certain of its functions to be performed 
 under responsibility to itself. It is very natural for us 
 to think of it as a committee, but no one at the time had 
 such an idea of it. It was the larger body shrunk to the 
 smaller dimensions determined by those who were imme- 
 diately connected with the government or attendant, 
 perhaps accidentally even, on the king. But size had 
 nothing to do with function, and in the business of the 
 state the small Council could do all that the great 
 Council could do. In fact the steady and permanent 
 institution by which day by day the business of the 
 Anglo-Norman state was operated and supervised was 
 the small Council. The unity of this institution in its 
 two forms is somewhat difficult for our more analytical 
 minds to grasp clearly, and yet the fact is exceptionally 
 important because this undifferentiated institution, in 
 which most functions of that primitive government were
 
 26 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 centered, became in time through each of its forms the 
 
 mother of a numerous progeny of institutions existing 
 
 in the modern state. The fact that all functions and 
 
 \ powers of the central body belonged alike to each of the 
 
 I forms in which it acted reveals itself also in the later 
 
 ' history in a tangle of crisscross institutions and opera- 
 
 i tions which is most puzzling and misleading unless the 
 
 original identity is clearly held in mind. 
 
 As the chief machinery of actual government and a 
 part of the constitution, the essential fact regarding the 
 Council is that it exercised or supervised the exercise of 
 all the functions of the state without making any 
 institutional distinction between them. It was the 
 supreme legislature on those infrequent occasions when 
 the slight business of the community demanded new 
 legislation or the modification of existing law. It was 
 the highest court of law in which the most important 
 cases, or the cases of the most important persons, were 
 tried and decided, it might be in the same session and 
 by the same assembly which perhaps immediately before 
 had changed the law of the land. It was in supreme 
 control of the executive and administrative activities of 
 the state. To it all executive and administrative officers, 
 high or low, were responsible and, when we attempt to 
 collect instances of the legislative action of the Council 
 in this early period, we find that a large proportion of
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 27 
 
 them were in reality in the form of administrative order's 
 or changes made in administrative practices. 
 
 It was upon this side of the Council's activity that 
 the first step was taken towards differentiation in this 
 early period or, as we may say, the first step towards fo-y 
 
 the machinery of the modern constitution. The financial 107 &* 
 
 i *+* 
 
 business of the state began, at some unknown time, to 
 
 be set apart from the other business of the Council and 
 to be carried on in sessions specially devoted to the 
 purpose. It was the business of the Council, since it 
 was the central organ of the government, not merely to 
 get in the revenue of the state in cash and to open con- 
 tinuing accounts by which to check the financial activi- 
 ties of the sheriffs in their respective counties, but also 
 to supervise indirectly all the activities of the sheriff 
 in administrative and executive work. Undoubtedly 
 where the particular matter was one affecting the whole 
 country, like a general feudal levy or like the complaints 
 against the sheriff coming up from all England about 
 1170, the great Council instead of the small would act 
 in the case, but always so far as we know and probably 
 from the beginning, it was the small Council which 
 supervised the collection of the revenue. 
 
 This financial business being quite specific in character 
 could easily and first of all lines of business be set off by 
 itself and considered in sessions specially devoted to the 
 purpose. The Council meeting in such sessions was known
 
 28 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 as the Exchequer and, in what was probably a second 
 stage of its history, it came to be considered that a special 
 responsibility for attendance and action rested upon the 
 official members of the Council whose offices had to do 
 with finances. This stage was reached at least as early 
 as the reign of Henry I, soon after the beginning of the 
 twelfth century. By slow degrees the Exchequer came 
 to be more and more highly specialized and limited to 
 its one field of work, but traces long remain visible to 
 us of the fact that it had once been the small Council 
 and capable of acting in an Exchequer session upon any 
 of the business which the small Council had to do. 
 
 The development of the Exchequer was the most 
 important purely institutional change in the first cen- 
 tury after the Conquest, but in the meantime two 
 changes had been taking place so gradually as not to 
 have been clearly perceived at the time, but leading to 
 constitutional results which were permanent. One was 
 the increase in the practical power of the king, the other 
 was the growth of the church in practical independence 
 within the state. In both the cases I use the word 
 ' ' practical ' ' to mean that these changes were not yet, or 
 only in small part, embodied in law and constitutional 
 form. 
 
 Monarchy and baronage stood over against one an- 
 other after the Conquest as the two most powerful 
 forces of the time, and the king was the stronger of the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 29 
 
 two. It was not, as has been said, the constitution which 
 made him strong. He was the strongest power in the 
 state because he possessed more of the practical elements 
 of strength, the greatest military power, the largest 
 financial resources, and the highest prestige, and because 
 the law and custom of the time allowed him certain 
 decided advantages over anyone else. And yet there 
 was something more that went to make his position than 
 these things. Even on the continent where feudal dis- 
 integration had reached its extreme limit, that age had 
 kept a conception of the office of king which we can 
 hardly call a theory or ideal of kingship, it was held with 
 so little general consciousness, but which was so far as 
 it went definite enough. The king was among men a 
 representative of the divine government. The supreme 
 objects of his rule should be those which the divine 
 government seeks. His great duty was to make peace V' 
 and justice prevail, to secure for his subjects the un- I 
 disturbed enjoyment of their rights. The idea was i 
 derived largely from the Old Testament, with some \ 
 traditions of the Roman monarchy through Charlemagne, 
 and some little speculative influence from the scanty 
 literature inherited from the ancient world. It was no 
 full-blown theory of government and probably it was 
 little in the minds of baron or burgher except on special 
 occasions. Men did in those days very little abstract 
 thinking about their government and made no effort to
 
 30 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 shape it according to any definite plan. But the idea 
 of the king's duties in the state was accepted generally 
 enough to make the king in practice something more 
 than a mere lord of vassals, and to give him strong 
 foundations on which to build a centralized and anti- 
 feudal power. That there was any building with plan 
 and intention towards such an end during the first 
 century after the Conquest, we cannot confidently say, 
 but there was some growth in that practical power which 
 has been described above. 
 
 William the Conqueror's son, William Rufus, the 
 second king of the Norman family, exercised his power 
 with such harshness, or took such extreme advantage of 
 his opportunities to increase it, as to excite the hostility, 
 at least of those who wrote the books, and twice there 
 were baronial rebellions against him without success. 
 He was too strong to be opposed. His reign lasted but 
 little more than ten years, but in that time, just how 
 we do not know, he was believed by his own generation 
 to have pushed the feudal rights of the king to illegal 
 extreme at the expense of his vassals. His sudden death 
 gave the barons an opportunity of which they took 
 instant advantage. His brother Henry needed their 
 support to secure the throne and as their price they 
 demanded formal promises of him that in the legal 
 relations between king and baronage there should be a 
 return to the days of William I. In making this demand
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 31 
 
 and putting the king's answer into written form in 
 Henry's so-called coronation charter, the barons fell 
 back in principle upon the fundamental fact of feudal- 
 ism already mentioned, the contract which created the 
 relation between lord and vassal. The charter, which 
 consisted of definite promises on the part of the king 
 as to the character of his government, implied an 
 equally definite engagement on the part of the barons 
 to support him as king, and was a specific contract 
 within the more general and unexpressed contract which 
 created the feudal relationship. 
 
 In the feudal system both as a practical way of getting % 
 certain things done and as a body of law, the controlling 
 idea was that of contract. It was by a contract that the | 
 relationship between lord and vassal was created, and 
 it was within the limits of that contract and as deter- 
 mined by it that the feudal system, as a system of 
 government, was operated. The sovereign of the feudal 
 state in getting his army, or legislature, or court, or in 
 collecting such money payments as the feudal relation 
 provided for, had no legal right to exact more service or I 
 larger sums than the contract between him and his / 
 vassals allowed as fixed and interpreted by custom. On 
 the other side also the king assumed in this contract 
 certain obligations towards his vassal, in some directions 
 definitely understood, with reference, for example, to 
 the right of the vassal to be tried by his peers, and in
 
 32 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 other directions more or less vague, but comprised in 
 the ideas of justice towards the vassal and protection 
 of him in his rights. It was upon this conception of the 
 obligations by which the king was bound that the barons 
 acted in securing the charter from Henry as a cheek on 
 the increasing royal power. 
 
 Here again it is not likely that lord or vassal had this 
 idea of a ruling contract constantly in mind, but it was 
 held clearly enough to act as a decided check on the 
 development of an absolute monarchy, when the appre- 
 hension of the powerful Anglo-Norman baronage was 
 excited, and to become ultimately the first stepping stone 
 towards the constitutional or limited monarchy. In the 
 coronation charter of Henry I there is no explicit refer- 
 ence to contract, as there is none in the ordinary codes 
 of feudal law, or in the more extended and specific 
 charter of King John which we call Magn& Carta. But 
 the coronation charter sets forth in its first clause as the 
 reason of its existence the oppression of the kingdom by 
 unjust exactions and unjust customs exactions and 
 customs, that is, which had no right to be. Clearly it 
 was possible to distinguish between the things to which 
 the king had a right and those to which he had no right, 
 and the king as clearly admitted that unjust exactions 
 and customs ought to be abandoned. 
 
 But the coronation charter of Henry I was only a 
 momentary check in the growth of a stronger royal
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 33 
 
 power. In the end it did no more than make a record \ 
 for future use of the fact that in the method of the 
 charter and in the principle of contract on which it 
 rested there was a way provided to curb the king and 
 set limitations to his absolutism. Henry I proved to be 
 an even stronger king than his brother William had 
 been and before long he reverted to the practices which 
 in the charter he had promised to abandon. Those 
 particular exactions to which, we judge from the charter, 
 the barons objected most bitterly, like the extreme 
 exercise of the rights of wardship and marriage, became 
 permanent rights of the crown, and in the days of his 
 grandson were a recognized part of English feudal law. 
 In the days of that grandson, King Henry II, the 
 absolute monarchy which was forming made an advance 
 more rapid and more decisive than any before that time, 
 because it took a long step towards embodying the royal 
 absolutism in fixed constitutional form. The problem 
 before King Henry when he came to the throne in 1154 
 was the perpetual problem of the middle ages, of main- 
 taining order and security everywhere throughout the 
 country and of making the king's justice, his power to 
 enforce right law, feared in every local subdivision of 
 the state. It was the problem not merely of holding the 
 people of the country to the law, but even the local 
 officers of the government whom the opportunities of 
 distance and difficult intercommunication were con-
 
 84 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 stantly tempting to use their offices for their personal 
 advantage, or even to turn them into personal posses- 
 sions annexed to their local territorial lordships. The 
 king could not be everywhere at once, and yet some form 
 of direct contact between the central and the local, some 
 immediate fear of the king's hand everywhere, was a 
 vital necessity. 
 
 This problem was solved by making regular and per- 
 manent a practice which had been occasionally used 
 since the Conquest and which had been inherited by the 
 Normans from the Frankish monarchy. From the 
 central Council, the small Council, which was, as we 
 have seen, the institution supervising the executive and 
 administrative work of the government and at the same 
 time a court of law trying cases, a commission of its 
 members was sent to groups of counties throughout the 
 kingdom to hold in each county of the circuit before the 
 local county court a session, not of the county court, but 
 of the central curia regis. William the Conqueror had 
 made use of this practice to collect in each county the 
 material for his great record of the taxing possibilities 
 of England, the Domesday book, and even in his reign 
 it was frequently used for the local trial of law suits by 
 the curia regis. Now Henry II determined that the 
 central supervising body of the kingdom should be 
 carried by this expedient into every county, with all its 
 powers and prerogatives, to hold a session by the help
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 35 
 
 of the local machinery on the spot where local evidence 
 was more easily got and protection more effectively 
 offered against the local fear of the powerful offender. 
 It was a most efficacious plan for that day of undiffer- 
 entiated institutions. 
 
 At the same time great improvements were made in the 
 procedure to be operated by these new courts both in 
 criminal and civil cases, improvements which begin an 
 age of rapid growth in the history of our judicial insti- 
 tutions. It was indeed upon these institutions, upon 
 the organization of our courts, upon the development 
 of the jury and of our judicial processes, and upon the 
 formation of the common law and the system of equity, 
 that this innovation was to have its most permanent 
 effect. But to men in that age another effect was more 
 noticeable and this is in the constitutional history of 
 the country more noteworthy. This new institution 
 added to the constitution of the Anglo-Norman state, to 
 the practical machinery of government, a new engine 
 of centralization, far more immediate and effective than 
 any which existed before. The controlling central power 
 was brought by it into direct contact with every free- 
 holder in the land through its use of the county court, 
 and thus bound together all parts of the country distant 
 and near under a common supervision. The king's hand 
 was laid upon every man. It was the first step and a
 
 86 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 long step towards embodying the practical Norman 
 
 absolutism in constitutional forms. 
 
 From such a beginning it would not be difficult to go 
 on to add to a royal control of administration vested in 
 fixed forms, an equally fixed royal legislative right and 
 an unchecked control over the new processes of taxation 
 which were soon to be put into use. It was a first step 
 towards a rounded constitution embodying in fully 
 developed machinery a royal control of all the functions 
 of the state. This is what actually occurred in France. 
 The singular contrast which the institutional history of 
 these two countries presents was long ago pointed out. 
 In details of constitutional life, France and England of 
 these early centuries were practically identical. France 
 was also a feudal state. The means of carrying on the 
 government, the machinery of the state, were furnished 
 by the feudal services of the baron ; the operative agent 
 of the government was the baron. Feudal law was the 
 same, the feudal practice and spirit controlled life 
 equally in the two states. In both states the same vague 
 ideas as to the royal duty of justice prevailed, derived 
 from the same past and expressed in a coronation oath 
 practically identical. And yet out of an institutional 
 situation hardly to be distinguished, France emerged at 
 the close of the middle ages an absolute and England a 
 limited monarchy. A hundred and fifty years ago one 
 of the first foreign writers who undertook to describe
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 37 
 
 the English constitution for the benefit of other peoples 
 declared that the explanation of this peculiar fact is 
 to be found in that other fact that England began its 
 history with an absolute and France with an almost 
 powerless monarchy. This declaration of the clever 
 French philosopher is much more than a striking para- 
 dox. It may have been in his case a brilliant intuition, 
 but it might have been a sober generalization. As in the 
 course of English history other elements in the state 
 arose to power beside the king and slowly won their way 
 to influence upon the government, what they gained was 
 taken from the king and his uncontrolled action by 
 degrees hemmed in and limited. In France step by 
 step the barons, who had been the strongest element in 
 the feudal state, were subjected to control and what 
 they lost was added to the king, by whom from the 
 beginning it had been in theory possessed. 
 
 If this explanation of the constitutional history of 
 these two states may perhaps be thought too simple for 
 the tangled maze of facts which they present, there still 
 does remain this constitutional situation clearly con- 
 trasted in one direction at the beginning and in the 
 opposite direction at the end of their medieval history. 
 For the Anglo-Norman kingship, if not an ideal, cer- j 
 tainly was a practical absolutism. The king was not 
 merely the strongest element in the state but the 
 constitution furnished no means by which a will in
 
 88 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 opposition to him could express itself except by dis- 
 obedience and rebellion, the feudal last resort. But 
 even with this recognized possibility nothing but a 
 combination of barons against the king could hope to be 
 successful, and no combination even was successful for 
 a century and a half. In the days when feudalism was 
 at its height the right of the baronage to resist the wrong- 
 doing of the king was apt to be looked upon as an indi- 
 vidual right, the right of an individual only, and some 
 beginning of corporate consciousness, some recognition 
 of the fact that the rights of the class together were 
 threatened by royal innovations, was necessary before 
 combined action of constitutional significance was pos- 
 sible. But that came slowly everywhere, and nowhere 
 in the Europe of that date outside England is there 
 to be found so strong and so centralized a state in the 
 first years of the thirteenth century. 
 
 But it was apparently not from the centralizing 
 aspect of Henry's changes that the impulse came which 
 put a check upon this development. It came from the 
 conduct of a king who ruled, or who was believed by his 
 time to rule, as William Rufus had done ; it was because 
 he stretched or seemed to stretch the royal rights to 
 illegal limits in his demands of money and of services. 
 These at least are the reasons which Magna Carta seems 
 to give us why the barons objected to the changes 
 of Henry II, and not so much the increased centrali-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 39 
 
 zation resulting. The interference of his judicial pro- 
 cesses with the jurisdiction of their baronial courts 
 especially excited their opposition and seemed to them 
 an illegal usurpation, rather it would seem because it 
 deprived them of one of their important property rights 
 than because it made the king more powerful. 
 
 But before taking up the Great Charter, which re- 
 sulted from the barons' opposition to the king, it is 
 necessary to notice the other practical development 
 referred to above which was destined in the end to have 
 important constitutional consequences. When Henry II 
 began his reform, he found that the most serious imme- 
 diate obstacle in his way was the fact that his clerical 
 subjects, persons in holy orders, were not within the 
 jurisdiction of his courts. This had not always been the 
 ease. In Saxon days cleric and layman had been judged 
 in the same tribunals. But the growing ecclesiastical 
 monarchy of Christendom, a real state with all the 
 organization and machinery of a state, could not be 
 satisfied with that arrangement, and William I, who 
 sympathized with the purposes of the great reformation 
 which placed Gregory VII on the papal throne, gave to 
 the church of England after the Conquest its independ- 
 ent courts. No serious consequences from this step were 
 felt at once. It is perhaps true at a time when both law 
 and judicial organization were somewhat crude and 
 undeveloped that the separation of the two kinds of
 
 40 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 courts was an improvement. At any rate it would seem 
 to the men of that time that in the change made by 
 William I the state surrendered nothing of its own 
 normal jurisdiction. It turned over to the church courts 
 jurisdiction over ecclesiastical questions and cases only. 
 
 The church, however, which confronted Henry II was 
 relatively much stronger than it had been under William 
 as a result of two changes which had taken place in the 
 intervening century. In the first place the conflict over 
 investitures, over lay appointments to ecclesiastical 
 office, though settled by a compromise under William's 
 son, Henry I, had brought about a great increase of the 
 practical power of the church as compared with the 
 state, not in England merely but throughout Europe. 
 The church did secure more control over the filling of 
 its offices which gave it a more complete and more stable 
 organization. In the second place the church in Eng- 
 land had taken advantage of the doubtful title and weak 
 control of Stephen, Henry I 's successor, to draw into its 
 courts all cases affecting clerics, even those naturally 
 belonging to the state courts like criminal cases and 
 questions concerning the ownership of land. It had gone 
 far beyond the position in independent jurisdiction 
 allowed it by William I. 
 
 As a result of this stronger position of the church and 
 of the vigorous leadership and then the unfortunate 
 murder of Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury,
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 41 
 
 Henry II was not able to accomplish his entire pro- 
 gramme of reform but was obliged to surrender to the 
 church courts a part of the criminal jurisdiction which 
 it had usurped though naturally belonging to the state. 
 The church did not succeed in retaining all that it had 
 attempted under Stephen, but it gained much in prestige 
 and in power, and it passed into the thirteenth century 
 as an independent government, almost or quite as strong 
 as the state, with the support behind it of a great inter- 
 national monarchy whose authority extended over the 
 whole of Europe.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 FROM MAGNA CARTA TO PARLIAMENT 
 
 The Anglo-Norman absolute government of the state 
 reached its climax in the reign of King John, youngest 
 son of Henry II and brother of Richard the Lion Heart, 
 which covers the first sixteen years of the thirteenth 
 century. In English literature and history John has 
 lived to the present day as the wickedest of tyrants, with 
 scarcely one redeeming trait of character. It is probable 
 that the traditional picture is a bit too dark. Something 
 may be said for John, at least in the way of intellectual 
 ability and statesmanship, and much for the strength of 
 his position. He defied the thunders of the imperial 
 church under the most powerful of medieval popes, 
 Innocent III, and maintained his defiance unshaken for 
 years, and it was further years before circumstances 
 made it possible for the barons to curb his power. But 
 the indictment of character and the accusation of tyr- 
 anny are too well supported by contemporary evidence 
 to be waived aside. His disregard of all rights that stood 
 in his way, the cruelty of his punishments, and his acts 
 of personal oppression led, when an opportunity offered
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 43 
 
 towards the close of his reign, to a combination of the 
 barons against him which was too strong to be resisted. 
 
 These were unquestionably the immediately effective 
 causes which led to the successful insurrection. It is 
 very likely that without them the opposition to the 
 institutional changes which had been made by John's 
 father could not have produced united action, though 
 certainly John by his own arbitrary conduct had added 
 acts of doubtful legality, not known to his father's reign 
 nor to his brother Richard's, but involved surely enough 
 in any logical development of the innovations of Henry 
 II. But by this time the baronage as a .whole had been 
 taught to recognize the legal foundation of their cause 
 as against the king which existed in the law. They saw 
 also how difficult it was to bind a king of John's char- 
 acter by any ordinary promises. Consequently the con- 
 cessions which they demanded of the king they threw 
 into the written form of a legally binding grant the 
 Great Charter, and they seem to have been careful, 
 except in a few cases, to demand nothing which they 
 could not justify in the law as it existed. By this 
 demand and by the documentary form which they gave 
 to it, specific and permanent in character, this baronial 
 opposition to the highest expression yet given to the 
 Anglo-Norman absolute monarchy took the first step 
 towards the limited monarchy. 
 
 The barons themselves had no such idea. They did
 
 44 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 not intend, or even suspect what they really did. They 
 had and could have no such idea as that conveyed to us 
 by the words constitutional, or limited monarchy, a 
 conception still in the distant future and quite beyond 
 the horizon of the thirteenth century. They based their 
 action on the fundamental principle of feudalism which 
 has already been stated. The king had broken the feudal 
 contract. He had no right to do many of the things 
 which he had done. In their distrust of any mere 
 promises which he might make, they determined to bind 
 him for the future in the strongest way possible to them, 
 and they had before them, recalled to their minds by 
 the archbishop Stephen Langton, the precedent of 
 Henry I's coronation charter, which that king had been 
 obliged to grant to meet a similar demand, and the text 
 of that legal document. They accordingly drew up a 
 deed of gift, based on the form for the most unreserved 
 conveyance of land then in use, in which the king bound 
 himself and his heirs to respect for the future for them 
 and their heirs their legal rights and to grant them in 
 perpetuity the liberties which they insisted belonged to 
 them. In it he also agreed, as another derivation already 
 spoken of from the same feudal right that, in case he 
 should violate their rights in spite even of his promises 
 made in this form, they might make war upon him and 
 force him to regard the law. 
 
 This deed of gift was Magna Carta, the Great Charter
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 45 
 
 of English liberties, whose seventh centennial we have 
 only recently passed. If we regard it as belonging to 
 the year 1215 and disregard what it has come to mean 
 to later times, Magna Carta was in substance a feudal 
 document. It states but little more than feudal law, 
 and it pledges the king to recognize the rights of the 
 barons merely and their vassals. Modern scholars have 
 failed to find in it any of the great principles or insti- 
 tutions of English liberty on which we especially pride 
 ourselves: Parliament, consent to taxation, the jury 
 trial, Habeas Corpus; and they have therefore said that 
 the influence of Magna Carta in the growth of the Eng- 
 lish constitution and of English liberty has been greatly 
 overstated. The conclusion does not follow from the 
 premises. None of the principles named is in the ' 
 
 </ rt. 
 
 charter, and yet it was by a very true instinct that the 
 English nation recognized for centuries that the Great 
 Charter was the palladium of their liberties, and in a 
 very right sense it was actually the beginning of the 
 
 English constitution considered as limited monarchy. 
 
 Q 
 For what the Great Charter did was to lay down two 
 
 fundamental principles which lie at the present day, as 
 clearly as in 1215, at the foundation of the English 
 constitution and of all constitutions derived from it. 
 First that there exist in the state certain laws so 
 necessarily at the basis of the political organization of 
 the time that the king, or as we should say today the
 
 46 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 government, must obey them; and second that, if the 
 government refuses to obey these laws, the nation has 
 the right to force it to do so, even to the point of over- 
 throwing the government and putting another in its 
 place. That this second principle has never been dis- 
 tinctly affirmed in legal form since the thirteenth cen- 
 tury is not evidence against its continued existence. 
 Even the thirteenth century expressed it only as a right 
 of insurrection to force conformity to the law, not of 
 the deposition of the king, but in the great crises of the 
 past when the constitution was seriously endangered, the 
 nation never hesitated to act upon the extreme right 
 logically involved in the supremacy of the law. We 
 have only to remember the Declaration of Independence 
 with its reiterated statements, that what the king of 
 England had been doing was an infringement of the 
 legal rights of the colonists as Englishmen, until the 
 point had been reached when he was "no longer fitted 
 to be the ruler of a free people." The principle upon 
 which the Declaration of Independence rests is exactly 
 the same as that upon which Magna Carta rests, stated 
 in modern terms by colonists, i.e., by a portion of the 
 nation which could not undertake to revolutionize the 
 whole. In every age of English history in which the 
 question has risen, in every crisis in the development of 
 English liberty, this double principle is that upon which 
 our ancestors stood and upon which, as a foundation,
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 47 
 
 they built up little by little the fabric of free govern- 
 ment under which we live. The specific and individual 
 legal provisions which Magna Carta stated may soon 
 have disappeared in the changing social conditions of 
 
 the following generations, but the sound judgment of 
 
 I nL 
 
 the nation insisted that successive kings, one after the 
 
 other, should pledge themselves to be faithful to the 
 Charter, some of the kings many times over, and should 
 confirm to them the liberties which it granted. In these 
 demands they did not intend to pledge their king to 
 laws which had become obsolete, but to that fundamental 
 conception which underlay all special provisions, a con- 
 ception of the relation of the government to the governed 
 which has become almost proverbial in the Anglo-Saxon 
 world a conception not expressed in the definite terms 
 of today, which would have been impossible to the thir- 
 teenth century, but clearly enough implied. These 
 renewed pledges and confirmations continued almost to 
 the end of the middle ages, until the supremacy of Par- 
 liament had come to be rather clearly recognized and the 
 chief lines of the modern constitution quite distinctly 
 laid down. Then in the fifteenth century, when we may 
 say the idea of a constitutional monarchy had become 
 for the time at least a habit of the English mind, they 
 ceased. 
 
 If then we consider 1215 as the date when constitu- 
 tional monarchy began and Magna Carta as the first step
 
 48 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 towards it, in the next succeeding centuries two other 
 steps were taken. First, the organization of a con- 
 tinuous and consistent opposition, to use the term which 
 has become technical in modern constitutional history, 
 whose practical purpose was, however unconsciously 
 entertained or even misunderstood, to protect the funda- 
 mental principles of the Charter from the encroachments 
 of the king; and second, the carrying on of a series of 
 experiments in order to devise some form of institutions 
 in which this fundamental principle of the national 
 control of the king's government might be permanently 
 expressed or, to state the object in more modern terms, 
 in which a limited monarchy might be constitutionally 
 embodied. For an idea, or an ideal, has little influence 
 upon the actual everyday life of the world until it has 
 been expressed in workable institutional form, and in 
 truth the work of the great institution making races of 
 history has been less to cherish or to promote ideals 
 than to invent and improve workable forms. 
 
 In the history as it actually occurred, this attempt 
 which I have put second, to find constitutional forms 
 for a limited monarchy, in reality began first, for the 
 first experiment made in that direction was in the Great 
 Charter itself. In the famous sixty-first clause of that 
 document, a standing committee or board of twenty-five 
 barons was constituted whose business was to be to bring 
 to the attention of the king any violation of the Charter
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 49 
 
 and to try to induce him to remedy the matter. If he 
 would not, it was then their right to make war upon 
 him with the support of all the nation until he should 
 be brought to consent. Then he was to be obeyed as 
 king as before. In other words the committee of barons 
 was first to decide that the Great Charter had been 
 violated, plainly a judicial act, and then as a last resort 
 they were virtually to suspend the king from office, for 
 in making war upon him in the name of the Charter 
 they assumed that they were acting for the community 
 more truly than he. 
 
 This was a crude and clumsy expedient, but it is to 
 be remembered that it was the first attempt ever made 
 in history to put into constitutional form the principle 
 that the government must obey the fundamental laws of 
 the state. There was no earlier experiment from which 
 the men of 1215 could learn. There was no theoretical 
 discussion of the institutional forms of a limited mon- 
 archy in the literature open to them. Nor should its 
 clumsiness conceal from us the fact that in this first 
 attempt is clearly struck the keynote of English con- 
 stitutional history and foreshadowed, faintly perhaps 
 but truly, what is its final triumph and greatest glory, 
 for this was in truth an attempt to find a way of enforc- 
 ing the fundamental law upon the king without the 
 necessity of civil war and revolution, with civil war and 
 revolution as the last resort only. That is in very briefest
 
 50 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 form of statement what the Anglo-Saxon constitution 
 is; it is a perfected method of holding the government 
 responsible to the will of the nation without the constant 
 danger of civil war. 
 
 Magna Carta considered in itself accomplished noth- 
 ing. Apart from a few clauses, mostly of temporary and 
 special interest, it stated only principles of feudal law, 
 and the feudal system was at the moment upon the edge 
 of its rapid decline. What Magna Carta was to be in 
 the future of English history would depend upon the 
 interpretation given to it in the next age and especially 
 upon the impression, permanent or otherwise, made by 
 its fundamental principle that the king may be legally 
 held to obey the law. 
 
 In the fifty years which followed the Great Charter, 
 there was begun that perennial struggle which char- 
 acterizes English history for four hundred years between 
 the endeavor of the king to free himself of all restric- 
 tions, and the endeavor of the nation to protect and 
 secure its own interests. In the thirteenth century this 
 struggle resulted in the second attempt to put the 
 responsibility of the king into constitutional form, by 
 removing temporarily in 1258 from all power a king, 
 Henry III, who could not be trusted and vesting the 
 government in officers and commissions appointed by 
 and responsible directly to the Great Council or, to use 
 the name by which it was then beginning to be called,
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 51 
 
 to Parliament. The Provisions of Oxford, as this con- 
 stitution was called, marked a great advance in half a 
 century from the crude beginning of clause sixty-one 
 of Magna Carta, but it was still far below the standard 
 of the modern constitution, and it was a short-lived 
 experiment only. It did, however, establish a precedent 
 for future experimenting in the same direction, and it 
 has a special interest for us in the fact that it reveals 
 a blind reaching forward towards what was to be one 
 of the highest achievements of the modern constitution 
 ministerial responsibility to Parliament. The modern 
 principle, however, growing out of wholly different 
 conditions and making its way slowly and "without 
 observation," has no historical connection with the 
 Provisions of Oxford nor with any other medieval 
 experiment. 
 
 The Provisions of Oxford were short lived and their 
 permanent value was merely as a precedent of institu- 
 tion making and a renewed assertion of the fundamental 
 principles of Magna Carta. But the same reign, that 
 of Henry III, son and successor of John, saw the 
 beginning of two new historical factors which were to be 
 of permanent and powerful influence in the making of 
 the English constitution. As one of these, we may date 
 from this reign the entry of the nation into public 
 affairs as a determining force, the consciousness of a 
 corporate and organic whole, the community. For the
 
 52 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 second, we may date from this reign also the beginning 
 of Parliament. 
 
 In trying to make clear just what happened in the 
 rise of a national consciousness, it is easy to over- 
 emphasize and overstate what occurred. The modern 
 democratic nation, with city and country on an even 
 plane, and all classes with equal political rights and 
 theoretically with power to determine everything, could 
 have no existence in the middle ages. The medieval 
 national community was still too much a matter of 
 separate classes. Each group had still its own special 
 interests which hardly allowed a really organic unity 
 to form, or every man to be interested in at least some 
 phase of common public affairs and to take part to that 
 extent, if not further, in determining their trend as in 
 the modern state. All that we can discover in the reign 
 of Henry III is the beginning, still very faint, of that 
 ultimate result. And yet what does take place means 
 then no small change. It means the rise even at the 
 moment of a new political influence and a new conception 
 of the state. 
 
 The feudal system, as a form of organization given 
 to the state, was in every feature of its political opera- 
 tion falling to pieces in the thirteenth century. Its 
 great service in holding the state together in an age of 
 political disintegration was no longer needed. Its 
 legislative, judicial, military, and financial services to 
 
 .
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 58 
 
 the state were finished and better methods of getting all 
 these services performed were coming in. Along with 
 these things there disappeared also, in the change which 
 marked the rise of a national consciousness, the general 
 conception of the state which feudalism had formed. 
 The king ceased to be looked upon as primarily the lord 
 of vassals ; the kingdom was no longer to be his barony, 
 his lordship, which he might exploit as he pleased. The 
 idea was growing up instead that his was an office ; that 
 his chief function was to seek and serve the interests 
 of the community even if, as it now begins to be seen 
 may be possible, these interests are in conflict with 
 personal interests of his own. The community, as con- 
 temporaries said, and we hardly dare yet to say the 
 nation, beginning slowly to be looked upon as a kind of 
 personal whole, a corporate unity, might have its own 
 important interest which might be injured or sacrificed 
 by the things the king would like to do. In that case his 
 interests must yield and the community might insist by 
 force that its views should prevail. The narrower con- 
 ception of Magna Carta, that the barons had the right 
 to protect from infringement by the king those rights 
 of theirs which were the natural outgrowth of the 
 fundamental principles by which the feudal organization 
 of the state was constituted, was broadening out into the 
 more modern conception of the national state and of
 
 54 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 the relation of the government to the community of the 
 
 ruled. 
 
 But in trying to explain the ultimate meaning of what 
 was taking place, the impression must not be given that 
 this was a theoretical or speculative change, or one 
 brought about by reasoning about an ideal situation. 
 It was intensely practical. It grew directly out of 
 specific abuses and expressed itself in specific complaints. 
 The English barons bitterly complained that the gifts 
 which the king heaped upon his foreign favorites should 
 of right belong to them. The eagerness with which the 
 king pursued abroad his own interests, in which the 
 community was not concerned, but for which it had to 
 pay heavily, forced upon Englishmen, the king 's natural 
 subjects as they said, the consciousness of their corporate 
 unity and corporate interests as against the foreigner. 
 The many who were concerned were made to draw a 
 sharp line between Englishmen and non-Englishmen 
 and between their interests and the separate interests 
 of the king. This new conception of the relation of 
 the king to the community of the governed grew more 
 clear and controlling as the reign went on, but then as 
 always the practical sense of the race led it to express 
 in legal form the ruling interests of the particular 
 moment, rather than to make a theoretically complete 
 statement. To bind the king to regard the interests of
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 55 
 
 the community, they made a new application of the 
 principle of Magna Carta. 
 
 In 1258 as in 1215, the king refused to accept the 
 barons' interpretation of his duty until he was com- 
 pelled to do so. In 1258 in framing securities for future 
 good government, the barons found themselves obliged 
 to go farther than the barons of 1215 had done in clause 
 sixty-one of the Great Charter, but in the same direction. 
 To protect the concessions made in the Charter, the 
 barons had demanded the exercise of one royal pre- 
 rogative, the judicial. The Provisions of Oxford of 
 1258 virtually suspended the king from all power and 
 vested the whole government for the time being in 
 commissions responsible to the great Council. In form 
 this was going a good deal farther than clause sixty-one, 
 but logically it was only a more complete expression of 
 the same principle, that a king who would not rule 
 according to law, or as we may now begin to say, as 
 the nation wished him to, might be removed from the 
 government. 
 
 Constitutionally the Provisions of Oxford were an 
 attempt to put the limitation of the king into institu- 
 tions which would work practically. As such the 
 Provisions had a profound influence on the future. 
 The idea of the responsibility of the king's ministers 
 to the great Council, which they vaguely expressed in 
 their commissions, gets its most perfect medieval
 
 56 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 expression in the process of impeachment something 
 more than a hundred years later, and becomes the 
 formative plan of all attempts to put the limited 
 monarchy into institutional form down to the seven- 
 teenth century. In fundamental meaning the Provisions 
 of Oxford are even more important for they were a 
 long step towards government for the people and by 
 the people. Said the poet of the barons' cause who 
 wrote in 1264: "Since the government of the realm is 
 the safety or ruin of all, it matters much in whom is its 
 
 guardianship It is the glory of a king to save 
 
 many, by his own pains to relieve many. Let him not 
 urge therefore his own interests, but regard his subjects 
 who trust in him; if he has saved the kingdom, he has 
 done the duty of a king." But this conception of 
 government, clearly held, was still far off in the future. 
 It is only the faint beginning of a drift in the current 
 of history that we can detect here, but it was a drift 
 that never ceased. However vaguely seen or felt, this 
 conception underlies the whole constitutional progress 
 of the future and is in reality the solid foundation of 
 every new advance. The seventeenth century when it 
 formulated clearly the doctrine of the sovereignty of 
 the people only completed what the thirteenth century 
 began.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE BEGINNING AND GROWTH IN POWER 
 OF PARLIAMENT 
 
 Before the close of the reign of Henry III another 
 beginning was made of great constitutional importance 
 for the future, the beginning of Parliament. Though 
 in origin and history for more than a hundred years 
 outside the line of growth by which the limited monarchy 
 was being formed, Parliament was destined before very 
 long to take the chief part in that development, and to 
 become the vehicle for the continuous and consistent 
 opposition to the crown to which the guardianship of 
 the constitution was committed. 
 
 The germ from which Parliament grew was the 
 existing national assembly of the state, the great Council. 
 This was a feudal assembly. It was composed of the 
 king's vassals, and the idea of the service which they 
 were rendering in making up the assembly was a feudal 
 idea. The service was a part of that which they had 
 engaged to render the king for the fiefs they held. 
 Notwithstanding the fact that occasionally some person 
 was called to the assembly by the king who had no
 
 68 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 connection with him by a feudal tie, it would have 
 seemed impossible to the twelfth century, at least in so 
 highly feudal a country as England, that men should 
 be admitted in numbers to the assembly as delegates of 
 a great class in the community which stood in no vassal 
 relationship to the king. It is no slight sign of the 
 decline of feudal ideas in their hold upon the community 
 that it did seem possible in the last half of the thirteenth 
 century. In these sentences has really been described 
 in simplest terms the origin of Parliament. It was the 
 introduction into the feudal great Council of the repre- 
 sentatives of classes in the community which in feudal 
 days had had no standing there, the representatives 
 of the commercial classes and of the small landowners. 
 But the extent of the change should not be exaggerated. 
 j It should be remembered that there is no evidence to 
 [ show that these new elements in Parliament were 
 allowed during that century any share in its determining 
 \ and deciding functions over any class or interests except 
 their own. 
 
 Into the feudal great Council then were brought new 
 elements, not on a feudal basis and representing classes 
 in the community which were essentially not feudal. 
 The result was a structural change, very similar in 
 character to that by which the earlier Teutonic national 
 assembly was made over into the feudal great Council. 
 It was like that the introduction of a new principle of
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 59 
 
 composition, the principle of representation. Scholars 
 have not yet come to an agreement among themselves 
 as to the source from which the idea or the practice of 
 representation was derived, nor can we say that they 
 were looked upon at the close of the thirteenth century 
 with anything like our modern clearness of under- 
 standing. They were understood, however, clearly 
 enough to be consciously applied in the step that was 
 taken, and from that beginning they have grown 
 through uninterrupted experience into our present-day 
 conception of representative government. And also we 
 must not overlook the fact that the new principle was 
 less completely applied to the old institution, than in the \ 
 earlier change to a feudalized assembly. The old great 
 Council remained unchanged. For a long time it still 
 acted now and then alone as Parliament, and for a / 
 longer time yet traces of its independent powers and 
 functions survived. The new elements were grouped 
 around it, not organically absorbed into it changing its 
 nature. It still exists in fact, almost unchanged, in the 
 present House of Lords. 
 
 Before very long these new elements drew off by 
 themselves into a separate "House," the House of 
 Commons, leaving the old great Council by itself as 
 the other house of the new Parliament. The surviving 
 great Council, however, changed in one respect. It was 
 no longer in the strict sense a feudal body. Its members
 
 60 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 were descendants of the feudal barons; the hereditary- 
 feature remained ; their service was based in form upon 
 the old service, but no one any longer thought of it as 
 a return for land and all ideas about it that were really 
 feudal died out, were dying out in England in general 
 at that time, except in deductions that were merely legal 
 or ceremonial. 
 
 The new elements were first introduced into the old 
 Council not in conformity to any theory that was then 
 held, nor with any intention of permanent policy. The 
 step was first taken to serve an immediate practical end 
 and implied no pledge nor even desire on anyone's part 
 that the experiment should be repeated. Deputies from 
 the English counties were summoned to a meeting of 
 the Council, in this case the small Council, in 1254, to 
 report the feeling of the counties about a tax which 
 the government desired to lay. In the process by which 
 this introduction was made, a precedent was exactly 
 followed which had long been in use when the Council 
 acting as a court desired a report from a county court 
 upon their action in some case which had been before 
 them. Deputies from the boroughs and cities were first 
 introduced into the Council by the revolutionary leader, 
 Simon de Montfort, in 1265, apparently from a desire 
 to strengthen his party, which had for some time been 
 declining. Of the action of this Parliament, the first 
 containing all the elements of the future Parliament, we
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 61 
 
 know little, but it seems highly improbable that the new 
 elements exercised any other function than that of 
 giving information and advice, the conciliar function 
 proper. 
 
 For fifty years and more after these dates, form and 
 function of the new institution were not fixed by any 
 certain rules. In membership, in manner of internal 
 organization, and in method of operation, what seems 
 to us like aimless experimenting was going on in the 
 interval. In 1295 what is known as the Model Parlia- 
 ment was called together by Edward I. It was a model 
 Parliament in the sense that it contained all the elements 
 that go to form later Parliaments, but it contained also 
 one element, the representatives of the lower clergy, 
 which soon dropped out of Parliamentary history. 
 Nor was this Parliament in organization any more 
 nearly an exact model than in composition, for the 
 representatives of the counties, the knights of the shires, 
 met with the greater barons, and burgesses and clergy 
 each met by themselves. It was a Parliament of three 
 houses, like later French Estates General, the first estate 
 the clergy, the second the nobles, and the third the 
 burgesses, a form of organization corresponding more 
 closely to the organization of feudal society than that 
 into which the English Parliament finally settled. 
 Parliament passed into the fourteenth century with 
 composition and organization still unsettled.
 
 62 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 If Parliament, as an institution for practical use, was 
 vague and formless in the thirteenth century, it was 
 equally true that it was for purely practical reasons 
 that the change which created Parliament was made, 
 not as carrying out any theory of government. Appar- 
 ently what was chiefly desired in drawing the new 
 elements into the great Council was information, in a 
 way authorized, of the local feeling about pending 
 questions from delegates whose report was the only 
 " share they took in the final decision, unless the question 
 seemed to concern exclusively their own class. If the 
 printing press and the telegraph had existed in the last 
 half of the thirteenth century to render possible the 
 Jl easy collection of information from all parts of the 
 country, we may question whether representative insti- 
 tutions would ever have been invented, for their purpose 
 could have been more easily served in another way. 
 For a long time Parliament, bringing its members 
 together in a single assembly from all parts of the 
 country, was the only means by which the public 
 opinion of the nation could be ascertained and brought 
 to bear upon the government. Political organization, 
 party campaigns, public discussion, and newspapers 
 were still a long way in the future. 
 
 If Parliament entered the fourteenth century with 
 composition, organization and methods of working still 
 undetermined, all these questions were rapidly settled.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 63 
 
 The two new elements, representatives of the counties 
 and representatives of the towns, became permanent 
 features of the new institution. The ecclesiastical 
 element, the representatives of the general clergy, with- 
 drew to perform their parliamentary duties in assem- 
 blies of their own, called Convocation. Parliament \ 
 settled into an organization of two houses, not upon ' 
 any definite theory that two were better than one or 
 three, nor with any clear plan or purpose, but largely 
 by accident, because the church which should, according 
 to continental analogy, have formed a third house, 
 chose to remain outside. But it was by no accident, 
 though no doubt a thing not planned, that the repre- 
 sentatives of the counties, who were drawn from an 
 aristocratic landowning class, a minor aristocracy, 
 joined in the house of "Commons" with the represent- 
 atives of the towns who came from the commercial, 
 burgher class. This union occurred in no other country 
 of Europe, and it points to peculiar social conditions 
 in England. 
 
 To describe what lay behind these conditions in the 
 way of cause would carry us too far afield in this out- 
 line sketch, but the result may be briefly stated. The 
 merchant burgher, the political equal of the minor 
 baron in the county court, was in fourteenth-century 
 England regarded as his social equal also, married his 
 sons and daughters into knightly families without
 
 64 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 exciting opposition, and found no obstacle to the pur- 
 chase of land or even, if he wished, to the foundation 
 of a knightly family of his own. While barriers of 
 custom and interest were being raised between the great 
 and minor barons, they were being broken down between 
 the latter and the burghers. On the continent the minor 
 barons formed a part of the barons' house as they had 
 in England in some parts of the thirteenth century, but 
 in the fourteenth century the English knights finally 
 found themselves more at home with the burgesses, and 
 the House of Commons was formed by the combination 
 of these two classes. This is probably all that we need 
 to say by way of explanation, the knights found them- 
 selves more at home with the burgesses. 
 
 This unintended event probably determined the rapid 
 advance of Parliament in power during the fourteenth 
 century, for that advance in reality was not that of both 
 houses of Parliament equally but of the House of 
 Commons. The House of Lords considered by itself was 
 relatively of less importance at the close than at the 
 beginning of the century. The House of Commons 
 evidently had in that age admirable leadership, a high 
 degree of self-confidence, and a feeling of equality with 
 lords and royal ministers which were not generally 
 characteristics of the third estate in the Europe of that 
 day nor for long afterwards. 
 
 In entering upon the fourteenth century with its
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 65 
 
 function in the state only vaguely defined and its power 
 as a factor in the government not even foreseen, Parlia- 
 ment had before it a great task, if the foundations of its 
 dominance in the modern constitution were then to be 
 laid. Towards this result three things, by no means 
 small things, were accomplished, or at least begun, in 
 that century: the establishment of the control of Par- 
 liament over all forms of public revenue; the establish- 
 ment of the right of the House of Commons to a voice 
 in every act of legislation ; and the establishment of the 
 right of Parliament to supervise and direct the general 
 policy of the government. The way, however, for the 
 taking of these three steps in advance had been prepared 
 by certain events of the thirteenth and early fourteenth 
 centuries which lie outside the history of the new 
 Parliament. 
 
 In 1215 in two famous clauses of Magna Carta, the 
 principle was asserted that no feudal aids except those 
 provided for by the feudal contract, nor the feudal 
 payment called "scutage," should be called for by the 
 king unless with the consent of the great Council. If 
 we leave unsettled the question of the arbitrary action 
 of King John and a certain difficulty of statement 
 regarding scutage, this principle corresponds to the 
 practice of the past, so far as we know it, and is well 
 founded in feudal law, but it was omitted from all the 
 reissues of the Charter by the next king, Henry III.
 
 66 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 Why it was omitted is something of a puzzle, unless it 
 was from the difficulty of exact statement referred to 
 in regard to scutage, because the practice of the reign 
 and of the following reign of Edward I, until near the 
 close of the century, conformed to the original Charter. 
 Edward I, however, found himself in serious financial 
 difficulties when he became involved in war with France 
 and Scotland at once. Even the new Parliament, acting 
 for all classes of the nation together, did not provide 
 him with all the money that he thought necessary. The 
 church was beginning to object to the increasing taxa- 
 tion of the clergy by the state and even to try to forbid 
 it entirely. 
 
 In these circumstances Edward believed that the 
 necessities of the state were so great that he was justified 
 in collecting money from the community without pre- 
 vious consent. At the moment, however, a majority of 
 the great barons, representing the traditions of baronial 
 opposition to his father, Henry III, which had culmi- 
 nated in the Provisions of Oxford, were from a variety 
 of reasons, some of them merely personal, ready to take 
 advantage of any mistake which the king might make. 
 They seized this opportunity. They may not have been 
 particularly interested in establishing consent to taxa- 
 tion as a fundamental principle of the constitution, nor 
 indeed have had any constitutional ideas at all, but 
 the demand was clearly in line with the baronial
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 67 
 
 opposition of the thirteenth century which they repre- 
 sented and the practice of the century gave them a 
 decided advantage. 
 
 The king found himself obliged .to yield the point and 
 the principle was formulated in the so-called Confirma- 
 tion of the Charters in 1297. The statement of the 
 principle then made was no doubt intended by those 
 who drew it up to cover all forms of revenue except 
 those allowed by the feudal law and to cut off all 
 possibility of arbitrary taxation. "Moreover we have 
 granted for us and our heirs," the king was made to 
 say, ". . . . to all the commonalty of the land that for 
 no business from henceforth will we take such manner 
 of aids, tasks, nor prises, but by the common consent of 
 the realm and for the common profit thereof saving the 
 ancient aids and prises due and accustomed." 
 
 So stated and accepted by the king, the Confirmation 
 of the Charters may be said to have restored to the 
 tradition of Magna Carta the principle of consent to 
 taxation, not limited now as in the original clauses to 
 feudal revenues but broadened out, as taxation itself 
 had broadened during the century, to cover all new 
 forms of revenue. From this date on this principle, 
 as the fundamental rule of action, was never called in 
 question by any English king. Successive kings might 
 try to avoid its effect by inventing new forms of revenue 
 to which they could say it did not apply or by unwar-
 
 68 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 ranted extensions of old revenues, but from this date 
 it was definitely established as a fundamental law of 
 the constitution that the king was dependent for his 
 revenue upon a previgus grant. 
 
 Hardly had this principle been established when the 
 next step forward was taken. The guardianship of the 
 constitution which was beginning to form was still in 
 the hands of the baronial opposition rather than of 
 Parliament, but the new step was the first move in the 
 slow crossing over of constitutional development from 
 the line of baronial to that of Parliamentary supervision 
 and protection. Edward II was successful before he 
 had been many months in possession of the throne in 
 exciting against himself a vigorous and determined 
 opposition. In the Parliament of 1309, a Parliament of 
 the new type not a mere great Council, a grant of taxes 
 was made to the king "upon this condition" that he 
 give attention to a certain list of grievances attached 
 to the grant, of which the Commons complained, and find 
 a remedy for them. The list in itself is not important 
 and marks no constitutional advance. It was also a 
 generation or more before the attaching of conditions to 
 grants of money became a recognized feature of Parlia- 
 mentary procedure and we are hardly justified in 
 beginning with 1309, or with any of the less complete 
 instances which preceded it, the continuous history of 
 Parliament's use of the financial necessities of reluctant
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 69 
 
 kings to force them to grant reforms. It is interesting, 
 however, to notice how quickly after it became possible, 
 the new Parliament began to make experiment with this 
 weapon. 
 
 We are accustomed to think of the English constitu- 
 tion as one in which Parliament, or more specifically the 
 House of Commons as representing the nation, is in 
 supreme control of all of the functions and operations 
 of government. But at the beginning of the fourteenth 
 century we stand at the beginning of Parliament as the 
 organ of representative government not merely in 
 England but in all history. What it was to be, the share 
 which it was to take in actual government, was still to 
 be determined. As yet nothing was fixed; the rights 
 and functions of the new institution were vague and 
 undefined; nothing was known even of its possibilities. 
 As the successor of the feudal great Council and heir 
 of the principles into which feudal consent to taxation 
 had been transformed during the thirteenth century, 
 that each class in the community should give consent to 
 its own taxation, Parliament had a starting point of the 
 greatest strategic value from which to begin its advance 
 to power. How conscious Parliament was of the 
 meaning of this advantage we hardly dare to say and 
 at most it was a starting point only. The struggle to 
 win full control of national revenue and expenditure 
 was to be long and severe. In legislation hardly even
 
 70 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 a starting point for the new institution had yet been 
 found, and in the determination of the general policy 
 of the government, Parliament foresaw its own future 
 so little that it sometimes vigorously repudiated such 
 an ambition and laid the foundations of its later power 
 in entire unconsciousness of what it was doing. 
 
 Yet to secure these three things was necessary before 
 modern Parliamentary government could come into 
 existence : complete control by Parliament of all national 
 revenue and expenditure; the exclusive exercise of the 
 legislative right by Parliament, including the House of 
 Commons as an equal partner in every act; and the 
 power to determine the general policy which at any 
 moment of time should give character and purpose to the 
 government. At the end of the fourteenth century no 
 one of these had been so far secured as to be beyond 
 future danger, but great progress had been made towards 
 them all and in regard to the first at least but little 
 comparatively speaking yet remained to be done. 
 
 It was in the control of taxation that the greatest 
 progress was made in this age, and from the starting 
 point which Parliament thus secured in its sole power to 
 provide revenue, it even reached forward to begin the 
 practice of examining and criticizing the way in which 
 the revenue was used. The men of 1297 when they 
 pledged the king in the Confirmation of the Charters to 
 take no taxes without previous consent may have thought
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 71 
 
 that they had cut off all important sources of revenue, 
 but within a few years they discovered their mistake. 
 The largest and most lucrative product for export of the 
 England of the fourteenth century was wool, and Eng- 
 lish wool was the chief supply of the rich manufacturing 
 cities which had grown up in the Low Countries across 
 the Channel. The foreign merchants who traveled 
 through England to buy up the wool from the monas- 
 teries and manorial lords were not interested in the 
 English constitution nor in the problem of controlling 
 the king through taxation. On the other hand, they 
 were greatly interested in the protection and privileges 
 which the king could give them in the port towns, in 
 the markets, and on the highways of the country, and 
 they stood ready to pay him for what he had to give. 
 It was a simple matter to arrange between the mer- 
 chants and the king an export duty on the sack of wool 
 which was easy to collect and richly productive not 
 merely from the size of the crop but also from the high 
 money value of the pound of wool. This was a difficult 
 matter for Parliament to deal with because Edward III 
 argued with much plausibility that the foreigners paid 
 the tax and, though Parliament detected the fallacy and 
 insisted that the tax was deducted from the purchase 
 price, it was only towards the end of the reign that the 
 king was finally brought to renounce the practice for 
 good and all.
 
 72 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 The long war with France which filled so much of 
 the reign of Edward III was favorable to Parliament. 
 The king was in constant need of money and it would 
 very naturally seem to him more than once that what 
 he expected to gain in France was more important than 
 the concession which Parliament was at the moment 
 demanding. No earlier English king had been obliged 
 to ask for such frequent grants of money as Edward III. 
 To Parliament, not familiar with the heavy expenses of 
 the war, it seemed not unnaturally that the money must 
 somehow be wasted. They were disposed to demand an 
 explanation and to say to the king : What have you done 
 with the money which we gave you last year for this 
 same purpose? The king knew very well, however, the 
 weight of expense which the war entailed, and it may 
 quite likely have seemed to him that an easy way of 
 proving his good faith was to allow Parliament to elect 
 the treasurers who should collect and spend the money 
 granted, and to allow the treasurers to exhibit their 
 accounts in Parliament, or to let them be audited by a 
 Parliamentary committee. 
 
 Edward knew the honesty of his own intentions and 
 what interested him most was that by such a simple 
 expedient Parliament could clearly be convinced that 
 the king had spent the money as he had engaged to spend 
 it. Neither the king nor Parliament understood what 
 was involved in this innocent-seeming beginning. It
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 73 
 
 was in truth the starting point of Parliamentary appro- 
 priations, of appropriating the national revenue to 
 government expenses in detail, which modern Anglo- 
 Saxon Parliaments practically regard more highly than 
 the more fundamental right of granting the revenue, 
 because it secures in a high degree though indirectly a 
 control of government policy. If Parliament refuses an 
 appropriation for a specific purpose, government must 
 abandon that purpose. No one in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, however, saw this possibility and, though the 
 practice of setting aside certain revenues to particular 
 objects was carried sbmewhat farther in the next fifty 
 years, modern appropriations to minute details of 
 government expenditure had to await the full estab- 
 lishment of Parliamentary powers at the end of the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 The establishment of the modern methods of legis- 
 lation was not, as in the case of taxation, the expansion 
 of an old process to meet new conditions. It was rather 
 the establishment of a new method at the expense of the 
 old which was finally driven out of the field. The feudal 
 method of legislation had been by the king and the 
 Council, either the great or the small Council, since, it 
 will be remembered, there was no difference in function 
 between these two bodies. In this function so exercised, 
 the new elements brought into the great Council to form 
 the modern Parliament had had no previously regular
 
 74 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 and recognized share, as they had had in taxation, 
 neither through their representatives nor as the classes 
 which were represented. The only process open to them, 
 if they wished to initiate legislation, was to petition the 
 king that such and such a law be made. Apparently 
 even the Council, which had from the beginning a 
 recognized share by advice and consent in acts of legis- 
 lation, if it wished to initiate legislation of its own, in 
 place of acting on matters laid before it by the king, 
 took the first step in the process by a petition to the 
 king. In fact in making use of this procedure by 
 petition as the beginning of modern legislation, the new 
 Parliamentary elements were employing a practice which 
 was then exceedingly common. The right of petitioning 
 the king for some exercise of his royal prerogative was 
 during these generations not merely originating modern 
 legislation but was also rapidly developing that great 
 division of our jurisprudence which is known as equity. 
 The chief practical difficulty to be overcome, however, 
 in establishing modern legislative methods was not to 
 get the right of the House of Commons to initiate 
 legislation by petitions recognized. That was an easy 
 matter. The difficulty was to establish an exclusive 
 right for the new legislation, to drive the older method 
 of Council legislation completely out of the field and 
 limit all law making to Parliamentary petitions. This 
 was the purpose which the House of Commons set before
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 75 
 
 itself in the fourteenth century, perhaps unconsciously, 
 and so great was the task to prove that it was not 
 completely accomplished until many generations later. 
 The right of the Commons to have a voice in the making 
 of every statute law was indeed conceded, but this 
 concession did not entirely solve the problem. King 
 after king, who desired a little more freedom in the 
 making of laws than Parliamentary restrictions allowed, 
 found a suggestion in the tradition of the powers which 
 king and Council had once possessed, and tried to 
 galvanize something of life into the survivals of Council 
 legislation in ordinances and proclamations, as he tried 
 to escape complete financial dependence by inventing 
 new forms of revenue. Even today the "order in 
 Council," though now made under strict Parliamentary 
 supervision, has a wide range of possibility. We easily 
 remember the part which such orders have played in 
 affecting relations between England and the United 
 States, and a modern English scholar has said of his 
 country: "the extent to which we are governed at 
 present by orders which hardly come within the direct 
 cognizance of the legislature is much wider than most 
 people are aware of." 
 
 In the third particular, in securing control of the 
 policy which should be followed by the government, 
 Parliament made even less progress during the four- 
 teenth century than it did in the other two lines of
 
 76 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 advance. We have already noticed briefly how by taking 
 advantage of the king's financial dependence the 
 foundation was laid of the modern practice of appro- 
 priations, and by a development of the practice such a 
 control might have been reached, but no more than a 
 beginning was made in this way. Not long after the 
 middle of the century, however, another process was 
 devised, better suited to medieval conditions and, when 
 put into use, very effective in checking the carrying out 
 of an anti-Parliamentary policy. It may indeed be 
 looked at as wider in its range than the mere control of a 
 particular governmental policy and be regarded as the 
 best of the medieval attempts to find institutional ex- 
 pression for the limited monarchy, of the attempts to 
 devise institutional forms through which the king could 
 be controlled without the danger of revolution and civil 
 war. Considered in this way, it was the highest and 
 most successful institutional expression of the limited 
 monarchy until the most recent times, so successful 
 indeed that in theory it still forms a part of the Anglo- 
 Saxon constitution the process of impeachment. 
 
 As a process it is not necessary to describe impeach- 
 ment since such a description forms a familiar part 
 of the constitution of the United States into which 
 impeachment passed from the English constitution. In 
 principle the process rests on the doctrine of ministerial 
 responsibility as the middle ages understood it, a doc-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 77 
 
 trine which came to be expressed in the maxim "the 
 king can do no wrong." This political maxim is not, 
 as it seems to be at first sight, the corner-stone of an 
 absolute monarchy. It is rather one of the foundation 
 stones on which the limited monarchy was built. For 
 it does not assert that no wrong will be done by the 
 government, nor that anything that may be done by 
 the government is right. What it says is that when 
 wrong is done by the government, it was not the king 
 who did it but his minister. As was said by Sir Dudley 
 Digges in opening for the House of Commons the im- 
 peachment of the duke of Buckingham in 1626, one of 
 the first steps of Parliament against the royal ideas 
 of Charles I : " The laws of England have taught us 
 that kings cannot command ill or unlawful things. And 
 whatsoever ill events succeed, the executioners of such 
 things must answer for them." 
 
 In this interpretation of the impeachment process may 
 be seen both the part which it played in the develop- 
 ment of the constitution and the way in which it fell 
 into line with earlier attempts to give constitutional 
 expression to the limited monarchy. If the king were 
 personally held to a direct responsibility for his acts, 
 there would always be great danger of civil war. For 
 it is not often in history that a king is found so thor- 
 oughly bad that no party is left that will rally to his 
 defence. But a minister can be held to a strict respon-
 
 78 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 sibility with far less danger. And yet when the minis- 
 ters of the king have been taught that, if they insist upon 
 carrying out his policy in opposition to the will of 
 Parliament, they will be held to a strict accountability 
 for their acts, a very serious obstacle has been placed 
 in the way of an irresponsible and arbitrary monarch. 
 The practice of impeachment rested clearly upon the 
 doctrine of ministerial responsibility, as does modern 
 cabinet government, but the medieval doctrine was so 
 different from the modern in idea and in method of 
 enforcement that the two must be recognized as distinct 
 in character and in origin, as will be shown in more 
 detail later. The modern minister is not responsible to 
 Parliament in form at all, but to the king. The respon- 
 sibility which he is actually under is indirect and dis- 
 guised. The medieval minister was responsible directly 
 and immediately to Parliament. The impeachment 
 process was a criminal trial. The lower house of 
 Parliament, the House of Commons, acting as an accus- 
 ing body, drew up charges against the minister and 
 brought him to trial upon them before the upper house, 
 the House of Lords, acting as a court of law in con- 
 tinuation of the judicial function of the old great 
 Council. The trial might end in acquitting the minister 
 or the House of Lords might find him guilty and inflict 
 upon him heavy penalties or even a sentence of death. 
 It was a responsibility terribly direct and immediate,
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 79 
 
 as if Parliament had appointed the ministers itself, as 
 medieval Parliaments did in some cases. Its purpose 
 and effect are, however, equally clear. It was the final 
 
 and best result of the medieval experimenting to devise 
 
 i 
 
 some constitutional form which, like the board of twenty- 
 five barons in Magna Carta or the commissions created 
 by the Provisions of Oxford, should be able to hold the 
 king to a real responsibility while avoiding as far as 
 possible the danger of civil war and revolution. It was 
 because the result reached by the middle ages in this 
 direction was so good, that it passed into the modern 
 constitution, where it is really an obsolete survival.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT AND ROYAL 
 REACTION 
 
 Impeachment is the sign and striking evidence of 
 the growth of Parliament in power during the four- 
 teenth century, but it is a sign of far more than appears 
 on the surface when it is regarded as an institution 
 merely. It should in addition be considered as result, 
 and as result it not merely brings into a single expres- 
 sion the advance made during the century, but it also 
 indicates how all the lines of progress of the century, 
 brought to a focus, became the vital impulse of a new 
 progress in the future. 
 
 In establishing its power in various particulars the 
 financial dependence of the king, the legislative depend- 
 ence of the king, the dependence of the king at least 
 partially in matters of government policy, Parliament 
 had really been doing one greater thing. It had been 
 enlarging the body of law which the king was bound to 
 observe as that had been stated in Magna Carta. It 
 may be said rather that it had been transforming it. 
 Political feudalism no longer existed. The services to
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 81 
 
 the state, for whose performance it had once been neces- 
 sary, were now better got in other ways. Many of the 
 rights on which the barons had once insisted in Magna 
 Carta were obsolete and forgotten. The baron himself 
 was disappearing. He was becoming the modern noble 
 to whom a title and a good income and a place at the 
 king's court were more important than his older feudal 
 independence. But the fundamental principle of Magna 
 Carta was neither obsolete nor forgotten. At no 
 moment in all the progress and transformations of the 
 past had it been lost to sight. The king was bound to 
 keep the laws which seemed to the nation at any stage 
 of its advance necessary to its interest and fundamental 
 statements of its rights. 
 
 In more specific statement, in making a place for itself 
 in the state during the fourteenth century and laying the 
 foundations of its future power, Parliament had bound 
 the king almost completely in taxation, a little less 
 firmly in legislation, and slightly in the control of 
 government policy. These were the new fundamental 
 laws of the state which took the place of, were trans- 
 formation of, the principles of feudalism which Magna 
 Carta had formulated. They were the new foundations 
 of the constitution by which the king was limited, in 
 addition to some surviving principles of the Great 
 Charter which occupied, however, a less conspicuous 
 place in public law. Inevitably it followed that Parlia-
 
 82 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 ment by establishing these limitations became the 
 guardian of the constitution which rested upon them, 
 in place of the baronial opposition which through the 
 whole thirteenth and early part of the fourteenth cen- 
 turies had performed that function. This change was 
 of immense importance in the formation of the limited 
 monarchy. In place of the unorganized, short-sighted 
 and self-centered opposition of the barons, so often 
 personal in character and to which a continuity of 
 purpose was scarcely possible, nor even the intelligent 
 accumulation of precedent, the directing of the advance 
 passed over to an institution whose activity was never 
 suspended, which allowed nothing that had been gained 
 to be forgotten and which was capable of continuous 
 growth and adaptation. The process of impeachment 
 as resting upon the principle that the agents of the 
 king's policy were responsible directly to Parliament, 
 and that therefore the king was under Parliamentary 
 control, is the institutional expression of the fact that 
 the guardianship of the constitution was in the hands 
 of Parliament. From this time on the formation of the 
 limited monarchy went on, not without reaction, but 
 consistently and without permanent loss. 
 
 In describing this change, I have not intended to 
 imply that Parliament was conscious that it had taken 
 this place or that it understood the larger significance 
 of its own position. The events of the next generation,
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 83 
 
 however, were of a sort almost to give us the right to 
 say that the king for his part was conscious of the situa- 
 tion, what it implied for the future of the royal power, 
 and the results of what he attempted to do in consequence 
 certainly advanced Parliamentary understanding. The 
 reign of Richard II began with a minority during 
 which the practical supremacy of Parliament was 
 evident and the precedents of Edward Ill's reign were 
 confirmed. Even the Council, the special organ of the 
 king's activity, was almost a creature of the Parliament. 
 A king who knew anything at all of the meaning of 
 monarchy could hardly fail to appreciate the position 
 in which Richard found himself placed when he reached 
 his majority. In another direction certain facts of 
 these and the following years showed clearly enough 
 what dangers to the government might lie in factious 
 combinations of nobles supported by princes of the 
 royal blood. It is impossible for us to say from any 
 direct evidence which we have that Richard learned the 
 lesson which this twofold situation might teach a king, 
 and that he determined to reestablish the personal and 
 unlimited government of the crown which his ancestors 
 had possessed. This much, however, we have a right 
 to say, that what he did in the last years of his reign is 
 what he would have done if he had understood this 
 position and with great skill formed such a plan. His
 
 84 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 acts seem consciously and definitely shaped to carry out 
 such a purpose. 
 
 Possibly there still lingers in our general knowledge 
 some remembrance of the tragedy which closed the reign 
 of Richard, because it is the theme of the first of the 
 series of plays in which Shakespeare wrote his con- 
 tinuous history of England from the fall of Richard II 
 to the death of Richard III. But to Shakespeare the 
 tragedy at the end was naturally everything. He 
 shows neither interest nor knowledge concerning the 
 issues earlier drawn between king and Parliament which 
 brought the tragedy about. The historian must note 
 that Richard attacked at the same time Parliament and 
 the powers of Parliament. It is significant of his per- 
 ception of the supremacy of Parliament that he felt 
 compelled to use it to accomplish at least the first items 
 of his programme. To make sure of the action he 
 desired, he seated in the House of Commons men he 
 could rely upon, using the help of the sheriffs who were 
 the returning officers, and in addition he overawed 
 Parliament by troops of Welsh archers in his pay. 
 From such a Parliament he secured the grant of a 
 revenue for life and a limited right of legislation : only 
 a beginning but one that could have been developed 
 with time into complete legislative independence. He 
 established also the principle that members of Parlia- 
 ment could be held to a direct responsibility to himself
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 85 
 
 for their words and acts in Parliament and severely 
 punished under an accusation of treason. He went even 
 farther than this and assumed the right to nullify actual 
 acts of Parliament by falsifying the records or by the 
 suspension of a statute by prerogative action. 
 
 If these different successes of the king be considered 
 together, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he was 
 acting upon a definite plan and it is easy to see how 
 little of the constitution would be left, if they were 
 made permanent. They would constitute the founda- 
 tion stones of an absolutism as complete as that which 
 Richelieu afterwards perfected upon the same founda- 
 tions, just then beginning to be laid by Charles the Wise 
 on the other side of the channel. The last three years 
 of Richard's reign form the first dangerous crisis 
 through which the English constitution passed because 
 of the skilful and systematic attempt of the sovereign 
 to turn back the tide of advance. Happily his attack 
 on the fundamental laws of the state was accompanied 
 with acts of personal tyranny which furnished the 
 opposition with a leader. Under Henry of Bolingbroke 
 the nation rose against the king and it was speedily 
 discovered that Richard's conduct had left him for the 
 moment almost without supporters. The revolution of 
 1399 was practically bloodless. 
 
 It was also complete. The house of Lancaster came 
 to the throne dependent upon the support of the nation
 
 86 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 for the possession of a crown won by revolution, logi- 
 cally pledged to recognize the rights which Parliament 
 had secured during the fourteenth century and to allow 
 the full exercise of the powers which Richard had 
 attacked. They were pledged also to the same policy 
 by the force of circumstances, for Henry IV, the 
 product of the revolution, himself in constant danger 
 of counter revolutions, was too dependent upon such 
 support as he could win to adopt a policy of aggression 
 in any direction, or to antagonize so strong an insti- 
 tution as Parliament had become. His reign seems a 
 very mediocre one, despite Henry's undoubted abilities, 
 because he found himself obliged in everything to take 
 a moderate and middle course. His son and successor, 
 Henry V, the Prince Hal of Shakespeare, felt himself 
 strong enough to renew the war with France and made 
 himself a great name by the victories he won, but his 
 long campaigns kept him away from England and left 
 the government there necessarily in other hands. His 
 premature death brought his son, Henry VI, to the 
 throne while a babe in arms and a long minority and, 
 after he came of age, the king's mental and physical 
 weakness, tended still to maintain Parliament's general 
 control. 
 
 For this long period of sixty years Parliament's 
 authority was unquestioned, nor did the Lancastrian 
 kings show at any time a disposition to question it.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 87 
 
 Their natural inclination seemed to be, so far as we can 
 judge it, to rule in harmony with Parliament. It was 
 a period of unbroken constitutional government. Start- 
 lingly and prematurely modern, I have called it in 
 another place, and though the machinery of constitu- 
 tional government had as yet been worked out in few 
 details, it was in spirit modern. Parliament seemed 
 aware of the security of its position and busied itself 
 on one hand with perfecting details and on the other 
 with strengthening its control. It used the king's 
 Council as its own instrument, and, most remarkable of 
 all, we seem to be able to detect the faint beginnings, 
 amid somewhat similar conditions, of that change in 
 the relations between Council and Parliament out of 
 which, in more modern times, the English cabinet system 
 grew. But even Parliamentary control of the Council, 
 through which the daily government of the country 
 was carried on, could not prevent the rise of those 
 factious rivalries among the great men of the day which 
 led in another generation directly into the civil Wars 
 of the Roses. 
 
 It was indeed a period prematurely modern. It was 
 constitutional not because the constitution was solidly 
 founded and firmly fixed and fortified in possession of 
 the government, not because the constitutional way 
 seemed the only natural and normal way of doing things, 
 but rather because of circumstances somewhat temporary
 
 88 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 in character; the insecurity of the king, his absence, his 
 infancy, or his personal weakness, left Parliament really 
 alone the strongest factor in the government. It was 
 the best result of such a period that constitutional 
 government grew to seem more normal. The habits of 
 thought and action then formed were more important 
 than the precedents established, and one great reason 
 why the constitution survived the next age was that in 
 this one it had become more firmly a part of the national 
 life. 
 
 What conclusion the best thought of the time had 
 reached about the place of the king in the government 
 may be indicated in the words of a contemporary student 
 of the English constitution, which are "so explicit and 
 weighty that no writer on the English constitution can 
 be excused from inserting" them, as Hallam says, in 
 the third part of his chapter on the English constitution 
 in his Europe during the Middle Ages. Sir John 
 Fortescue, who had been chief justice of England, 
 had had his training and almost all his active life 
 in the Lancastrian age. In his book In Praise of the 
 Laws of England, written early in the reign of Edward 
 IV, he said of the king: "He can neither make any 
 alteration or change in the laws of the realm without 
 the consent of his subjects, nor burden them against 
 their wills with strange impositions." And again: 
 "As the head of the body natural cannot change its
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 89 
 
 nerves and sinews, cannot deny to the several parts their 
 proper energy, their due proportion and aliment of 
 blood, neither can a king who is the head of the body 
 politic, change the laws thereof, nor take away from the 
 people what is theirs by right, against their consent. 
 Thus you have the formal institution of every political 
 kingdom, from whence you may guess at the power 
 which a king may exercise with respect to the laws and 
 the subject. For he is appointed to protect his subjects 
 in their lives, properties and laws ; for this very end and 
 purpose he has the delegation of power from the people 
 and he has no just claim to any other power but this." 
 These may be the words of a philosophical student of 
 government, but there can be no doubt that in essence 
 Fortescue was right. At that date the principle had 
 been in reality established that the royal power was a 
 delegation from the people, although it was to be two 
 hundred years longer before that principle could be 
 carried out in the practical government of the country. 
 One new Parliamentary right which the revolution 
 of 1399 went a long way towards establishing should 
 not be passed over the right of determining the suc- 
 cession to the crown. By this is not meant the larger 
 and more important right of deposing a king who could 
 not otherwise be controlled. The right of deposition 
 had been made in a sense constitutional by Magna 
 Carta, as the foundation upon which rested the smaller
 
 90 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 and included right of temporary suspension asserted 
 in clause sixty-one. That right of temporary suspension 
 for bad conduct had been exercised by the great 
 Council in 1258 and again in 1310, and the more com- 
 plete right of deposition had been exercised against 
 Edward II in 1328. But more than this was done in 
 1399. Parliament assumed the right to pass over the 
 line marked out for succession by the principle of 
 primogeniture, lately established in English law, the 
 principle of strict hereditary succession by blood, and 
 to place upon the throne the younger line, the house of 
 Lancaster. Logically this right was involved in the 
 older right of deposition, but its exercise in this form 
 was destined in the immediately following centuries to 
 attract to itself more general interest and to be more 
 useful to Parliament than the greater right from which 
 it was derived. Indeed as early as 1460 it led to a most 
 significant declaration of the power of Parliament. 
 When the duke of York after a decisive victory over 
 the Lancastrians in the field unexpectedly called upon 
 a Yorkish Parliament to recognize his better right to 
 the crown, as standing for the elder line, the House 
 of Lords gave as one of its reasons for refusing his 
 demand the fact that the entailing of the crown upon 
 the house of Lancaster by act of Parliament created a 
 better title to the throne than any other could be. 
 The fifteenth century stands in sharp contrast to the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 91 
 
 fourteenth, not in the exercise of Parliamentary power 
 but in its increase. The great creative advances 
 possible to the political foresight of the middle ages 
 had been made. There was no experience of constitu- 
 tional government in the past to which the leaders of 
 the fifteenth century could turn for guidance. They 
 could have no ideal of a perfected limited monarchy, 
 institutionally complete in all its parts, which they 
 could strive to reach as a final result, nor any clear 
 conception of the future dangers to their work from 
 which they ought to guard it. In all the stages of this 
 historically new work of creating government by the 
 people, it was the practical need of the moment which 
 determined what was done, not any theoretical concep- 
 tion of the end to be reached. The fifteenth century 
 was satisfied with the results which had been gained, 
 and felt no immediate need of further advance. Since 
 this work was new to all experience, it was fortunate 
 also that there came after the rapid progress of the 
 fourteenth century a period of three generations, as 
 medieval generations must be reckoned, of comparative 
 quiet, comparatively stationary. The operation of con- 
 stitutional government, the supremacy of Parliament, 
 the doing of all sorts of things by Parliamentary action, 
 became to a degree in so long a period things of habit, 
 and this habit of Parliamentary authority, as has been 
 said, formed a solid substratum of constitutional right
 
 92 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 underlying all the superficial reaction of the next 
 century. 
 
 And so Parliament from 1399 to 1460, carrying on 
 the government as a matter of course, concerned itself 
 in strengthening its position not in large things but in 
 small ones. It was busy about the establishment of the 
 so-called privileges of Parliament : freedom of debate, 
 which perhaps can hardly be called a small thing; the 
 freedom of members from arrest ; the right of the House 
 of Commons as distinguished from the upper house to 
 originate taxation, to determine the qualifications of 
 members, and to discipline and punish members and 
 disrespectful outsiders; the regulation of the right of 
 suffrage in the counties; the extension of the practice 
 of appropriations; and the improvement of the process 
 of legislation. Comparatively these were small things, 
 but in that stage of progress important. As with the 
 greater advances of the fourteenth century, not all of 
 these privileges were completely established at once. 
 Some of them, like freedom of debate, were called in 
 question for a long time. But a substantial beginning 
 was made in them all during the Lancastrian period. 
 In comparison with these, the special facts in which the 
 Parliamentary control of the Council expressed itself, 
 which seem on the surface the most striking facts of 
 the period, are of minor interest because they did not 
 become precedents of constitutional importance. The
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 93 
 
 responsibility of the Council, that is of the executive 
 and administrative departments, to the legislature, had 
 to be reestablished at a later time, after the results of 
 the Tudor reaction had been overcome, and it was then 
 done from a different beginning and in a different way. 
 The reaction against the Lancastrian constitutional 
 monarchy began before the end of the fifteenth century. 
 The Wars of the Roses, which were at first only a 
 factious rivalry for influence in the government under 
 a helpless king but which passed soon into a dynastic 
 civil war, were a predisposing influence. The political 
 skill and determined character of Edward IV and 
 Richard III were matched by no leadership in oppo- 
 sition which had any understanding of constitutional 
 principles or any interest in maintaining a limited 
 monarchy. On the other hand the kings themselves 
 seem to have had no such foresight of the dangerous 
 situation into which arbitrary kingship had been drift- 
 ing as we may possibly attribute to Richard II. They 
 were determined to be the most powerful force in the 
 state because of the dangers which threatened them from 
 insurrections rather than because of those which threat- 
 ened from constitutional progress. They began some 
 of the methods of a practical absolutism which were 
 afterwards carried farther by the Tudors, but with no 
 conscious intention of founding absolute monarchy. 
 They packed the House of Commons with their adher-
 
 94 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 ents; they kept Parliament from meeting during long 
 intervals of time in sharp contrast with the fourteenth 
 century; and they provided themselves with an inde- 
 pendent revenue at least partially sufficient for their 
 needs by means of forced loans and forced gifts, 
 "benevolences" they called them. But perhaps it was 
 the mere accession of the house of York to the throne, 
 emphasizing the right of strict hereditary succession in 
 the teeth of a statute, which was the most severe blow 
 to Parliamentary supremacy struck at the time. 
 
 As part of a resume of results already attained, 
 Hallam calls attention near the beginning of his Con- 
 stitutional History of England to certain principles of 
 civil liberty which at the end of the fifteenth century 
 protected the individual from the arbitrary action of 
 the government. They had been established in England 
 in the common law, that is, in private rather than in 
 public law, but in America we have made them parts 
 of the constitution. He says: "No man could be 
 committed to prison but by a legal warrant specifying 
 his offence; and by a usage nearly tantamount to con- 
 stitutional right, he must be speedily brought to trial 
 by means of regular sessions of gaol-delivery. The fact 
 of guilt or innocence on a criminal charge was deter- 
 mined in a public court, and in the county where the 
 offence was alleged to have occurred, by a jury of twelve 
 men, from whose unanimous verdict no appeal could
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 95 
 
 be made. Civil rights, so far as they depended on 
 questions of fact, were subject to the same decision. 
 The officers and servants of the crown, violating the 
 personal liberty or other right of the subject, might be 
 sued in an action for damages to be assessed by a jury, 
 or, in some cases, were liable to criminal process; nor 
 could they plead any warrant or command in their 
 justification, not even the direct order of the king."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE TUDOR STRONG MONARCHY 
 
 The revolution by which Richard III, the last of the 
 Yorkist kings, was overthrown and the house of Tudor 
 established on the throne in the person of Henry VII 
 excited little interest in the nation at large. It was not 
 a constitutional revolution as that of 1399 had been. 
 At the moment no one could tell that it was not another 
 of the many ups and downs of the Wars of the Roses, 
 in which also as a whole the nation had not been greatly 
 concerned. The only constitutional principle which it 
 could be cited in the future to support was the right 
 of Parliament to determine the succession in the return 
 to the younger line, which it then decreed at the expense 
 of the elder. But this principle was by no means so 
 clearly asserted as in 1399 and was not strengthened by 
 the later marriage of Henry VII with the heiress of the 
 Yorkist Edward IV. The Tudors came to the throne 
 as the result of no national movement in defence of the 
 constitution and under no implied pledge to respect the 
 powers of Parliament. 
 
 Nor was the general situation an aid to constitutional
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 97 
 
 government. It was a new and stormy age on which 
 Europe as a whole was then entering, the transition in 
 political history from medieval to modern times. The 
 modern nations had assumed something like their final 
 form. France had acquired, not quite its final eastern 
 boundary, but its general geographical outlines; the 
 great feudal baronies, earlier independent, had been 
 overcome or absorbed; the government of the state had 
 been centralized in the sovereign, not with the perfection 
 of detail to be obtained in the seventeenth century, but 
 to the exclusion of any rival powers. In the Spanish 
 peninsula the chief kingdoms which had been so long 
 pushing back the Moors were now brought under one 
 rule by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, and by 
 a sharper and quicker process than in France, largely 
 of force, an absolutism practically as effective as the 
 French had been established. The house of Austria, 
 which had added to its southeastern dominions the most 
 of the great Rhenish combination, the patchwork which 
 had been formed by the ambitions of the dukes of 
 Burgundy, was just entering upon the great period of 
 its history. 
 
 New ambitions were rising before these new states 
 soon to be the first "great powers" of modern diplo- 
 macy, which was then itself also new. Medieval condi- 
 tions had passed away. In the immediately preceding 
 centuries the pressing problem before every government
 
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 was national or internal consolidation and centralization. 
 If a ruler of the later middle ages sought to build up 
 an interstate alliance, in the great majority of cases his 
 purpose was not dominion outside the boundaries he 
 was striving to establish, but he hoped by foreign help 
 more easily to overcome some difficulty within those 
 boundaries. Those difficulties were now so far overcome 
 in these great states that the ruler could give his chief 
 interest to other things. Then opened out a new vision 
 of empire, not now of a Holy Roman Empire co- 
 extensive with Christendom and founded in the divine 
 plan for human history. This conception was not a 
 part of fifteenth-century plans, and the word empire 
 took on then a new meaning. It began to mean the 
 dominion and power of a state outside its national 
 boundary lines; in a few cases perhaps, it included the 
 annexation of other states or parts of states, but more 
 truly it meant the conception and inauguration of the 
 struggle for the domination of Europe by a single state. 
 This has been the conception, broadened later into an 
 idea of world domination, which has brought on all the 
 great wars of European history since that date, and we 
 can only hope that in the great world war of 1914 we 
 are seeing its last stage. 
 
 In this first phase of modern international rivalry, 
 the great contestants were France and Spain. Between 
 them England was a little state hardly sufficient to
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 99 
 
 furnish a balance of power; but she had well in hand 
 resources somewhat out of proportion to her size, and 
 her geographical position then as always gave her a 
 peculiar security. But it was a dangerous age for a 
 small state. The great powers of the continent were 
 eager to use her for their own ends, and it was only by 
 the most skilful management that she could avoid 
 entangling her fortunes and fate in one alliance or 
 another. The danger became far more acute when the 
 religious revolution of the sixteenth century complicated 
 the situation, pushed international rivalries to extremes 
 and introduced new elements of fanaticism and hatred. 
 The danger then came to be for England not merely 
 one of foreign entanglements but one of domestic civil 
 war and revolution as well. 
 
 It is no wonder that in such an age with the tacit 
 consent of the nation the constitution, the limited mon- 
 archy, was practically suspended. The wonder is that 
 it escaped destruction. The English nation had just 
 passed out of an age in which the horrors of civil war 
 had been made very real and a strong monarchy had 
 been found something of a relief. It had passed into 
 an age in which the general atmosphere of Europe was 
 absolutist, and in which foreign and domestic problems 
 seemed to demand concentration of national will and 
 a single control of national policy and resources. Clear- 
 sighted statesmanship might easily justify a return to
 
 100 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 practical absolutism with the general support of the 
 nation. 
 
 We should have, however, a wrong impression of the 
 sixteenth century if we regarded it merely as an age 
 in which the growth of the constitution was suspended 
 and an absolutist reaction had full sway. It was in 
 two particulars at least something quite different from 
 that. In the first place in important respects the con- 
 stitution continued in operation. The Tudor sovereign 
 found it easier to get what he wanted done with the help 
 of Parliament and by the forms of the constitution than 
 to do away with Parliament and build up instead an 
 institutional absolutism. During some part of the time 
 it was really true that what the king wanted the nation 
 also wanted; sometimes Parliament was controlled and 
 induced to do what perhaps the majority of the nation 
 did not sanction; at other times, especially towards the 
 beginning of the period, Parliament was thrown some- 
 what into the background and long intervals were 
 allowed to pass between its sessions, long at least as 
 compared with the greater part of the period since the 
 accession of Edward III; and in the opposite direction 
 occasionally Parliament asserted a will of its own and 
 refused to be led by the king, though not usually in 
 large matters. But under all these varying conditions 
 Parliament was used. It was the legislating, author- 
 izing, creative instrument. The use which was made
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 101 
 
 of the constitution was no doubt the use of forms from 
 which the spirit had departed. The forms were used 
 to carry out the sovereign's will, not to limit it or to 
 carry out a will in opposition to his. But, it must be 
 emphasized, the forms were used. The constitution in 
 the matter of Parliamentary powers and functions 
 at least was kept in operation. Nothing was lost or 
 forgotten which had been gained. Everything was 
 ready to be filled again with the spirit of a truly con- 
 stitutional monarchy when conditions should so change 
 that the struggle with the king, which would be neces- 
 sary, could be entered upon without national danger. 
 
 The second particular in which the Tudor age may 
 be seen to be not one of mere reaction was given its 
 peculiar character, and indeed was rendered possible, 
 by this use of constitutional forms to carry out the 
 king's will. Briefly and in general form the fact may 
 be so stated: It was the positive work of the sixteenth 
 century to bring the national church under the same 
 degree of Parliamentary control which had been at that 
 date established over the monarchy. The medieval 
 church withdrew from the government of the state and 
 kept within its own sphere a larger share of the public 
 life of the community than we should think likely from 
 the position of any modern church. Large fields of 
 law, wills and inheritance, marriage and divorce, were 
 its exclusive province. Some administrative functions
 
 102 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 of the modern state, like the care of the poor, were in 
 its hands. The Papacy was a great international state 
 with all the organization and machinery of a political 
 government. To its capital went up from all the 
 countries of Europe a constant stream of reports, 
 appeals, and taxes, and an equal stream came down of 
 orders, commissions, and judicial decisions. In some 
 respects the Papacy was more than an international 
 state for it assumed to represent the divine government 
 more directly and to speak with a higher authority than 
 any merely political state. England was in a few 
 matters in a somewhat more independent position than 
 most states of the time, but still in a large part of its 
 public life it was dependent not upon its own govern- 
 ment but upon a foreign government. 
 
 This dependence upon a foreign government it was, 
 which was the first thing to be broken in the sixteenth 
 century. With the religious past of the church no break 
 was then intended, but the government of the state 
 assumed full control of all public interests that had 
 formerly fallen to the charge of the Papacy and with 
 them it assumed governmental control of the church 
 itself. This was in itself a revolution, and it drew 
 logically and inevitably a larger revolution in its train, 
 but the larger revolution, the religious revolution, it 
 does not belong to us to consider. Nor is it important 
 for us to know how far personal desires of King
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 103 
 
 Henry VIII in seeking a divorce from Catherine of 
 Aragon, or wise statesmanship in fear of a doubtful 
 succession, brought the result about. What is important 
 for our subject is the fact that this great political 
 change, this revolution, was accomplished by act of 
 Parliament. By a series of great statutes adopted in 
 successive sessions of the Parliament of 1529, which 
 remained in existence for seven years, one bond after 
 another which bound England to the government of the 
 pope was broken and the king put in his place as 
 governor of the church. Even considered no further 
 than this, these acts were an extraordinary exercise of 
 Parliamentary power, but they go much farther. In 
 them was laid the foundation of future Parliamentary 
 control of ecclesiastical matters which has been exercised 
 in the last hundred years in ways that would have 
 seemed drastic in the extreme even to the revolutionists 
 of the sixteenth century. And more than this even: 
 that the king should have asked the sanction and secured 
 the authority of Parliament for changes on which his 
 heart was so deeply set was not merely a striking recog- 
 nition of the position of Parliament, but a precedent 
 of creative value for the future. 
 
 This ecclesiastical revolution was a great forward 
 move in bringing the entire round of public affairs 
 under national control, and when we take it into account, 
 it is no longer possible to say that the sixteenth century
 
 104 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 was an age when the growth of the constitution was 
 suspended. In comparison with this advance, some 
 improvement in executive and administrative machinery, 
 some increase in the activity of the Council, not now 
 under Parliamentary control but directly representing 
 the sovereign, are of minor importance. The great 
 thing is that the powers which Parliament had gathered 
 into its hands in nearly two centuries of earlier growth 
 had not been dropped, but had rather been confirmed 
 and enlarged in its possession, as marking out its definite 
 and secure function in the state. It was to Parliament 
 that the king turned as if to the source of final authority 
 and sanction in his revolutionary reorganization of the 
 state. New precedents of far-reaching importance had 
 been established and all was ready, when conditions 
 should become more favorable, for the reconstruction of 
 a constitutional limited monarchy upon a broader and 
 more solid foundation than ever. 
 
 Nor is what has been so far said a complete statement 
 of the constitutional meaning of the sixteenth century 
 in English history. The economic and social historian 
 points out also a condition of things which the historian 
 of constitutional development is bound to regard. The 
 constitutional monarchy of the fifteenth century was 
 premature in one way because as yet there was no nation 
 in the modern sense prepared by political discipline and 
 social advancement to work in its own interests the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 105 
 
 constitutional machinery which had been so rapidly 
 built up since the meeting of the Parliament of 1295. 
 The baronage was the controlling power in English 
 political life during the long reign of Henry VI, and 
 the baronage of the fifteenth century was far more 
 interested in its own factious ambitions than in Parlia- 
 ment or nation. From 1455 to 1485 the great fact in 
 English history seems on the surface to be the Wars 
 of the Roses; but that was a war of the baronage, not 
 of the people, and in spite of continuous civil war the 
 economic and social development of the country at large 
 was going rapidly forward. It needed the strong 
 absolutism of the Tudors to bring the nobles and their 
 private armies into subjection to the law and reestablish 
 an orderly public life. 
 
 The relentless vigor with which Henry VII accom- 
 plished this work established his throne, and for a 
 hundred years after Bosworth Field the nation was so 
 wrapt up in the economic revolution, the commercial 
 progress, and the consequent social changes that were 
 going on, that it stood ready to pay any price which 
 their sovereigns demanded for the peace they main- 
 tained. As a result before the end of Elizabeth's reign 
 a community life had come into being which had no 
 existence in 1450. The nation, conscious of its organic 
 life and power, able to say ''the people" in something 
 like the modern sense, was ready not merely to work
 
 106 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 in its own interests the constitutional machinery of the 
 fifteenth century but to demand in addition all which 
 was logically implied in it but never before understood. 
 In the Tudor age also the constant employment of Par- 
 liament by the policy of the crown in legislation on 
 matters of grave importance gave it an acquired knowl- 
 edge of practical government greater than it had ever 
 before possessed. The nation also had been politically 
 disciplined and developed especially by the keenness of 
 its interest in religious questions and trained to con- 
 sider with care the rights and duties of government. 
 The sixteenth .century was an age of apprenticeship in 
 the use of the constitution and in the practical operation 
 of government, which shows its result clearly in the 
 acquired knowledge and skill of the seventeenth. 
 
 The conditions which had given character to the Tudor 
 age began to change before the death of Elizabeth. 
 The execution of Mary Stuart and the successful 
 defence against the threats of Spain gave something of 
 security against both domestic and foreign danger, 
 though the nation was not fully conscious of how great 
 a change in these respects had really taken place. But 
 Parliament began towards the end of the century to 
 be somewhat restless; to show an inclination to greater 
 independence, and a disposition to be more critical of 
 royal methods. There was, however, no real inter- 
 ference with Elizabeth's action which can be said to
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 107 
 
 have amounted to a matter of principle. It was only 
 that all things were ready for a new age and, if Elizabeth 
 herself with all her political skill could have continued 
 to reign for another twenty years, it is not likely that 
 she could have repressed the opposition that was form- 
 ing. As the history actually went, it was reserved for 
 a new dynasty to raise for the first time in English 
 history a square issue between two types of monarchy 
 and two types of constitution.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 PARLIAMENT VERSUS THE KING 
 
 James VI of Scotland began to reign when a babe in 
 arms and could never remember a time when he had not 
 been a king. He was something of a student and he 
 read, not without a natural inclination to believe, 
 current philosophical arguments in favor of the divine 
 right of kings, and even restated them in a book of his 
 own writing. He was the king of a poor country, but 
 he knew himself heir to the English crown and could 
 look forward with pleasant anticipation to its wealthier 
 resources and to the headship of a liberal and aristo- 
 cratic church in place of the hard and narrow republi- 
 canism of the Scotch Presbyterians. He knew the 
 history of the Tudor monarchy and Elizabeth's methods 
 of rule and her overbearing ways of dealing with indi- 
 vidual opposition. He knew also that his right to the 
 throne was shadowed by the provision for the succession 
 which Henry VIII had made under the authority of 
 Parliament, by which his own elder line had been post- 
 poned in the inheritance to the younger line of the 
 descendants of Henry VII. But he knew too, when he
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 109 
 
 came to the throne with the sanction of the nation in 
 the teeth of this arrangement, that the principle of 
 succession by direct descent, the principle of divine 
 right, had made no small gain over the principle of 
 Parliamentary authority. It is not at all strange that 
 James became king of England with the determination 
 to go on with the practical absolutism which the Tudors 
 had exercised and indeed with clearer theoretical ideas 
 than they had had of monarchy as the natural govern- 
 ment intended for mankind and of his own right as the 
 particular monarch divinely selected. 
 
 Over against the determination of the king was the 
 determination which had been slowly growing in Parlia- 
 ment for some years. It would probably be going too 
 far to say that this was a conscious determination that 
 the absolutism of the Tudors should come to an end. 
 It was rather a determination that the king should be 
 held to the law where law existed. The particular events 
 in which this determination of Parliament expressed 
 itself were so entirely shaped by the action of the king, 
 Parliament came so slowly, as the years of the seven- 
 teenth century went on, to an understanding of what 
 its opposition meant as an interpretation of the consti- 
 tution and an assertion of the position of Parliament 
 in the state, that it is hardly possible to say that it began 
 the conflict with the crown with any definite plan, or 
 any foresight of the result for which it ought to strive.
 
 110 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 The practical situation created was, however, the same 
 as if it had been designed. A square issue was joined 
 between a king determined to go on with a virtual 
 absolutism and a Parliament determined that the king 
 should be limited by the law. 
 
 This issue had never before been joined in English 
 history. Since the working out of the limited monarchy 
 and the establishment of its principles in 1399, these 
 two interpretations of the constitution had never entered 
 the field together. Each in turn had had possession for a 
 long period, and government had been carried on accord- 
 ing to it with no serious interruption from the other. 
 The Lancastrian period was in fundamental principles, 
 though these had not been worked out in all details, an 
 age of constitutional monarchy. The Yorkist and Tudor 
 periods formed an age of practical absolutism, though 
 an absolutism which for its own convenience made use 
 of some of the machinery of a constitutional monarchy 
 and in so doing strengthened and confirmed it. In this 
 most important respect, the joining of issues between 
 a traditionally strong royal power and a Parliament 
 strong in accumulated rights and privileges, the acces- 
 sion of James I opened a new epoch in the history of 
 England. 
 
 The great practical question to be solved was : Would 
 it be possible to make these two conceptions of govern- 
 ment work peaceably together? "Would it be possible
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 111 
 
 in practice to mark off a boundary line between the 
 
 M 
 
 king's prerogative action and those things in which he 
 must allow Parliament to be supreme? Was any com- 
 promise between these two" powers in the state possible? 
 Was not the real question which was involved in the 
 rivalry between them the question of the ultimate 
 political authority in the state of which there could be 
 in the nature of the case but one? Somewhere in every*" 
 state there must reside a power of making decisions 
 from which there can be no appeal ; a final authority to 
 which in the last stage of discussion every great question 
 must be referred and whose answer will at once be seen 
 to end all controversy. This ultimate authority in any 
 state is the sovereign authority whether it be a sovereign 
 monarch or a sovereign people, and the question where 
 does sovereignty reside in any given state is the question 
 where is to be found the power of, making decisions 
 which we know no other power can call in question. 
 In the conflict between the king and Parliament in the 
 seventeenth century in England this was the question 
 really at issue and really decided. Slowly growing 
 more and more clear through the cloud of special issues, 
 forced by progressive dispute and argument more and 
 more definitely into the foreground, the great question, 
 where does political sovereignty reside in the English 
 state, what is the ultimate source of all authority, 
 though it was never distinctly formulated nor answered
 
 112 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 in specific words, was in the end really answered by the 
 facts, by the actual situation left as the result of the 
 struggle. 
 
 The joining and the settlement of this issue make 
 the seventeenth century like the fourteenth century a 
 great creative age in English constitutional history, 
 creative not of institutions nor of constitutional pro- 
 cedure, but of meaning and interpretation fixed beyond 
 future question. If we say that by 1399 the English 
 constitution had been brought into existence so far as 
 its fundamental principles are concerned, we have by 
 no means said that the work of making the constitution 
 was completed. There was much of a creative sort still 
 to be done. Most important work still remained in 
 seeing that these principles were consistently carried 
 out in all the details of government. The importance 
 of this work may be seen in saying that it was especially 
 to be done in the control of national finance, in making 
 the judiciary independent of executive interference, and 
 in the directing of foreign policy this last an item in 
 which the work is perhaps not yet complete. Much had 
 still to be done in devising machinery for the operation 
 of practical government according to these principles, 
 and this in its chief instance has given us the English 
 system of government by a cabinet of responsible min- 
 isters. And perhaps most broadly fundamental of all, 
 much had still to be done in ascertaining what these
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 113 
 
 principles logically implied as to the nature of govern- 
 ment, the source of its powers, and the seat of sover- 
 eignty in the state. This last was the work of the 
 seventeenth century and it was truly creative although 
 a work of interpretation. 
 
 The work of the seventeenth century was creative 
 also not merely in the general result to which it was to 
 lead but also in many details by the way. Seventeenth- 
 century England was deeply interested in its past 
 history, and the leaders on both sides of the conflict 
 made an appeal to precedent hardly equaled in any 
 other age. But it must be admitted that precedents in 
 favor of the claims of Parliament were many times 
 interpreted and urged in the light of what they logically 
 implied rather than of what they originally meant. 
 The king also more than once asserted that he possessed 
 a general right of action on the basis of precedents 
 which related only to a much more limited range of 
 cases, as in the instance of the so-called impositions, a 
 supertax added by proclamation to the customs duties 
 fixed by law. Impositions indeed had been added in 
 this way to the legal duties by earlier kings but always 
 for special administrative purposes, not for raising 
 revenue, and in justifying his use of the right by the 
 earlier precedents the king was certainly carrying them 
 beyond their legitimate application. The case is typical
 
 114 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 of the kind of legal justification asserted for many other 
 things done by the Stuarts during the century. 
 
 On the whole, however, it must be said that history- 
 was with the king. The stretching of precedent at that 
 time which history finds the most unwarranted into 
 something which it did not originally mean, though 
 perhaps logically implied, was on the side of Parliament. 
 The seventeenth century is for instance the great age of 
 the perfection of the writ of Habeas Corpus as the 
 means of securing the citizen against arbitrary executive 
 action. But Parliament began the struggle to obtain 
 this result, in the dispute which led to the Petition of 
 Right of 1628, with the assertion that the most of what 
 it was to gain in the end was already historically its 
 rightful possession. But however clearly history must 
 condemn the literal form such claims assumed, the fact, 
 which was in truth the essential fact, should not be 
 overlooked, that the extended meaning which Parliament 
 gave to precedents was really logically involved in them. 
 Habeas Corpus as it existed before 1628 did logically 
 imply what Parliament asserted it had meant, as a means 
 of defending the individual against the arbitrary action 
 of the executive, though it may never have been actually 
 so used. 
 
 What Parliament was really doing through all the 
 faulty history it employed, was to apply logically in 
 new ways, to new details, in further extensions, the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 115 
 
 fundamental principles which the past had established. 
 The struggle between Parliament and the Stuart kings 
 was the process through which the nation was learning 
 to understand what these principles really implied for 
 the whole constitution of the state. Indeed the keenness 
 with which the opposition of the seventeenth century 
 pressed to their logical limit past precedents against the 
 king, often to a meaning which the makers of the prece- 
 dent would not have recognized as their own, leads us 
 to suspect that during the long interval of the absolutist 
 reaction, there had already formed, unconsciously and 
 beneath the surface no doubt, a clearer conception than 
 ever before of what the constitution was and what it 
 might logically involve; that the sixteenth century had 
 in this way really laid down a solid foundation for later 
 advance on which the seventeenth century was building. 
 Against extensions of this sort, if they be really 
 logical, history can urge no objection. The historical 
 argument is never of any validity against the results 
 to which the living process of a nation's growth has 
 brought it. However far they may go beyond the begin- 
 nings the past has made, if they are the genuine results 
 of national life, they have a rightfulness of their own 
 which history cannot question. This is what we must 
 say of the main things which Parliament was striving 
 to obtain in the seventeenth century. They were new 
 claims in form, but they were logical applications of
 
 116 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 established principles, and the time had now come when 
 it was necessary that they should be made if the English 
 constitution was not to cease to grow. 
 
 Almost immediately after his accession James I found 
 himself face to face with law by which he was bound, 
 with rights and privileges of a political sort which he 
 could not change. In summoning his first Parliament 
 he undertook to rule that certain classes of persons of 
 doubtful character should not be elected to the House 
 of Commons and to assign to Chancery the function of 
 deciding whether his prescription had been complied 
 with in individual cases or not. This would be to de- 
 prive the House of Commons of the right to decide upon 
 the qualifications of its own members and upon disputed 
 election cases. A conflict immediately arose between 
 the House and the king over the matter, in the course 
 of which the king asserted that the House "derived all 
 matters of privilege from him and by his grant," and 
 the House in a formal defence of its position declared 
 that "our privileges and liberties are our right and due 
 inheritance, no less than our very lands and goods." 
 This was a square issue squarely drawn but it was not 
 at this time further developed. In the end the king 
 had to abandon the attempt which he had made, though 
 the lesson that a body of law existed in the state superior 
 to his will was very imperfectly learned. 
 
 This was the opening battle of a long struggle and
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 117 
 
 typical of it all. The position of the king was that 
 rights and liberties which limited his own action were 
 grants from the crown and might therefore legitimately 
 be revoked. On the contrary Parliament asserted, as 
 it put it later in the reign, that they were "the ancient 
 and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects 
 of England," that is, possessed by the same title as 
 private property and as little subject to withdrawal by 
 the king. In other words this was saying that they 
 were rights and privileges by which the king himself 
 was bound and limited in his action. This was one form 
 of the fundamental issue, and it was to find a working 
 compromise between the two assertions that it must be 
 pressed to a settlement. 
 
 Beyond this point the conflict hardly developed in 
 the reign of James I. The actual issues between king 
 and Parliament were largely of finances, in which the 
 king believed himself driven to raise money without 
 Parliamentary grant and finally to free himself from 
 Parliamentary opposition by refusing to call Parliament 
 together during periods of unusual length. Three times 
 during the reign the royal theory of a monarchy free 
 from restrictions was stated with great clearness. This 
 was done first by the barons of the Exchequer in their 
 decision that the "impositions" were legal; and again 
 by an Oxford scholar, Cowell by name, in his law dic- 
 tionary called "The Interpreter," in which he went so
 
 118 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 far that the first edition was suppressed because of the 
 criticism aroused in Parliament; and third by the king 
 himself in a rebuke administered by him in person to 
 the judges of the Exchequer Chamber in 1616. In this 
 last case the king declared that his prerogative was 
 twofold, one ''ordinary" which might be subject to 
 law and the other relating to his supreme power and 
 sovereignty, by which he meant his superiority to the 
 law. This declaration was meant to be the royal inter- 
 pretation of the fact that the king is at once under the 
 law and above the law. On its side, Parliament made 
 two formal statements of what it claimed, one in the 
 Apology of 1604 and the other in the Protestation of 
 1621, both of which have been quoted above, but Parlia- 
 ment stated its position as a matter of fact. It made 
 no attempt to go back of what the law was and find a 
 theoretical or scientific foundation upon which to rest 
 its justification. All that had yet to be worked out by 
 future experience. 
 
 In such assertions as these the king almost necessarily 
 had a certain considerable advantage. In the past it 
 had been natural for thinkers to say that sovereignty 
 resided in a person. Historically there had been little 
 experience in practice of a sovereign people, or of a 
 sovereign legislature, and the sovereignty of the people 
 had not yet been worked out in any theory capable of 
 practical application. It had been sometimes stated in
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 119 
 
 philosophical speculation, but not with any reference 
 to working forms. It had been sometimes stated in 
 legal treatises but only in the most abstract way as a 
 principle on which might be based a very different actual 
 form of government from any democracy, the imperial 
 government of Rome for instance. The Roman law 
 declared that the emperor possessed the supreme law- 
 making power because the people had vested their 
 authority in him cum populus ei et in eum omne 
 imperium suum et potestatem concedit. But it was not 
 a sovereign people of that kind towards which the 
 seventeenth century was working. 
 
 As a practical matter also is to be reckoned the 
 revival of impeachment by Parliament during the last 
 years of James's reign. During the long period of the 
 strong monarchy, since 1450 in fact, this weapon against 
 the king had not been used. While Parliament was 
 under royal control, either because it was too weak to 
 resist, or because it really wished to support the king's 
 policy, there had been no occasion for its use. But now 
 conflict had begun again, and the study of history on 
 the Parliamentary side speedily restored this weapon 
 to its hand. In a series of cases towards the end of the 
 reign of James, some of them experimental, uncertain 
 as to details of method, one of them at least, the im- 
 peachment of the Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon, 
 probably not aimed directly at the king, Parliament
 
 120 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 recovered a knowledge of how to use this method of 
 attack. Early in the reign of Charles I it put it into 
 full operation in the impeachment of his chief minister, 
 the duke of Buckingham. In this case, as has already 
 been stated, the speakers for the House of Commons 
 came very near to stating as clearly as it could be done 
 today, the doctrine that the king can do no wrong, that 
 the minister is responsible for the acts of the govern- 
 ment and cannot shelter himself behind the king's 
 orders ; and the king, insisting on his own responsibility, 
 found no method of escape except to end the impeach- 
 ment by a dissolution of Parliament. 
 
 The reign of Charles I, at least to 1640, is a natural 
 continuation of his father 's. Charles was more obstinate 
 and more short sighted than James, and Parliament had 
 now a clearer understanding of what was at stake. For 
 these reasons things drifted more rapidly to extremes 
 than in the earlier period. By 1628 issues had been 
 so sharply drawn upon a number of questions of detail 
 that Parliament was ready to put into formal shape its 
 position regarding them and to demand that the king 
 accept the resulting statement of their views as law 
 binding upon himself. 
 
 The formal document in which this statement was 
 made, which the king did finally agree to, is the Petition 
 of Right, one of the series of great documents of our 
 constitutional history which begins with Magna Carta.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 121 
 
 The Petition of Right in spirit, purpose, and method 
 is exactly in line with the Great Charter. It asserts that 
 the things to which it demands the king's agreement 
 were already the law of the land, and it is based upon 
 the supposition that the king has shown himself so 
 unwilling to regard these principles that it must obtain 
 his formal pledge, binding upon his successors as in 
 1215, to respect them in the future. As a matter of 
 fact, what the document really does, as was done in a 
 few at least of the clauses of Magna Carta, is to demand 
 that Parliament's view of what was lawful should be 
 accepted by the king instead of any view that may have 
 been acted upon by earlier kings. The assertion as to 
 Habeas Corpus may be taken as a typical instance. 
 Habeas Corpus was a writ designed to prevent the 
 arrest and holding in prison of a man without just 
 cause. The writ brought the officer holding the prisoner 
 before a court of law, most often before the court of 
 King's Bench, and required him to show upon what 
 charges he was held. If these were insufficient or 
 illegal, the court discharged the prisoner. Now Par- 
 liament asserted that specific reasons must be given in 
 every case, that the answer that the prisoner was held 
 by the order of the king or the Council was not satis- 
 factory. Undoubtedly such a view of the real meaning 
 of the writ was logical enough, but there is also no
 
 122 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 doubt but that orders of king or Council had been in 
 
 the past regarded as a satisfactory answer to the writ. 
 
 Under the imperative necessity of obtaining a grant 
 of money from Parliament because of his unfortunate 
 war with France, the king was obliged to yield and to 
 enact the Parliamentary interpretation into law. It 
 cannot be affirmed that the Petition of Right is of equal 
 importance in English constitutional history with either 
 Magna Carta or the later Bill of Rights. It deals with 
 only four points and the two most important of these, 
 taxation and Habeas Corpus, needed further and supple- 
 mentary legislation later in the century. It uses many 
 words after a fashion of the time and is the least concise 
 and clean-cut of all our constitutional documents. Its 
 historical value is to be found less in the enactment of 
 constitutional principles than in the precedent which 
 it established in the struggle of that century of the 
 Parliamentary coercion of the king in constitutional 
 interpretation, and in the assertion which it made in a 
 most striking manner of the supremacy of the law. 
 
 Not long after agreeing to the Petition of Right, 
 Charles's patience with Parliament became exhausted, 
 and there followed the longest period of government 
 without calling a Parliament together since the House 
 of Commons began to be. The king's decision to rule 
 alone was of as vital significance in the history of New 
 England as of Old. The Puritan party, which had
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 123 
 
 arisen in the later years of Elizabeth 's reign, the radical 
 party in questions of religious reformation and of 
 opposition to the king, was grown now to be numerous 
 in England, and seeing his success, began to despair of 
 the future at home. No more in the church than in the 
 state did there seem any hope. Laud, in full sympathy 
 with the king and appointed by him archbishop of 
 Canterbury, seemed in this interval of arbitrary govern- 
 ment as certain to carry out his plan as the king. The 
 age of "comprehension," of liberal blindness to lax 
 observance of established forms in public worship, was 
 at an end, and the Puritan who would not make use of 
 the legal ritual was being driven out of the national 
 church. Religious liberty and political liberty, as they 
 were understood by the Puritans, seemed perishing 
 together in England. In this despair thousands of 
 Puritan families determined to begin another England 
 in America and in so doing they rescued the northern 
 colonies from the gradual encroachments of Dutch and 
 French. 
 
 But more important than the geographical expansion 
 which the Puritans secured were the constitutional ideas 
 which they brought to America. There was indeed to 
 be for these ideas an immediate future in England which 
 the Puritan emigrants did not foresee, a future in which 
 they were to be forced to a premature development in 
 the hothouse process of revolution. But it was to be
 
 124 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 a development short lived and without permanent 
 influence in the mother country. It was in that other 
 England which they helped to found across the sea that 
 the peculiar constitutional ideas of the Puritans in a 
 slower and more normal development were to bear fruit 
 for all the world. Nor must the fact be overlooked that 
 it was not in New England alone that Puritan colonists 
 settled, nor through New England influence alone that 
 Puritan ideas affected the future in America. 
 
 At home, between 1630 and 1640, everything seemed 
 to be going as the king and Laud desired. The modern 
 newspaper was not yet in existence. None of the 
 machinery of democratic expression, public meetings, 
 political speaking, party organization, had yet been 
 devised. Parliament still remained the only organ in 
 the state by which the general opinion of the nation 
 could be made conscious of itself, could be created, 
 gathered, and expressed. By the policy of the king 
 the opposition was for a period of eleven years deprived 
 of the opportunity of Parliamentary expression, and it 
 was in consequence helpless and dumb. The financial 
 dependence of the king on Parliament, which was at 
 that date the only thing making a meeting of Parliament 
 necessary, seemed for the moment at least to be success- 
 fully overcome. The search for precedents out of the 
 past came here strongly to the assistance of arbitrary 
 government, and various expedients for raising money
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 125 
 
 were discovered, long disused but not forbidden by law, 
 like ship-money and distraint of knighthood; or in- 
 genuity invented means of avoiding the strict letter of 
 statutes as in the revival of monopolies. By means like 
 these, and a liberal allowance of debts, the government 
 managed to meet its current needs during years of no 
 special financial strain.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE VICTORY OF PARLIAMENT 
 
 Charles I succeeded, as has been said, by his arbitrary 
 measures in establishing a temporary independence of 
 Parliament. Governments can hardly hope, however, 
 to go on for many years without special financial strain, 
 and the end came for the government of Charles through 
 yielding to a very natural temptation. So great appar- 
 ent success had crowned the efforts of Laud to recon- 
 struct the English church according to the aristocratic 
 ideas of the high church party, that the conclusion 
 seemed obvious that with the continued backing of the 
 king the same thing might be done in Scotland. The 
 king's ideal of monarchical power would promise to be 
 solidly established in facts, if Presbyterianism in Scot- 
 land could be curbed and a subservient church put in its 
 place. The Scots proved to be, however, too thoroughly 
 devoted to their national worship. They resisted in 
 arms, and Charles was compelled to raise and main- 
 tain an army. That was too great a strain for his 
 makeshift finances. It became necessary to call a 
 Parliament.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 127 
 
 In April, 1640, the so-called Short Parliament came 
 together. It speedily disappointed the hopes of the 
 king and his advisers. The ablest of the king's sup- 
 porters, probably the ablest man of the time, was the 
 earl of Strafford, who as Sir Thomas Wentworth had 
 been in the early part of the reign a leader of the oppo- 
 sition but had not been able to follow that party into 
 its extreme position and had gone over to the king. He 
 with others urged the calling together of Parliament. 
 It was hoped that the national antipathy to the Scots 
 would induce the House of Commons to vote the king 
 at once such money as he needed to carry on the war, 
 and then the complaints of the opposition could be dealt 
 with from a position of advantage. But the leaders of 
 Parliament were as alive to this possibility as the 
 advisers of the king, and they insisted on examining and 
 criticizing the policy which had been followed since the 
 last Parliament before making a grant of money. When 
 the king became convinced that Parliament was deter- 
 mined to keep to this plan, he dissolved it in anger after 
 a session of three weeks in which nothing had been 
 accomplished. 
 
 But something had been gained. The nation had been 
 made aware of its own opinion and of the strength 
 which it possessed as against the king. The members 
 of the dismissed Parliament returned to their homes 
 with new courage and new determination, and their
 
 128 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 spirit was reflected in the elections which were held later 
 in the summer. The king tried the expedient of calling 
 a meeting of the old great Council, but obtained from 
 it no permanent relief. It was not long indeed until he 
 was convinced that he could not go on without Parlia- 
 ment, whatever Parliament might do, and a new one 
 was summoned to meet at the beginning of November 
 of the same year. This is the famous Long Parliament, 
 which by one stretch of ingenuity or another is reckoned 
 to have continued in existence for twenty years. 
 
 The Long Parliament met in a most determined 
 spirit. The House of Commons was almost unanimousr 
 The number of members who were ready to defend the 
 acts of the king against the attacks of the majority 
 was very small. The majority on its side was conscious 
 of the character of the crisis in which they were called 
 to act, of the issue between monarchy and Parliamentary 
 government, as no similar body of men had ever been 
 before in any crisis of English history. In their think- 
 ing also, in the argumentative defence of their position, 
 if they had not yet reached any ultimate principles 
 which they could state, they were at least on the eve 
 of great advance in that direction. In this advance 
 of theirs the student of constitutional history, and 
 especially the student of the antecedents of American 
 constitutional ideas, is particularly interested. They 
 could hope also to proceed to extremes against the king
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 129 
 
 without interruption, for the Scottish army, known to 
 be in sympathy with them, had taken its station in the 
 north of England ready to march on London at a 
 moment's notice. 
 
 The first step of the House of Commons was the 
 impeachment of Strafford. There was no doubt some 
 personal bitterness against a man who seemed to the 
 opponents of the king to be an apostate from their 
 cause; they were also no doubt afraid of his abilities; 
 but it is equally true that in him they intended and 
 conducted an attack upon the king which did much to 
 bring the fundamental contradiction of the two positions 
 into light. The accusation was treason. But as yet in 
 English history there had been no definition of treason 
 except as an offence against the king. If sovereignty in 
 reality resided in the king, treason took necessarily the 
 form of an offence against him. Here was a logical 
 difficulty insuperable to ordinary and traditional ways 
 of thinking. Strafford, as the most devoted supporter 
 of the king in his conflict with Parliament, could not 
 have committed treason in any historical meaning of 
 the term. Yet some way must be found of convincing 
 the House of Lords, on which rested the responsibility 
 of judging a man upon a capital charge, that they might 
 righteously find guilty of treason and condemn to death 
 one who had most faithfully served the king as the king
 
 130 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 himself believed. If this could not be done, the hope 
 of a successful impeachment must be abandoned. 
 
 Forced forward by this dilemma, the leaders of the 
 House of Commons advanced in the formulation of their 
 case to a statement which they might logically have 
 rested on Magna Carta had they known as much of the 
 true historical influence of that document during the 
 formative centuries of the past as they believed them- 
 selves to know of its special clauses. As a matter of 
 fact, though there had been much thinking on the 
 Parliamentary side since the king's father began to put 
 the issue as he understood it into words, they were not 
 entirely conscious of what they were doing. It is 
 probable that they were thinking only of the specific 
 case and its difficulty, though reasoning concerning the 
 foundations of government had already begun and was 
 soon to go very far in the democratic wing of the party. 
 In reality what they did in constructing and endeavor- 
 ing to prove their accusation of treason was to combine 
 together the fundamental principle on which Magna 
 Carta rested with that on which impeachment rested. 
 If there existed a body of law which the king was bound 
 to keep, and if the king who refused obedience could 
 be driven from the throne, made non-existent in the 
 state, then surely the lesser man, the minister who aided 
 and abetted the king in his refusal, might justly be 
 made to suffer the penalties of treason. But they did
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 131 
 
 not quite see that this was what they were doing. The 
 argument in this form was still beyond them. They 
 still interpreted the past history of the constitution too 
 narrowly, however rapidly they were advancing in the 
 understanding of its meaning. 
 
 What Pym said in opening the case of the Commons 
 before the Lords was that Strafford had committed 
 treason in attacking and endeavoring to subvert the 
 fundamental laws of the country and the liberties of 
 the subject; or as it was phrased in the bill of attainder, 
 where the formal accusation was no longer treason 
 against the king, but "high treason," against whom or 
 what not specified, "for endeavoring to subvert the 
 ancient and fundamental laws and government of His 
 Majesty's realms of England and Ireland and to intro- 
 duce an arbitrary and tyrannical government against 
 law in the said kingdom." The case for impeachment 
 was not clear enough to convince the Lords, and a bill 
 of attainder had to be substituted for it. The Lords were 
 little better satisfied with this form, and it could be 
 carried only in a very small house by the mob pressure 
 of Puritan London, and by the same means the king was 
 made to sign the bill. 
 
 There followed several months of active legislation, 
 mostly destructive in character, in which the king was 
 deprived of the institutions of arbitrary government, 
 like the Star Chamber Court, and of the sources of
 
 132 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 illegitimate revenue which had been found for him. 
 As the end of the first session drew near, it became 
 evident that the House of Commons was no longer a 
 unit. The number of those who thought that enough 
 had been demanded of the king was increasing, and 
 when the second session opened in October, 1641, the 
 division of parties was nearly even. The Grand Remon- 
 strance, the appeal to the nation of the party resolved 
 to go on with the radical programme, was carried by a 
 majority of eleven only in a vote of more than three 
 hundred. Here was the material of conflict unless a 
 compromise could be found and the Puritan party was 
 not one of compromise. 
 
 Actual civil war began over the question of the control 
 of the militia, the only organized military force in 
 England, and the action of the House of Commons in 
 the matter marks another step forward towards the 
 doctrine of the sovereignty of the people. When the 
 king resolutely refused to accept the bill transferring 
 the appointment and responsibility of militia officers 
 from himself to Parliament, the House of Commons 
 resolved to carry out its will by what it pleased to call 
 an "ordinance," remembering perhaps that there had 
 been in early times law-making by non-Parliamentary 
 legislation called by that name, but forgetting that an 
 ordinance in the fourteenth century was not an act of
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 133 
 
 Parliament without the king but an act of king and 
 Lords without the Commons. 
 
 In defence of their action, of their right to make law 
 without the king's formal consent, the House of 
 Commons declared: "What they do herein hath the 
 stamp of the royal authority, although His Majesty, 
 seduced by evil counsel, do in his own person oppose or 
 interrupt the same; for the King's supreme and royal 
 pleasure is exercised and declared in this High Court 
 of law and council, after a more eminent and obligatory 
 manner than it can be by personal act or resolution of 
 his own." 
 
 These words do not contain an explicit declaration 
 of the sovereignty of the people or of Parliament but, if 
 they are to be scientifically defended, it can be done only 
 on the ground of the sovereignty of the people expressed 
 through Parliament. What these words really say is 
 that sovereignty is exercised by Parliament, not by the 
 man who holds the name and title of sovereign. It may 
 be added that they are so entirely assumed to be true 
 in the present English government that the king is not 
 supposed to have any will, or opinion even, on any 
 political question, except that of his ministers. 
 
 The war went against the king. In a little more than 
 two years he was obliged to surrender himself to Parlia- 
 ment. In a second stage of the war, which followed, 
 those of the Presbyterian Puritans and their Scottish
 
 134 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 supporters who were ready to make some agreement with 
 the king in the hope of saving a national church organi- 
 zation, were defeated, and the democratic wing of the 
 Puritan party, the Independents or Congregationalists as 
 they were called from their ecclesiastical teaching, was at 
 the end of 1648 in sole possession of power. They re- 
 turned from the field very angry with the king and with 
 the Presbyterian Puritans for what they believed to be 
 the unnecessary sacrifices of the second war, and they 
 immediately proceeded against both. First the Presby- 
 terians were all expelled from Parliament, leaving of 
 the Long Parliament the Independents only, a Parlia- 
 ment which came to be known as the Rump. Then in 
 a second step they constituted a court to try the king for 
 treason treason in the sense of Strafford's treason, 
 against the nation and the fundamental laws, not 
 against the sovereign person. In the formal charge 
 before the court they said: "That the said Charles 
 Stuart, being admitted King of England, and therein 
 trusted with a limited power to govern by, and accord- 
 ing to the laws of the land, and not otherwise; .... 
 yet, nevertheless, out of a wicked design to erect and 
 uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power 
 to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights 
 and liberties of the people, .... which by the funda- 
 mental constitutions of this kingdom were reserved on 
 the peoples' behalf in the right and power of frequent
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 135 
 
 and successive Parliaments; .... he, the said Charles 
 Stuart, for the accomplishment of such his designs .... 
 hath traitorously and maliciously levied war against the 
 present Parliament, and the people therein represented." 
 In trying the king upon a charge of this kind, the 
 Independents necessarily broke with the history of the 
 past, with established form and precedent, even more 
 completely than they had done before. The House of 
 Lords, even the little fraction left in that House, would 
 not go so far. All government was reduced to one House 
 and its appointees, and again a declaration was adopted 
 in defence of this position, having especially in mind the 
 trial of the king. The House of Commons resolved 
 "that the people are, under God, the original of all 
 just power; that the Commons of England, in Parlia- 
 ment assembled, being chosen by and representing the 
 people, have the supreme power in this nation; that 
 whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the 
 Commons in Parliament assembled, hath the force of 
 law, and all the people of this nation are concluded 
 thereby, although the consent of the King or House of 
 Peers be not had thereunto." But already by this time 
 the sovereignty of the people and the delegated char- 
 acter of government had been expressed clearly and 
 fully by so many mouths and pens that there can be no 
 doubt it had become one of the ruling ideas of the party. 
 It had been stated ten years before by Thomas Hooker
 
 136 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 in a sermon which he preached not long after his arrival 
 in Connecticut in this way : ' ' They who have the power 
 to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power 
 also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and 
 place unto which they call them. And this, in the first 
 place, because the principle of authority resides in the 
 free consent of the people." Hardly a more striking 
 example can be had of the transfer of Puritan ideas of 
 government to new influence and power in America. 
 
 It is hardly possible today to do better than these 
 statements in formulation of the principle of the sover- 
 eignty of the people and of the representative character 
 and derived powers of the legislature. We must 
 remember, however, that in England such ideas were 
 revolutionary. The new constitution which was fore- 
 shadowed by them was a break with past history and, 
 however logically involved in that past, as an experiment 
 in actual government it had not been prepared for in 
 experience or in institutions by an adequate political 
 development. In the details of this advance the Inde- 
 pendents were influenced by their religious, as well as 
 by their political training. After a long, slow process 
 of growth towards democracy, which was not to be begun 
 for more than a hundred years, England was to come 
 in reality to these principles, though not in avowed law 
 and not along a road which led through this age of 
 revolution. It was American, not English, constitu-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 187 
 
 tional law which was here making its first beginning, its 
 first essays in imperfect and half conscious formulation, 
 and it was in America that these principles were 
 developed in unbroken growth into the government of 
 a great people. 
 
 The execution of the king and the disappearance of 
 the House of Lords, left the House of Commons the sole 
 survivor of the national authorities of the old constitu- 
 tion. But the House of Commons was the Rump merely, 
 the Independent members, and the real power in the 
 state was undoubtedly the army and its leading officers. 
 But the chief influences in army circles had been for a 
 long time democratic, and years before it succeeded to 
 power individuals and councils had been busy consider- 
 ing the foundations of government and the forms it 
 should assume. A flood of proposals, theories, and 
 arguments appeared in those years, as characteristic in 
 tone and substance of an age of religious, as of political 
 revolution. For the Puritan, especially for the Inde- 
 pendent, this age was both, and the results he attempted 
 to accomplish in constitution making are a compound 
 of the conclusions to which the tendencies of English 
 history would naturally lead, prematurely conceived, 
 and the ideas which he drew from the Bible and applied 
 in the organization of his churches. 
 
 Of these suggestions, the most formal and developed 
 as a proposal to be carried out in government, was that
 
 138 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 which was presented to the House of Commons in 
 January, 1649, under the title, "The Agreement of the 
 People." This title conveys to us less clearly than it 
 did to contemporaries what the document was intended 
 to accomplish ; but it implies and was intended to imply 
 what the preamble of the American Constitution asserts : 
 "We the people of the United States do ordain and 
 establish this Constitution." It implied that the people 
 of England by an agreement formally entered into were 
 to make a written constitution in order to establish a 
 government and define its powers. As a proposal for 
 actual government, we need not consider the Agreement 
 of the People, for it was never put into operation, but 
 as a landmark in the history of American constitutional 
 law it is of great importance. The foundation upon 
 which it rested, the agreement of the people, is the same 
 as that upon which our constitutions rest, and it was 
 here proposed for the first time in history as the founda- 
 tion of a national government. The similar compacts 
 which had preceded it in America, though they came 
 from the same ultimate sources and were truly intended 
 to establish "a Civil Body Politick," served for little 
 communities of people in which an actual democracy 
 was entirely feasible, and representative institutions, as 
 an expedient for working a democracy on a great scale, 
 need scarcely be considered for a long time. The Agree-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 139 
 
 ment of the People was seriously intended as the consti- 
 tution of a great nation. 
 
 The Agreement of the People was never put into 
 operation. It was the programme, not of the majority 
 of the Independent party, but of the more radical 
 extremists. It has an importance in history, however, 
 beyond the fact that it was the first written constitution 
 proposed for a great state. In 1653 the leaders of the 
 army with the approval of Cromwell drew up another 
 written constitution, called the Instrument of Govern- 
 ment, much more concise, specific and practicable than 
 the Agreement but following its suggestions in many 
 particulars. This constitution was actually put into 
 operation and formed, nominally at least, the basis of 
 the government of England for something more than 
 three years, the first written constitution in history 
 which actually created a government of delegated 
 powers, defined and limited, for a nation. Its history 
 does not here concern us, nor the astonishing number 
 of details in which it anticipated later American practice, 
 for it had no influence on the constitutional history of 
 England. 
 
 The Puritan revolution of these twenty years from 
 1640 to 1660 marks the division of the stream of English 
 constitutional development into two branches. For 
 England it was an attempt to arrive at the logical con- 
 clusions of that development prematurely, by violence
 
 140 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 and revolution, under the stimulus of religious as well 
 as political excitement, before an adequate preparation 
 in ideas and institutions had made the ground ready. 
 In the reaction which naturally followed, the work of 
 the revolution was undone. Constitutional development 
 linked itself back to the results of its more natural 
 processes in the stage which it had reached at the end 
 of the first session of the Long Parliament in 1641. 
 Nearly everything for which the revolution strove is now 
 I a part of the English constitution, but not as a result 
 i of its endeavor. Rather as a result of the slower and 
 Tnore normal process of growth, out of which in a sense 
 the revolution indeed came but which it for a moment 
 interrupted. In the Puritan and Quaker colonies of 
 America the ideas of this revolution created the natural 
 political atmosphere. There they were not revolutionary, 
 but became the material from which the normal consti- 
 tutional life of these little states drew its strength. 
 Their natural political development began with these 
 ideas and led, as their population and needs increased, 
 to more and more extensive realization of them in 
 practice, until at the last they had large share, with 
 other influences, in shaping the institutions of the second 
 great Anglo-Saxon nation.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE VICTORY CONFIRMED 
 
 The extent of the reaction against the radical party 
 was shown by the character of the restoration of Charles 
 II in 1660. The king was restored to the throne with 
 no constitutional guarantees whatever. Nothing was 
 said of the sins of his father, nor of the principles which 
 the great majority of the House of Commons were 
 determined to defend in 1640. The legislation of the 
 first session of that Parliament remained on the statute 
 books, and arbitrary government was to that extent 
 deprived of the means of operation. But the supremacy 
 of Parliament was not declared in any formal statement, 
 nor was the king required to acknowledge that his 
 powers were limited or derived from the people. So 
 far as formal pledges are concerned, or formal state- 
 ments even, with which the new government began, 
 there was nothing to indicate that anything of a consti- 
 tutional character had happened since the first of 
 November, 1641. 
 
 Much had happened, however, which affected the 
 minds of men and which could not be forgotten.
 
 142 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 Charles's statement that he had no wish to go on his 
 travels again is not of chief interest as the sign of a 
 cynical character. It was his expression of a profound 
 political observation which judged correctly the actual 
 state of things. Charles knew that a great constitutional 
 change had taken place, though perhaps he could not 
 have called it that nor defined very clearly its nature. 
 What he did know very assuredly was that he could not 
 resist the will of Parliament beyond a certain point, and 
 by that knowledge he shaped his conduct. It was not 
 that he was any more willing than his father to submit 
 to the authority of Parliament or any the less determined 
 to reestablish an irresponsible royal power. He had a 
 keener political insight and recognized more quickly the 
 limits of the possible and understood the consequences 
 of overstepping them. And so when a Parliament, 
 which was usually ready to do what he wished, objected 
 strenuously when he undertook to relieve the non- 
 conformists of their legal disabilities by proclamation, 
 he yielded and withdrew from his attempts. 
 
 Such an act on the part of the king was highly typical 
 of the actual situation as it had been left by the Restora- 
 tion, not in law or formal statement, but in the facts 
 themselves. In form and law the king was supreme 
 and sovereign. In fact Parliament was supreme. The 
 sovereignty in the state, the power of final decision on 
 every political question, if an issue arose upon it, had
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 143 
 
 been transferred to it. Never since that date has it 
 been possible for the king, so long as the king remained 
 the real executive, nor for the ministry after the cabinet 
 had absorbed the executive authority, to withstand the 
 convinced will of Parliament. No period of later history, 
 not even the most modern, reveals this result more 
 clearly than that which followed first, in which the 
 attempt of Charles I's sons to reestablish the old royal 
 power met with disastrous failure. 
 
 The result in 1660 just described was a compromise; 
 not less truly a compromise because it was expressed in 
 facts rather than in words. The question which had 
 arisen at the beginning of the reign of James I, whether 
 it would be possible to make the strong monarchy of the 
 sixteenth century and the strong Parliamentary control 
 of the fifteenth work together in practice; what 
 boundary line could be found between king and consti- 
 tution, had been answered by the discovery of a com- 
 promise. But it was a compromise of a peculiar type. 
 As developed in the next hundred and fifty years, it 
 meant that form and appearance remained with the king, 
 the reality with Parliament. The words in which the 
 modern constitutional lawyer states the result are as 
 accurate as can be found: "Sovereignty resides in the 
 king in his Parliament." The king is in theory sover- 
 eign, but his sovereignty can be declared and exercised 
 only in Parliament. The king gave up the power to
 
 144 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 determine by his individual will the policy of the state, 
 but the surrender was disguised by an appearance of 
 power and for a long time by the exercise of very sub- 
 stantial powers and the permanent possession of im- 
 portant rights and influence. It was more than a 
 hundred years before all that the compromise implied 
 was clearly recognized and the balance established at 
 its present level. But it was really made in 1660. 
 
 In the history of government in the world no event 
 has ever happened of greater significance or of wider 
 influence than the making of this compromise. Upon 
 it depended the spread of the English constitution 
 throughout the civilized world which is one of the chief 
 characteristics of the nineteenth century, even if it 
 should in the end prove that constitutional monarchy 
 is only a halfway house on the road to ultimate democ- 
 racy. In this respect it is difficult to overstate the 
 influence of this compromise. Had the course of English 
 history led to a constitution in which in form and law 
 the ministry was directly responsible to Parliament 
 instead of to the king, not merely would it have been 
 immensely more difficult to reconcile the sovereign to 
 a loss of the substance of power, but the adoption of the 
 constitution by other and unwilling monarchies would 
 have been made a practical impossibility. The com- 
 promise feature of the present constitution by which in 
 theory and in form the ministry, though supreme, seems
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 145 
 
 to be the creature of the king and responsible to him, 
 would have had no existence. The choice which in that 
 case a successful revolution might offer to a sovereign 
 between a formal direct responsibility of all the organs 
 of actual government to the legislative assembly on one 
 side, and an out-and-out republic on the other, would 
 have had no particular attractiveness or significance. 
 The world influence of the English constitution depended 
 for its existence upon the fact that Parliament came to 
 control the actual government in fact rather than in 
 form, indirectly, not directly; that an actual republic 
 was concealed under all the ceremonial and theoretical 
 forms of a continued monarchy. 
 
 If Charles II knew that Parliament was in reality 
 supreme, he had no intention of allowing that result to 
 develop undisputed into the permanent constitution 
 of the state. With more than average political skill and 
 aided by the course of events, by the plans of Louis XIV 
 on the continent, and by the disorganization of the 
 opposition at home, he was able in the twenty-five years 
 of his reign to accomplish much. But to rule as freely 
 as he wished, he found it necessary at last to rule with- 
 out a Parliament, and during the last five years of his 
 reign the houses were not called together. The practical 
 power which in these ways he gathered into his hands, 
 evading the check of Parliament upon him, and some- 
 times evading the knowledge even of his own ministers,
 
 146 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 has been said by a student of those times to have been 
 greater than that exercised at any time by the Tudor 
 sovereigns. But it was still a practical power, not a 
 constitutional. The problem before Charles and his 
 brother, who succeeded him, was the same as before the 
 Angevin sovereigns of the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries: whether it would be possible to vest in insti- 
 tutions an existing practical absolutism and make it 
 constitutional. Charles's premature death gave him no 
 opportunity to make the trial. 
 
 James II began with everything in his favor: the 
 practical power handed on to him by his brother; the 
 sympathy and favorable disposition of the nation; a 
 disorganized and discouraged opposition; a Parliament 
 ready to do anything in reason which he wished, and 
 yet he proceeded so hastily and with so little judgment 
 towards his ultimate goal, which could be reached only 
 by slow and cautious approach, that within three years 
 he had destroyed all his advantages and turned the 
 whole nation against him. It was no doubt a religious 
 motive, the desire to give Catholicism a better position 
 in England, that urged James on, but the means which 
 he employed and the results which unintentionally he 
 accomplished were constitutional. The suspension or 
 virtual annulment of the law, so that Catholics might 
 be appointed to office in the state, in the army, and even 
 in the church, and all their disabilities be removed; the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 147 
 
 reestablishment of the arbitrary ecclesiastical Court of 
 High Commission; the violent attack on established 
 rights seen in the case of the university of Oxford; the 
 attempt to use the courts as the instruments of his will ; 
 and the collection of a large army in the neighborhood 
 of London with which opposition might be overawed, 
 so clearly revealed the designs of James that all parties 
 united in an invitation in the summer of 1688 to William, 
 Prince of Orange, the husband of James's daughter, to 
 come to their relief. Even the party which believed 
 in the divine right of kings and which had been urging 
 that all resistance to the constituted sovereign authority 
 was sinful, joined the others in this invitation. 
 
 The revolution which followed, long known as "the 
 Glorious Revolution," was sudden, bloodless and com- 
 plete. James 's power, which had seemed great, suddenly 
 crumbled to nothing. Scarcely one was found who 
 dared or wished to maintain his cause. The ground was 
 swept clean for the Convention Parliament, and it was 
 free to frame into specific provisions of the law the 
 principles upon which the Revolution had acted, for 
 neither William nor his wife could lay any claim to the 
 throne by divine right or by any right except the will 
 of the nation. The nation's right through its chosen 
 representatives to depose the sovereign who would not 
 keep the law and to determine among all the possible 
 heirs of the crown who should reign in his place, came
 
 148 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 here, so many centuries after the principle on which it 
 rested was first laid down, to its most complete expres- 
 sion. Not that it was here, any more than in Magna 
 Carta, expressed in formal law. No government is 
 likely to provide in constitutional enactment for its own 
 overthrow. But it was expressed in facts and is the 
 principle of right on which the Revolution rested and 
 its justification. 
 
 With careful observance of every form that could be 
 observed, with just as little extra-legal or revolutionary 
 action as was possible, going even to the extent of main- 
 taining that James had abdicated the throne, the Con- 
 vention Parliament laid down the terms on which 
 monarchy would be reestablished in the person of 
 James's son-in-law and eldest daughter, William and 
 Mary, and required their consent to them. In that sense 
 the Bill of Rights, in which these terms were finally 
 enacted, becomes more nearly a constituent constitu- 
 tional document than any other in English history. 
 It is not however a constitution in the American sense, 
 nor in the sense of the Independents of 1653. It does 
 not affirm the sovereignty of the people or of Parlia- 
 ment. It says nothing of the fundamental rights by 
 virtue of which conditions may be made with the king 
 before he is allowed to reign, or limitations placed upon 
 his exercise of power. It does not describe nor define the 
 organs of government nor lay them out in a detailed
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 149 
 
 plan. It concerns itself only with the immediate 
 practical purpose and deals only with those dangers 
 against which the experience of the past thirty years 
 had shown it was necessary to guard. And yet in the 
 historical explanation which accounts for its existence, 
 in its logical meaning and necessary implications, and 
 in the fundamental principles by which alone it can be 
 justified, it includes all that it omits. 
 
 It should be remembered also that the Bill of Rights, 
 considered as a constitutional enactment, affirmed in 
 more specific language than any earlier document the 
 underlying fact of English constitutional development, 
 that the king has no right to violate the fundamental 
 laws of the kingdom. To be sure the Bill does not say 
 this in set terms, but by unavoidable inference. In the 
 preamble, after enumerating the arbitrary acts of James, 
 it continues : ' ' All which are utterly and directly con- 
 trary to the knowne lawes and statutes, and the free- 
 dome of this realme. " And in the body of the Bill the 
 same acts are declared to be illegal. The Bill is also as 
 clearly a contract between the king and the nation as 
 the charters of Henry I and John were between the king 
 and the barons, though there was in the seventeenth 
 century no reminiscence of a feudal contract. It is 
 made evident in the Bill, though again not expressly 
 affirmed, that it is in consequence of their recognition 
 of the illegality of James's acts that William and Mary
 
 150 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 are accepted as reigning sovereigns. In these respects 
 the Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights mark the 
 culmination of English constitutional development. 
 The foundations upon which the constitution rests, the 
 supremacy of the law, the sovereignty of the nation, are 
 never again called in question. All the later progress 
 consists in more and more complete application of these 
 principles in actual government, the more complete 
 carrying of them out in practice. 
 
 The Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights re- 
 stored the monarchy with constitutional guarantees. 
 The arbitrary measures which the Stuarts had employed 
 were enumerated in specific form, declared to be illegal, 
 and the recognition of their illegality by the king made 
 the condition of the possession of the throne. The views 
 of the constitution with which James I had begun the 
 century were therefore repudiated and made henceforth 
 impossible. But the democratic extremes of the Puritans 
 were equally refused, and the sanction of the law and 
 of practical success was given to the interpretation of 
 the constitution towards which Parliament was gradually 
 working from 1603 to 1642. The Bill of Rights logically 
 marks the end of this great age of constitutional ad- 
 vance, for that is what it should rightly be called. It 
 was not an age of advance in institutions, though a 
 considerable enlargement of the body of law which the 
 king must obey in the Bill of Rights and the independ-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 151 
 
 ence of the judiciary, omitted probably by oversight 
 and enacted a few years later, are institutional in 
 character. But the great development in the under- 
 standing and application of the constitution as it existed 
 in 1603, or we may say as it existed in all its larger lines 
 in 1399, makes the seventeenth century a great age of 
 constitutional advance.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE MAKING OF THE CABINET 
 
 The reign of William and Mary opens a new and a 
 different epoch in the constitutional history of England. 
 The Stuart interpretation of the constitution was never 
 again insisted upon by any English king. It is indeed 
 a little more than two hundred years before any question 
 of the fundamental meaning of the constitution becomes 
 a leading one for the nation to decide. It is doubtful 
 if even that question the real position of the House of 
 Lords should be considered to concern the fundamental 
 meaning of the constitution, for it also was virtually 
 decided in 1688. The characteristic of the new age was 
 institution making, and the chief institution made is 
 beyond all question one of the most important of 
 history, we may perhaps in the end be justified in saying 
 the most important, for its history is not yet finished. 
 The new institution was the English cabinet, meaning 
 by that not the cabinet as a mere institution, but the 
 cabinet system of government : the cabinet as controlled 
 by the doctrine and practice of ministerial responsibility. 
 
 To understand the beginning of the cabinet system
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 153 
 
 we must go back to the Restoration of 1660. The 
 Restoration was, as we have seen, a compromise by 
 which the form of sovereignty remained with the king 
 while the reality was transferred to Parliament. If 
 fully carried out in practice, this compromise would 
 mean the direct supervision and control of all lines of 
 government policy and executive action by the legisla- 
 tive assembly. Such an arrangement was new to all 
 human experience and naturally there existed no ma- 
 chinery by which it could be carried out in practice, 
 no institutional forms through which a legislature could 
 exercise an executive authority which in theory it did 
 not have. Constitutional machinery for the practical 
 operation of the compromise must be devised, and the 
 origin and growth of this machinery is the origin and 
 growth of the cabinet with the principle of ministerial 
 responsibility to Parliament. Or we may state the fact 
 in another way: the English system of vesting the 
 executive authority in a cabinet virtually chosen by the 
 legislature and held under a close control by it, was the 
 method finally devised to carry out in the practical 
 operation of the government of the country the sover- 
 eignty of Parliament which had resulted from the con- 
 stitutional advance of the seventeenth century. 
 
 It would be absurd to suppose that the men of 
 Charles II's reign, or any later reign, were conscious 
 that here was a practical problem for them to solve.
 
 154. OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 What they were conscious of at first was some little 
 difficulty in harmonizing the king's policy and Parlia- 
 ment's policy upon a common line of action, and such 
 conscious efforts as were made, as in Sir William 
 Temple 's plan for a reorganization of the Privy Council, 
 were directed to creating a mediating, harmonizing body 
 between these two great powers. These conscious efforts 
 led to no result. So far as any progress was made under 
 Charles II, it resulted from the efforts of a small body 
 of ministers who were in the confidence of the king and 
 at the same time able to influence the action of Parlia- 
 ment. The earl of Clarendon, who was for a time one 
 of these ministers, has described their methods in words 
 which are especially interesting to us because they 
 might be used almost without change to describe 
 methods employed in Washington during the past thirty 
 years in efforts to bring the influence of the President 
 to bear on legislation. He says: "These ministers 
 [Clarendon and Southampton] had every day confer- 
 ence with some select persons of the house of commons, 
 who had always served the king, and upon that account 
 had great interest in that assembly, and in regard of 
 the experience they had and their good parts were 
 hearkened to with reverence. And with those they con- 
 sulted in what method to proceed in disposing the house, 
 sometimes to propose, sometimes to consent to what 
 should be most necessary to the public ; and by them to
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 155 
 
 assign parts to other men, whom they found disposed 
 and willing to concur in what was to be desired : and all 
 this without any noise, or bringing many together to 
 design, which ever was and ever will be ingrateful to 
 parliaments, and, however it may succeed for a little 
 time, will in the end be attended with prejudice. ' ' 
 
 As a matter of fact, the king was still, and for a long 
 time after, the real executive. He chose his own minis- 
 ters and controlled their policy and did not concern 
 himself with Parliament's approval of them nor con- 
 sistently with Parliament's approval of his policy. On 
 its side Parliament naturally regarded the new methods 
 with some suspicion, as evidence of intrigue in the 
 king's interest, but it knew no way of exercising its 
 power of final decision except by making a square issue 
 with the king, nor of holding the king's servant respon- 
 sible except by asserting a direct responsibility enforced 
 by the old practice of impeachment. 
 
 The situation in this respect was not changed by the 
 Revolution of 1688. That Revolution was not a decision 
 as to particular forms or machinery. What was at stake 
 once more were the principles which underlay all forms, 
 and the whole nation showed that it was determined 
 to maintain the settlement of 1660 so far as that was 
 a settlement of the fundamental question of the su- 
 premacy of Parliament. But we may be sure that if 
 satisfactory constitutional machinery had been devised
 
 156 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 during the reign of Charles II for exercising that 
 supremacy in practice, it would have been included in 
 the settlement of 1689. But it had not been, and indeed 
 in 1689 it was only the fundamental principle of Parlia- 
 mentary supremacy that was in any sense apprehended. 
 Neither the range of its application to the operation of 
 actual government, nor the method of its application, 
 was yet understood, nor was the latter, which is the 
 principle of ministerial responsibility applied to the 
 cabinet, clearly understood for another century. 
 
 With the accession of William III this fundamental 
 question at issue between king and Parliament was 
 settled, as has been said, never to be raised again. The 
 characteristic feature of the new age was not a question 
 of that kind, nor of the interpretation of the constitu- 
 tion, but it was progress upon the new task of devising 
 machinery for carrying out in actual government the 
 compromise settlement already reached. In workable 
 machinery for this purpose, the age of William III made 
 no great advance over that of Charles II. The mediating 
 body still consisted of a small and informal group of 
 ministers who enjoyed the confidence of the king and 
 who were influential in Parliament. The king still 
 retained a very decided control over the conduct of 
 government, especially in foreign affairs, and he never 
 dreamed of allowing Parliament any voice, direct or 
 indirect, in the choice of his ministers.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 157 
 
 William III made, however, in the course of his reign 
 one very important discovery which was never after- 
 wards forgotten. He began to reign with a desire to be 
 king, not of a faction, but of all England, and as what 
 he thought would be a harmonizing measure, he chose 
 to have a coalition ministry made up from both political 
 parties at once. But he soon found out that the easiest 
 way to accomplish the objects he desired, the line of 
 least resistance in carrying out his policy, was to choose 
 his chief ministers from those political leaders who were 
 best able to secure the support of Parliament, or in 
 other words from that party which had a majority in 
 the House of Commons. 
 
 This was a great step forward, but it was not yet a 
 matter of principle. No one supposed it to be more than 
 a mere matter of convenience, and a long time passed 
 before its real meaning began to be understood. It was 
 in truth the beginning of the principle of ministerial 
 responsibility with all its applications in the present 
 constitution. It was from this origin that modern 
 ministerial responsibility arose, gradually and unper- 
 ceived, and not from the medieval idea or practice. The 
 medieval was for some time supposed to continue along- 
 side the new growth, unconnected with it, rather as 
 opposed to it, for the older method of impeachment was 
 still thought to be the only means which Parliament had 
 of controlling the king's ministers.
 
 158 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 Parliament indeed under William was again greatly 
 troubled by the signs of this new development which it 
 could see was going on but could not understand. The 
 government 's policy seemed to be determined by a secret 
 clique of ministers upon whom it was difficult to fix 
 responsibility. Not long after the accession of William 
 and Mary, the House of Commons began to debate 
 methods of holding the government responsible and 
 found no satisfactory means. Impeachment seemed to 
 be slipping out of its hands and nothing taking the place. 
 Parliament really was losing impeachment because it 
 was no longer needed or in place. The future struggles 
 of English history were not to be between king and 
 Parliament over the establishment of the constitution, 
 or over its meaning, but they were to be over purpose 
 and policy in the daily operation of the government 
 between the leaders of groups of opinion in the nation 
 whose equal loyalty to the constitution was uncon- 
 sciously accepted early in this period. In such a situa- 
 tion it was instinctively felt that it was an unworthy 
 use of a party advantage to subject the leaders of the 
 opposition side to a criminal prosecution and, though it 
 was not yet seen what could be used in its place . to 
 enforce responsibility, impeachment was tacitly dropped. 
 How wholly unconscious was the real development 
 which was going on at that time is strikingly recorded 
 in the Act of Settlement of the last year of William's
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 159 
 
 reign. In clauses four and six of that document Parlia- 
 ment attempted to destroy the beginnings of the cabinet 
 system in order to protect what it believed to be its means 
 of enforcing responsibility and, if those clauses had been 
 put into force, would have succeeded. Clause four 
 required that all conciliar business should be transacted 
 in the Privy Council and not elsewhere, that is, not by 
 the suspected clique alone, and that the members of the 
 Council should furnish the evidence of their responsi- 
 bility by attaching their signatures to the resolutions 
 to which they consented; and clause six forbad the 
 election to the House of Commons of any officers of the 
 crown, including of course the ministers. That is to say, 
 Parliament had so little conception of how best to realize 
 its own supremacy that it deliberately tried, in the 
 interest of an obsolete method, to end the line of progress 
 which was bringing in the most effective means ever 
 devised, or apparently devisable, for operating a republic 
 under the forms of a monarchy. 
 
 It was in this stage of the development of cabinet 
 government that the house of Hanover came to the 
 throne. George I never ceased in any respect to be a 
 German and he cared little about the character of Eng- 
 lish government and understood the constitution and 
 constitutional tendencies even less. George II had a 
 greater interest in his British kingdom and a clearer 
 idea of what was going on in government, but he did not
 
 
 160 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 know how to interfere with the natural growth of ten- 
 dencies which were in full course when he came to the 
 throne. As a result the forty-five years of these two 
 reigns is a long period of unbroken development in the 
 history of cabinet government. Nearly half the time is 
 covered by the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole, a time 
 of peace and of unnoticed growth. Walpole was not 
 merely the first prime minister but the first minister 
 who had something like a clear, though no doubt largely 
 unconscious, idea of the character of the machinery for 
 government which was forming and of the principles 
 according to which it should be consistently operated. 
 The fact that George I did not understand English shut 
 him out of the consultations of the cabinet, and George 
 II did not seriously attempt to restore the king's right 
 to attend. Decision of government policy in the absence 
 of the king and without his knowledge made abundantly 
 clear the sole responsibility of the cabinet for the con- 
 duct of public affairs, and Walpole saw that this state 
 of things should require the cabinet to be a unit in policy 
 and collectively responsible. He had some difficulty in 
 applying this principle strictly, and other prime minis- 
 ters after him, and it was not until the beginning of 
 the nineteenth century that it came to be rigorously ob- 
 served and a commonplace of thinking about government. 
 Walpole was also the first minister who consciously 
 perceived the relation which should subsist between the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 161 
 
 cabinet and the majority in the House of Commons. 
 He was the first to organize that majority in something 
 like an official way and to act upon the logical conclusion 
 that when he lost the majority he must resign. The 
 progress was rapid under Walpole and it continued after 
 his fall. Its character is further indicated by the fact 
 that in 1746 Lord Granville failed in the attempt to 
 form a cabinet because he could not bring together a 
 body of men to act with him who would command the 
 support of Parliament, and also by the fact that in the 
 same year the king was forced under pressure and 
 against his will to admit William Pitt to the ministry. 
 These are full-grown characteristics of the modern 
 cabinet, but cabinet government was not yet complete 
 nor perfectly understood by anyone at the middle of 
 the eighteenth century. The first thirty years of George 
 Ill's reign revealed how much was still to do. 
 
 George III came to the throne in 1760 as a young man 
 of most decided convictions and intentions. He had 
 been trained by his mother to be a king in the highest 
 Tory sense, and he possessed by nature a degree of 
 obstinate short-sightedness sufficient to prove his Stuart 
 descent. It was, however, not the policy of the elder 
 Stuarts which George attempted to carry out. It was 
 the cabinet system of government which he attacked and 
 it was that which he failed to overthrow. If neither he 
 nor his contemporaries understood that system as com- 
 
 J
 
 162 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 pletely as we do, he understood at least what its growth 
 had cost the crown, and this is what he set about to 
 recover. What might have been the ultimate result 
 of his attempt if it had been successful, it does not 
 belong to the historian to say, though it is difficult to 
 see how constitutional liberty could have survived if 
 he had been completely successful. But his immediate 
 plans as he developed them went no farther than to 
 reestablish the degree of control over the policy of the 
 government which William III had possessed. 
 
 He was at first successful. By forcing devoted adher- 
 ents of his own into the cabinet which he had inherited 
 from his grandfather, the cabinet of the great war 
 minister William Pitt; by creating a strong influence 
 of "king's friends" in the House of Commons, inde- 
 pendent of the cabinet; and finally by finding a prime 
 minister in the person of Lord North whose private 
 conviction regarding the relation of minister and crown 
 agreed with his own, he did succeed in recovering for 
 a time a decided royal influence over the policy of the 
 government. The highest point of this success was the 
 ministry of Lord North from 1770 to 1782. The price 
 which was paid for it was the loss of the American 
 colonies. 
 
 Had cabinet government been understood at that time 
 as it was a century later, had ministerial responsibility 
 of the modern type existed then, it is hardly an exaggera-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 163 
 
 tion to say that the American Revolution would not 
 have occurred. It is at any rate open to belief that if 
 ministerial and Parliamentary opinion had been free 
 to form in view of the facts alone, some workable 
 compromise could have been found between opposing 
 interests, neither of which desired at first extreme 
 measures. 
 
 The failure of the king's policy to compel the return 
 of the colonies to their allegiance was also the failure of 
 his policy to control the cabinet, not at once nor while 
 he lived with absolute completeness, but so completely 
 that after the fall of Lord North there was no longer 
 any possibility of accomplishing the plan with which he 
 had set out. This fact it is which has led Englishmen 
 to say that Washington ' ' by his military conduct of the 
 War of the American Revolution saved English consti- 
 tutional liberty, as well as won American independence. ' ' 
 The final subjection of the executive to the legislature 
 in all respects, never again to be seriously resisted, may 
 be dated from the end of Lord North's ministry in 1782. 
 The few individual exceptions which occurred after that 
 date are cases in which the cabinet and the legislature 
 yielded to the nominal executive, not on principle, but 
 because it did not seem advisable or worth while to make 
 an issue on the particular point. 
 
 One incident, coming only a few weeks after the 
 signature of the peace with the United States, might be
 
 164 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 cited as evidence of the continued power of the king, 
 but it is really more significant of other things. In 
 December, 1783, George III suddenly dismissed the 
 coalition ministry, to which he had been obliged to 
 submit against his will, on their being defeated in the 
 House of Lords, although they still had a good majority 
 in the House of Commons. The younger William Pitt, 
 then twenty-five years of age and just entering upon his 
 great career, consented to form a ministry in support 
 of the king. With an overwhelming majority against 
 him, the new prime minister began a severe and dramatic 
 struggle with the House of Commons which lasted for 
 more than three months. He stood almost alone. He 
 was the only member of the cabinet in the House of 
 Commons. All the leaders of debate and brilliant 
 orators of the House, in that most brilliant period of 
 House of Commons oratory, were against him. The 
 business of Parliament was at a standstill. The passing 
 of the appropriations and of the annual mutiny bill 
 was postponed, and from that date it has been under- 
 stood that the Parliamentary weapon compelling the 
 appointment of a minister of its choice is the refusal to 
 do business with any other. 
 
 But Pitt maintained his position boldly with the king 's 
 support. Twelve successive votes were passed against 
 him by the Commons, any one of which would now be 
 thought sufficient to compel the resignation of the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 165 
 
 cabinet. The insistent demand that he should resign 
 and the anger occasioned by his refusal to do so, fixed 
 firmly in the public consciousness the duty of a ministry 
 to give up office on an adverse vote in the House of 
 Commons. Since the time of Pitt no minister has been 
 able to maintain himself in a like situation, and it is 
 hardly probable that Pitt could even then have done so, 
 if public opinion outside Parliament had not been turn- 
 ing in his favor. The change of feeling was steadily 
 reflected in a dwindling majority in the House, and 
 finally on a defeat by a majority of one only, he dis- 
 solved Parliament and appealed to the country in a 
 general election. The country returned him a great 
 majority and his ministry of nearly twenty years was 
 securely begun. 
 
 Pitt's struggle to maintain himself against a hostile 
 House of Commons had great influence in bringing 
 about an understanding of cabinet government and the 
 principle of ministerial responsibility, but that under- 
 standing was still far from complete and was only slowly 
 perfected through another twenty-five years. Two inci- 
 dents between 1784 and the close of the century show 
 how incomplete the understanding still was. Three 
 years after Pitt's triumph the Constitution of the 
 United States was framed by an assembly of the most 
 experienced public men and students of politics in 
 America, who considered with care the question of
 
 166 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 setting up a government to operate in the best way. 
 One great problem before them, set by the situation of 
 the time, was to secure a really effective executive while 
 leaving ultimate authority in the legislature as repre- 
 senting the people, exactly the problem which ministerial 
 responsibility solves. In their constitution, however, 
 not merely did they entirely separate the executive and 
 legislative departments, then becoming closely united in 
 England, but they gave little attention to the cabinet, 
 and they seem to have had no idea whatever of minis- 
 terial responsibility. 
 
 If we may judge by the powers conferred upon the 
 president in the Constitution and the fact that the 
 cabinet is not mentioned, merely referred to in passing 
 in the phrase ' ' the principal officer in each of the execu- 
 tive departments, ' ' their idea of the head of the state and 
 his relation to his cabinet seems to have been that which 
 George III had made familiar to them during the min- 
 istry of Lord North ; I do not mean that they consciously 
 thought about it, but that this is the idea which they 
 would instinctively have. It is altogether probable that 
 they thought that in this respect they were following the 
 English model, as beyond question they did when they 
 adopted impeachment, and certainly, had there existed 
 in England any such definite idea of ministerial respon- 
 sibility as fifty years later, there would have been some 
 discussion of it in the Convention.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 167 
 
 The other incident is even more indicative of English 
 understanding. In 1791 Parliament under the leader- 
 ship of Pitt's ministry framed a new government for 
 Canada. The debate on the bill shows conclusively that 
 the desire was to give to Canada the same kind of 
 government which England had, and there can be no 
 question but that this was honestly intended. And yet 
 no responsible ministry was granted, nor even proposed, 
 and the foundation was laid for the later Canadian 
 rebellion which opened a new era in British colonial 
 government. 
 
 It is from the opening years of the nineteenth century 
 that we must date a full understanding of the cabinet 
 system and of the way in which ministerial responsibility 
 is enforced through it, though even then the under- 
 standing was rather that of practical action than of 
 theoretical description. It was not until about the 
 middle of the century that descriptions of the system 
 were written that seem satisfactory to us, and well past 
 the middle before any treatise was published upon the 
 new constitution as a whole.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 While cabinet government was developing during the 
 long reign of George III, from 1760 to 1820, change of 
 another sort was taking place in England which had 
 most important constitutional consequences and may in 
 the end affect the nature of cabinet government itself. 
 If so, the future historian will undoubtedly describe this 
 change as opening a new epoch in England's constitu- 
 tional history as truly as did the accession of the house 
 of Lancaster or the house of Stuart. The change which 
 took place was the economic revolution which began 
 about the middle of the eighteenth century and its 
 effects upon population and opinion. Within a few 
 years of one another a series of discoveries, inventions, 
 and favoring events combined together to create a new 
 industrial age. The application of steam to machinery; 
 the invention of new machinery to which steam could 
 be applied, especially in the manufacture of cloth ; the 
 opening up of great stores of coal to make easy the pro- 
 duction of steam and iron; improved methods of smelt- 
 ing iron ore to meet the demand made by the increased
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 169 
 
 use of machinery ; better means of transportation for raw 
 material and manufactured goods; and the expanding 
 markets which followed the peace with France in 1763, 
 all worked together to one end, an unparalleled indus- 
 trial development. 
 
 But the industrial change brought with it changes in 
 population and in attitude towards political questions. 
 Cottage and village industries disappeared. Great 
 factories grew up and concentrated population. New 
 large towns were formed and old ones grew larger. 
 Wealth endowed a new class which arose from among 
 the manufacturers or from families not prominent 
 before to take their place in popular influence beside 
 the old aristocracy. A new political atmosphere began 
 to form in large portions of the country. The new forces 
 which were beginning to make themselves felt were less 
 bound by old ideas, more ready to change, inclined even 
 to be radical, and deeply interested in certain reform 
 demands which affected their position in the state or 
 their local conditions. The political change which re- 
 sulted from and attended the economic revolution some- 
 what slowly developed into a great movement towards 
 a democratic control of government and of all public 
 interests which has gone on constantly widening and 
 deepening from that day to this and constantly 
 achieving more and more of its aims in the management 
 of national and local affairs.
 
 170 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 Historically we must trace the transformation of Eng- 
 land into a democracy back to its beginning in the rise 
 of new centers of population with new and pressing 
 problems to be solved and to the rise of new classes 
 demanding political opportunity for themselves. But 
 it must not be supposed that the changes which this 
 movement has brought about one after another have 
 been revolutionary in character. They are the logical 
 outgrowth, the consummation in practical government, 
 of that slow drift towards the sovereignty of the people 
 which began long centuries ago in English history. The 
 Puritan attempt, in a revolutionary atmosphere and 
 under the stimulus of radical religious thought, to 
 accomplish these ends prematurely led to failure in 
 England, but in America to an earlier and more com- 
 plete fulfillment of the natural tendencies of the past. 
 Now early in the nineteenth century, England began an 
 approach to these same democratic results, slower than 
 would have satisfied the Independents, but rapid as 
 compared with the intervening generations. 
 
 As soon as the close of the struggle with Napoleon's 
 attempt at world empire removed a natural but un- 
 English repression, and the English people had time to 
 fall securely back into the normal current of their life, 
 the advance began. About 1828 there opened a great 
 epoch of reform changes which has continued, with 
 intervals of lessened activity, to the present day, an
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 171 
 
 epoch not merely of destructive but in the highest sense 
 of constructive legislation. The first steps taken in this 
 process were towards securing religious liberty by law. 
 In 1828 the most serious disabilities of Nonconformists, 
 which had in reality long been obsolete, were removed. 
 In the next year Catholics were given throughout Great 
 Britain practical political equality with Protestants, 
 but it was some years still before Jews were admitted 
 to Parliament or Nonconformists on equal terms to the 
 universities. These acts were speedily followed by the 
 extinction of Negro slavery in the colonies, by the 
 adoption of free trade, and by the beginning of the slow 
 process of reform in the criminal law, in the organization 
 and procedure of the courts of civil law, and in local 
 government. But in a sense these acts of legislation, 
 though results of the growing influence of the mass of 
 the people upon government, are not strictly constitu- 
 tional measures. The first great step in constitutional 
 reform, to be followed in time by the most far-reaching 
 consequences, was the passage of the first Reform Bill 
 in 1832. The history of this bill and of the steps by 
 which it made its way through Parliament illustrates 
 in so many ways the operation of the English cabinet 
 and Parliamentary system in the nineteenth century 
 that it should be told in some detail. 
 
 The demand for reform in the election of members 
 of the House of Commons had really been felt before
 
 172 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 the long war with France which began in 1793. No 
 change had been made in the election laws since the 
 fifteenth century, and members were still elected from 
 the counties by the votes of the holders of freehold land 
 of the annual value of forty shillings, and from an 
 arbitrary list of boroughs, long regarded as fixed, in 
 which the right of suffrage was defined in widely 
 varying ways as each borough had originally determined 
 for itself. Glaring inequalities had always existed in 
 the relation of representation to population, to, some 
 extent in the counties and to a great extent in the 
 boroughs. The Puritan reformers had dealt with this 
 matter in the modern sense, but their measures were not 
 continued, and the inequalities, especially in the case 
 of the boroughs, were greatly increased by the changes 
 in population which followed the industrial revolution. 
 Large new towns arose which had no representation. 
 Old boroughs lost population heavily. Worse even than 
 this, the decline of population, combined with limited 
 rights of suffrage, had put many boroughs sending 
 members to the House of Commons completely into the 
 hands of neighboring great landowners who either con- 
 trolled the election through their ownership, the so- 
 called pocket boroughs, or found it easy to buy the 
 required number of voters, the rotten boroughs. The 
 duke of Norfolk nominated eleven members of the House 
 of Commons, Lord Lonsdale nine, Lord Fitzwilliam
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 173 
 
 eight, and so on. Nearly half the membership of the 
 house represented in this way private interests rather 
 than a public constituency. 
 
 Near the end of the eighteenth century, about the time 
 the war with France began, the question of this evil had 
 been raised in Parliament, and hopeful measures for 
 reform were under way. The extremes of the Revolution 
 led to a reaction which continued for some years after 
 the close of the war, but with the beginning of reforms 
 in other directions this too was taken up. Early in 
 November, 1830, Earl Grey, who had been a leader in 
 the eighteenth-century attempt, expressed in debate in 
 the House of Lords the hope that this reform might not 
 be long delayed. The prime minister, the duke of 
 Wellington, answered in absurdly extravagant praise of 
 conditions as they were, saying among other things that 
 if he had been called upon to form legislative institu- 
 tions for any country he could not hope to do as well, 
 "for the nature of man was incapable of reaching such 
 excellence at once." These words proved the spark 
 which fired the train and revealed how broadly prepara- 
 tion had been made in the public mind for a decided 
 change. On the fifteenth of November Wellington's 
 ministry was defeated in the House of Commons and 
 resigned. The king sent for Earl Grey who formed a 
 Whig ministry and went on without asking for a new 
 election. The House of Commons had nominally a Tory
 
 174 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 majority, but public opinion had declared itself so 
 clearly for reform that there seemed a chance of securing 
 a majority for it without an appeal to the country. 
 
 The bill was introduced on the first of March by Lord 
 John Russell, who for twenty years had advocated a 
 measure of the kind in speeches and motions in the 
 House of Commons. It passed its first and second read- 
 ings, but on the second reading the majority in its favor 
 was only one in a vote of over six hundred. In Parlia- 
 mentary practice a small majority on the second reading 
 is considered a defeat. The passing of the second 
 reading means that the House adopts the principle of 
 the bill, but the details have still to be settled in com- 
 mittee of the whole, and experience shows that more 
 members are ready to accept the general principle of 
 any measure than will agree together on all the details. 
 This proved to be the case at this time, and on the nine- 
 teenth of April the cabinet was defeated by a majority 
 of eight. Then the ministry appealed to the country. 
 Parliament was dissolved and a new election ordered, 
 which was held with electoral reform as the chief issue 
 of the campaign. The election was one of unusual 
 excitement and of clear determination on the part of 
 the reformers. Some pocket boroughs even were carried 
 against their owners, and a great majority for those days 
 was secured for the government. So quickly was all 
 this done that on June 24 Lord John Russell introduced
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 175 
 
 practically the same bill again, and its second reading 
 was carried on July 8 by a majority of one hundred and 
 thirty-six, and on September 21 it was finally passed by 
 a majority of one hundred and nine. The House of 
 Lords was naturally opposed to a measure which seemed 
 about to destroy the political influence of the aristoc- 
 racy, but the reformers made a brilliant defence, and 
 it was only after one of the ablest debates in the history 
 of the House that the bill was rejected by forty-one 
 majority in a vote of three hundred and fifty-seven. 
 The defeat of a government measure in the House of 
 Lords does not call for the resignation of the ministry 
 and, sustained by a vote of confidence immediately 
 passed in the House of Commons, the cabinet decided 
 to prorogue Parliament in order that a new session 
 might allow the reintroduction of the bill. 
 
 In the interval between the two sessions the public 
 excitement reached the highest point that had ever 
 attended any question before Parliament or perhaps 
 that has ever been known since that time. All measures 
 familiar to English and American politics to impress 
 public opinion upon the legislature were employed, 
 monster meetings, impassioned speeches, processions and 
 petitions, newspaper articles and pamphlets; in places 
 there was even rioting by the more radical supporters 
 of the bill who expected larger results from it than it 
 really produced. The House of Lords met in the new
 
 176 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 session under no misunderstanding as to the temper of 
 
 the majority of the nation. 
 
 On December 12 a new bill was introduced consider- 
 ably improved by the experience of previous debates, and 
 after another thorough discussion was passed by the 
 Commons on March 23 and sent to the House of Lords. 
 Everybody knew that now the real battle was to come, 
 and the pressure on the Lords was tremendous. It was 
 generally understood that King William IV had agreed, 
 though with reluctance, to create a number of Whig 
 peers large enough to carry the bill through the House, 
 if this should prove to be the only way in which it could 
 be saved. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten 
 that the country had hardly yet recovered a reform 
 disposition from the reaction which the extravagant 
 policies of the French revolutionists had caused, that 
 their excesses were still fresh in mind, that only two 
 years before there had been another outbreak of revo- 
 lutions on the continent, and that this measure seemed 
 to strike at the very foundations of government as they 
 had existed for centuries, a belief which the radical 
 supporters of the Reform Bill did nothing to remove. 
 The mind of a conservative aristocracy, naturally timid 
 of experimenting with the unknown, had some defence 
 for itself on this occasion. 
 
 Public pressure and the known plans of the govern- 
 ment were, however, too strong for many minds in the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 177 
 
 House, which were wavering either in opinion or as to 
 the best policy for the Lords to follow. When the vote 
 on the second reading was taken, it proved that seven- 
 teen peers had changed to the affirmative, that some, 
 including Wellington, had stayed away, and that a net 
 gain had been made from among the absentees of 1831. 
 The second reading was passed by a majority of nine. 
 The fate of the measure was, however, undecided 
 because it had yet to undergo the dangers of amend- 
 ment and of adverse votes in committee of the whole, 
 and in reality such a vote was carried against the 
 ministry on May 7. 
 
 It was now evident that the number of Whigs in the 
 House of Lords must be increased to a working majority 
 or the bill be abandoned, and the cabinet asked of the 
 king the fulfillment of his promise to create peers, 
 offering him the alternative of their resignation. It 
 seems clear now that the king had never agreed to 
 increase the membership of the House of Lords by so 
 large a number as the ministers thought necessary. He 
 was himself conservatively minded and somewhat afraid 
 of the reform, though on the whole loyal to the ministry, 
 as his constitutional position demanded. When brought 
 face to face with the necessity of swamping the majority 
 in the House of Lords in order to carry the bill> he 
 could not bring himself to act and instead accepted the 
 resignation of the cabinet.
 
 178 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 It then became the practical question whether the 
 Tory party in support of the action of the king could 
 form a cabinet which would be able to carry on the 
 business of the country, including some measure of 
 electoral reform which it was now clear to everybody 
 must be adopted. The duke of Wellington made the 
 attempt to construct the ministry, but Sir Robert Peel, 
 who was indispensable, and others refused to serve; the 
 House of Commons passed a vote of confidence in Lord 
 Grey's cabinet by a large majority; and renewed public 
 excitement gave warning of trouble. After a few days 
 of hard effort, Wellington was obliged to inform the 
 king that he could do nothing and advised him to recall 
 Earl Grey. William was forced to yield, though yield- 
 ing meant agreeing to the cabinet's demands. He 
 attempted in vain to persuade them to consent to im- 
 portant modifications of the bill, but he gave them his 
 promise in writing to create as many peers as might be 
 necessary. Then of his own motion he took a further 
 step of more doubtful propriety constitutionally which, 
 though not objected to at that time, certainly would be 
 today, by directing his private secretary to suggest to 
 Wellington and certain others that all difficulties would 
 be removed by their absenting themselves from the 
 House when the vote took place. This course had been 
 already resolved upon by many and the bill was finally 
 allowed to pass by a large majority.
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 179 
 
 It has seemed worth while to relate the history of this 
 episode in such fulness because there is no case in which 
 are illustrated in so many points of detail the practical 
 workings of the cabinet system of government by a 
 responsible ministry, which is the especially charac- 
 teristic result in the constitution whose historical devel- 
 opment we have been following. From 1832 to the 
 present time the operation of this system has remained 
 the same with only slight modifications, which will be 
 noticed later. The relation to one another of three of 
 the great factors in the government is clearly brought 
 out in the history of the passage of the Reform Bill and 
 that of the fourth is implied. The king, the lords, and 
 the cabinet are shown as they operate together, not of 
 course in the business details of administration, but in 
 the higher determination of government policy and the 
 foundation of all in the House of Commons is indicated. 
 The king has ceremonial and social functions to 
 perform which are of great importance in an old society 
 which, however democratic politically, is still aristo- 
 cratic in social spirit, but in the determination of 
 government policy upon any measure his position is 
 fairly shown in the relation of William IV to the pas- 
 sage of the Reform Bill. He cannot insist that the 
 ministry change the details of a measure to make it 
 accord more nearly with his own views. He may 
 present his views to the cabinet, either orally through
 
 180 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 some member or in writing, and urge their acceptance, 
 and they will always be considered respectfully and 
 fully. In matters of form, as in the famous case of the 
 note of Lord Palmerston's government to Washington 
 on the Trent affair in our Civil War, which was modified 
 at the suggestion of Queen Victoria, or in unessential 
 details, the advice of the sovereign may often be ac- 
 cepted, but if the cabinet decides against his views he 
 must yield. 
 
 In William IV 's time when the ministry asked of the 
 king an act to which he was strongly opposed, it was 
 thought his right to accept their resignations and to try 
 the experiment of forming a government which would 
 not require such an act of him. But when the leaders 
 of the king's way of thinking, from whom the new 
 cabinet must be made, came to the conclusion that no 
 government could be formed which could carry on the 
 business of the country, then the king must abandon the 
 attempt. It is hardly likely that any student of the 
 British constitution would deny the king the same right 
 at the present day, but the elimination of the king from 
 the practical government of the country in thought and 
 habit has gone so far since 1832, that it is exceedingly 
 doubtful if any sovereign will ever try the experiment 
 again. The attempt would be from the start so hopeless 
 and public excitement so great, for it would only be 
 made on a question of great importance, that the king
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 181 
 
 would probably always yield rather than take an appeal 
 against the cabinet. 
 
 It may be said without qualification that William's 
 conduct in allowing his views about the Reform Bill to 
 become known would be thought improper in a sovereign 
 of today. Theoretically the king is supposed to have no 
 political opinion but that of his ministers, and it would 
 be a serious breach of etiquette for an English political 
 speaker to quote the king in support of his argument. 
 This principle is very correctly stated in a letter of 
 Edward VII 's which has been published. When he was 
 asked in writing as to the truth of a rumor that he 
 was opposed to any change in the policy of free trade, 
 he replied: "The king never expresses any opinion 
 on political matters except on the advice of his respon- 
 sible ministers, and therefore the statement must be 
 inaccurate. ' ' 
 
 The only political function which the king can per- 
 form is to support his cabinet loyally and completely 
 in such ways as are possible to him, which are not many. 
 Much was said during the reign of Edward VII of the 
 activity of the king in the field of foreign relations, and 
 it is quite possible that he may often serve as a particu- 
 larly useful ambassador because of the peculiar access 
 he may have to the inner circles of government. As Mr. 
 Gladstone has said: "personal and domestic relations 
 with the ruling families abroad give openings, in
 
 182 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 delicate cases, for saying more, and saying it at once 
 more gently and more efficaciously than could be ven- 
 tured in the more formal correspondence and ruder 
 contacts of governments." It is certain however that 
 in such a mission the king could take no position which 
 had not been previously agreed upon or which was not 
 in harmony with the policy of his government. 
 
 The last work which was necessary in bringing the 
 nominal sovereign into so complete harmony with the 
 real sovereign in the practical carrying on of govern- 
 ment was done by Queen Victoria in the course of her 
 long reign. Her letters, which have been published, 
 reveal in how many ways and with what sympathetic 
 understanding this work was carried on, and Queen 
 Victoria's personal place in the future history of Eng- 
 land may very likely be determined more by her assist- 
 ance in this development than by anything else she did. 
 So entirely is the British sovereign at present in harmony 
 with the constitution that it is very possible that the 
 question of the government's remaining in name a 
 monarchy or being changed in form into a republic will 
 be determined by other than political considerations. 
 
 More decided and dramatic changes have taken place 
 in the relation of the House of Lords to the other factors 
 in government than in the case of the kingship, and yet 
 all the changes which have occurred were virtually 
 involved in the position of the House as it was revealed
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 188 
 
 in the struggle over the Reform Bill. That struggle 
 clearly showed that the Lords might safely oppose the 
 popular will, as expressed by the House of Commons, 
 to a certain point but not beyond it. Their first rejec- 
 tion of the Bill was clearly their constitutional right, 
 an appeal to the people with the question : Is this your 
 deliberate and mature desire? Their second rejection, 
 after a general election upon the specific question had 
 declared the popular will unmistakably, was of more 
 doubtful propriety; and the third rejection after con- 
 tinued evidence of a national determination certainly 
 endangered their historical position. What followed, 
 the determination to coerce the House by the creation 
 of peers, the failure of the king's attempt to avoid the 
 necessity, and the final acceptance of the bill as the only 
 way of escape, revealed for the first time the fact that 
 the .long progress towards the realization of the sover- 
 eignty of the people in government had overcome the 
 aristocracy as well as the king. 
 
 A general understanding of this fact was however 
 only slowly reached. A few years later, on the repeal 
 of the corn laws, the protectionist legislation in the 
 interest of the landlord class, the House of Lords was 
 strongly tempted to resist the reform. Only the great 
 influence of the duke of Wellington, who explained to 
 the House clearly and for the first time the powerlessness 
 to which it had been reduced in the consitution, pre-
 
 184 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 vented a repetition of the experiences of the Reform 
 Bill. From that time on to near the end of the century, 
 it was the custom to say that the House of Lords served 
 the purpose of a brake on the wheel of too rapid ad- 
 vance, served to make sure that a reform was really 
 demanded by the mature judgment of the country. 
 Before the close of Victoria's reign, however, the com- 
 plaint became very frequent that the brake was applied 
 only to the measures of a Liberal ministry, never to those 
 sent up by a Conservative cabinet. Although the 
 Liberals during these years had raised more men to the 
 peerage than the Conservatives had done, it had yet 
 been found exceedingly difficult to keep a family liberal 
 in the atmosphere of the Lords. The Earl of Rosebery 
 a few years ago declared in a speech that in his expe- 
 rience as Liberal leader of the House he had never been 
 able to count with certain confidence on more than thirty 
 votes in a membership of over six hundred. 
 
 It was a growing sense of the unfairness of this 
 situation and of the danger of a permanent rejection 
 of some important measure with its probable effects in 
 public excitement, enforced and deepened by recent 
 experiences in the adoption of tax reform measures, that 
 led to the passage of the Parliament Bill of 1911. If 
 we regard the English constitution with special refer- 
 ence to the character of its long historical development, 
 there is nothing revolutionary about this measure. It
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 185 
 
 takes away the power of the House of Lords to post- 
 pone for more than two years the enactment of a bill 
 passed by the House of Commons which it has been 
 made clearly manifest during that time that the public 
 opinion of the nation demands. This is doing no more 
 than to describe in statute form, with the time of delay 
 definitely measured out, the position which the passage 
 of the Reform Bill of 1832 had shown was really that 
 of the Lords in the constitution, and this position was 
 clearly the logical result of the previous development. 
 The power of the Lords was as much involved in the 
 seventeenth-century struggle with Charles I and James 
 II as was that of the king. The final triumph of the 
 sovereignty of the people demanded as complete and 
 cordial a recognition of the results from the House of 
 Lords as from the crown. 
 
 The position of the cabinet both in ordinary action 
 and in times of crisis is illustrated with equal fulness 
 in the passage of the Reform Bill. This date, 1832, is 
 the earliest to which we can assign with certainty the 
 completion of the cabinet system in all its working 
 details, though it is very likely true that a somewhat 
 earlier test, had it been applied, would have found its 
 practical operation as fully understood. The Reform 
 Bill was a government measure. That is, it was framed 
 by the ministry, introduced by one of its members, and 
 remained in his charge during its passage. If it should
 
 186 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 be defeated, or if an amendment upon a vital point 
 should be carried against the ministry, then the cabinet 
 must either resign or appeal to the country for its sup- 
 port upon the issue by dissolving Parliament and 
 bringing on a general election. A new election can be 
 the cabinet's choice only under a heavy responsibility. 
 An appeal to the country upon insufficient grounds, 
 without some evidence of general support, or merely to 
 save the ministry time, would be sure to be followed in 
 the election by severe condemnation, but in this case the 
 government had every reason to believe that the country 
 was behind it, and the event proved the opinion correct. 
 A greatly increased majority for the cabinet was re- 
 turned by the electors, and the vote was considered a 
 mandate from the country to go on with the measure. 
 
 On the defeat of the second bill in the House of Lords, 
 the case was different. An election had lately been held 
 and the government had still a large majority in the 
 Commons. An appeal to the country was unnecessary 
 and would have been improper. Instead the cabinet 
 prorogued Parliament to permit a reintroduction of the 
 bill in a new session. When the government was again 
 defeated on an amendment in the Lords, matters came 
 to a crisis which illustrates the action of the cabinet 
 at such a time. In asking the king to take a step, the 
 creation of peers, which it was known that he was very 
 reluctant to take, the prime minister offered him at the
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 187 
 
 same time the alternative of the cabinet's resignation. 
 At that time, whatever might be done today, the king 
 chose that alternative, but while the attempt to form 
 a cabinet of the opposite party was made, the old cabinet 
 remained in office and carried on the routine business 
 of the government. When the king was obliged to 
 admit that his attempt had failed, it resumed its position 
 as cabinet with reference to Parliament, but now with 
 the certainty that its advice would be accepted by the 
 king. The crisis reveals also what it is in the British 
 system which keeps a cabinet in power or turns it out 
 of office. It is its ability or inability at any given time 
 to determine and direct the policy of the government. 
 If the House of Commons will do business with the 
 cabinet, then it goes on; if the House of Commons will 
 not do business with it, no other power can maintain it 
 in office. If a ministry should attempt to retain power 
 in the teeth of a hostile House of Commons, the business 
 of government would shortly fall into chaos and the 
 attempt would mean revolution. But with the House of 
 Commons and the opinion of the nation against it, no 
 ministry would ever make the experiment. This is the 
 whole theory of government by a responsible ministry. 
 The House of Commons reflects the opinion of the people 
 in regard to the policy proposed by the government and 
 its judgment, which is the judgment of the nation, is 
 final in the question before it.
 
 188 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 The position of the House of Commons has been 
 already clearly indicated. It supports the ministry so 
 long as the policy of the ministry has the support of 
 public opinion. In times of crisis it may hold up the 
 hands of the cabinet by a direct vote of confidence, 
 which is equivalent to a formal declaration to all oppo- 
 nents that the country is behind the government 's policy. 
 If public opinion turns against that policy, correspond- 
 ing changes will take place in the House of Commons 
 and then in a crisis conceivably the House may adopt a 
 vote of want of confidence which is a formal declaration 
 to the cabinet that it has lost the support of the nation 
 and should resign. If the ministry should prove un- 
 willing to resign, or an attempt be made to bring into 
 office a ministry which does not have the sanction of the 
 people, the House of Commons would refuse to allow 
 any items of its policy to be enacted into law, and it 
 would be unable to go on. It is also of course the busi- 
 ness of the House of Commons to discuss the measures 
 proposed by the government and to amend and improve 
 them, but this is a duty which it still shares with the 
 House of Lords.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The results of the Reform Bill of 1832 disappointed 
 both its friends and its opponents. It was not followed 
 by the consequences which had been hoped or feared. 
 Most pocket and rotten boroughs had been disenfran- 
 chised and seats had been given new centers of popu- 
 lation, and these were changes which had been desired. 
 But though the number of voters had been largely 
 increased, no important change was manifest in the 
 character of the membership of the House of Commons, 
 and no evident progress had been made towards democ- 
 racy. Corrupt voting was not entirely extinguished, 
 difficult formalities in the process of registration kept 
 down the number of voters, and the natural local in- 
 fluence of family and property combined with all the 
 rest to reduce the significance of the reform. The 
 radical supporters of the Bill had never been satisfied 
 with the concessions which that measure secured and 
 it was not long before agitation began for supplementary 
 reforms. The agitators had much material to build with 
 in the rather general discontent of the working class,
 
 190 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 discontent which was quite as much due to economic 
 as to political conditions. 
 
 The agitation, which reached its height in 1839, is 
 known in history as the Chartist movement from the 
 so-called People's Charter in which the radical demands 
 were stated. These were six in number : universal man- 
 hood suffrage; vote by ballot, to prevent intimidation; 
 annually elected Parliaments, to maintain the respon- 
 sibility of members; payment of members of the House 
 of Commons, to make possible the election of poor men ; 
 the abolition of the property qualification for member- 
 ship in the House, for the same reason; and the 
 formation of electoral districts of equal population. 
 
 The movement was a failure. None of the demands 
 set forth in the charter was granted by Parliament, but 
 the agitation did not cease in other ways. The demo- 
 cratic cause won gradually more and more support 
 among the classes which controlled Parliament, and the 
 programme of the People's Charter may be taken as an 
 epitome of the progress since that day. Three of the 
 demands, the second, fourth and fifth as given above, 
 have been fully secured; the first also, with very slight 
 exceptions which are now about to be swept away and 
 the limitation implied in the word manhood dropped 
 as well. The sixth has been fully obtained in principle 
 and in practice as nearly as some peculiar difficulties of 
 the situation allow. The second has not been secured
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 191 
 
 in form, but the possible life of a Parliament has been 
 reduced to five years, and the responsibility of members 
 to their constituents more indirectly but sufficiently 
 secured. The leaders of the movement of 1839 would 
 be astonished at the England of today, if they could 
 return to it, and would be obliged to say that, according 
 to the standards which they proclaimed, it is a democ- 
 racy, and that in some things which they had at heart, 
 the legal protection of the workingman for instance, 
 progress has gone far beyond their wildest dreams. 
 
 For many years after the passage of the Reform Bill 
 of 1832, there was no serious movement towards a 
 further lowering of the qualifications for suffrage. It 
 was not until the time of Lord Palmerston's ministry 
 during our Civil War that it became clear that further 
 reforms must be made. The Liberal party of that day 
 was so divided within its own ranks that it was not able 
 to perfect and carry a measure on the subject, and the 
 second reform bill was enacted in 1867 by the Con- 
 servative ministry of Lord Derby under the leadership 
 of Mr. Disraeli. It was a further advance along the line 
 which had been opened up in 1832 but it was plainly 
 a temporary measure only. It struck out no new 
 principle and it stopped halfway along the road. In 
 the boroughs, however, the suffrage was made almost 
 democratic. It was made possible at least for anyone 
 who would take the required trouble, except a very few,
 
 192 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 to obtain the right to vote. The number of voters was 
 increased, but the same sort of tests, virtually property 
 qualifications, were to be used as in 1832; and more 
 boroughs were deprived of representation and new and 
 increased representation given to others and to the 
 counties. 
 
 The interval between the second and third reform bills 
 was shorter. Reform had lost its terrors during half a 
 century in which no national calamities had followed 
 from it. Society had not been disrupted; property had 
 not been made insecure; and the radical party had not 
 obtained permanent possession of the government. Not 
 merely in the intellectual convictions of men, but in 
 habits of thought and action, democracy had made great 
 progress, and in 1884 England was ready for a step 
 which was nearly final. By the act of that year the 
 franchises which had been given the boroughs in 1867 
 were extended to the counties and the qualifications for 
 the suffrage in these two kinds of electoral districts were 
 made, with some slight exceptions, uniform for the first 
 time in Parliamentary history. The change did not 
 quite introduce universal suffrage. It gave the right to 
 vote to any man occupying a separate dwelling house, 
 or a part of a house used as a separate dwelling, without 
 regard to its value, and to those occupying lodgings of 
 the value unfurnished of ten pounds per year. A young 
 man living in his father's family, a servant living in his
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 193 
 
 master's house, could not vote, but anyone earning day 
 wages or having an equivalent income who was willing 
 to meet the conditions was really enabled to do so. 
 Under this act practically as many votes in proportion to 
 the population have been cast in a Parliamentary as in 
 an American congressional election. 
 
 At the same time an act redistributing seats and 
 rearranging electoral districts was passed, making far 
 more radical changes than ever before. The principle 
 of the representation of equal units of population is not 
 quite so exactly realized in England as in the United 
 States, but there are inequalities with us, and perfect 
 exactness of measure is not possible anywhere. In the 
 meantime other acts, perhaps less strictly constitutional 
 in character, had made the way of democracy easier. 
 The Australian secret ballot had been adopted ; registra- 
 tion had been simplified in the interests of the elector; 
 and a Corrupt Practices Act had greatly reduced the 
 opportunity to influence elections improperly. 
 
 Since 1885 in everything except a few points, less 
 important practically than theoretically, England has 
 been a democracy. It is indeed fair to say that, so far 
 as the immediate influence of public opinion upon 
 government policy is concerned, England has been for 
 a generation more democratic than the United States. 
 The cabinet system of government, the ministry respon- 
 sible to the House of Commons, losing office when it
 
 194 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 loses its majority, provides a way by which almost 
 automatically, without waiting for a future election day, 
 a change of national judgment is carried out in a change 
 of government policy, provided always that opinion 
 changes in the House of Commons with the change of 
 opinion outside. It has done so certainly in the past and 
 may be expected to do so in the future. 
 
 As a further step in the line of development which 
 we are now following, the progress of the constitution 
 towards democracy, the enactment of the Parliament 
 Bill of 1911 should not be overlooked. It has been 
 described already sufficiently for our purpose, but it 
 should be remembered in its chronological place that 
 it did away in law with the power formerly possessed by 
 the House of Lords of absolute veto of popular measures 
 which they had already lost in theory. There was no 
 doubt natural reluctance to have the powerlessness of 
 the peers so bluntly stated in statute terms, but the law 
 really did no more than to remove all possibility of a 
 serious collision between the two houses which came so 
 near to occurring more than once in the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 In one particular the Parliament Bill is a distinct 
 departure from the ordinary English practice. It is the 
 embodiment of a constitutional principle in a statute; 
 that is, the principle is legalized in definite words which 
 state exactly what shall and what shall not be, an
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 195 
 
 approach on a single point towards a written constitu- 
 tion. In this respect it is in line with the Bill of Rights 
 of 1689 and with some provisions of the Act of Settle- 
 ment in 1701, rather than with the general trend of 
 English history, which has left the constitution to be 
 expressed in unwritten custom and convention. 
 
 But a written constitution is not out of harmony with 
 English history, as is shown by the acts mentioned and 
 by other legislation in earlier history which has become 
 obsolete. The reason why the English constitution is 
 unwritten is not because there is any especial political 
 virtue about that form of constitution which was fore- 
 seen and chosen. The unwritten constitution was as 
 little intended as a Parliament of two houses. It was 
 an accident of the situation and was due to the fact 
 that the work which England was doing in constitution 
 making was new to human experience. The constitu- 
 tional future could not be foreseen nor planned in detail, 
 nor the needs of government provided for in advance, 
 because this road had never been traveled before. The 
 constitution was slowly made, not according to any 
 theoretical ideal, but by finding a practical solution for 
 every problem as it arose. The result in each case was 
 rather a way of doing things than a formal provision, 
 though it might be and often was afterwards put into 
 statute form as a single detail. 
 
 It would be absurd to argue from England's un-
 
 196 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 written constitution that the results of her experience 
 should not now be expressed in a written constitution; 
 that would be to r elevate an accidental attendant of past 
 growth into a law of the future. Nor does such a 
 formulation in writing of the British constitution, as 
 has been made in whole or in part by so many states, 
 prevent among them its steady enlargement or modifica- 
 tion by the continued new creation of custom and 
 convention. The relation of the president to legislation 
 in our government is quite different now from that 
 intended by the constitution, as is that of the Senate to 
 foreign affairs and to the government in general. Other 
 instances of enlargement or amendment without formal 
 enactment could easily be cited. The embodiment of 
 a principle in statute form never prevents its modifica- 
 tion by the development of custom and precedent so 
 long as a nation remains politically and institutionally 
 alive. A written constitution is as truly in harmony 
 with English history and its methods of advance as an 
 unwritten one. 
 
 In America in conversation and in discussion in print, 
 the question is often raised whether England will not 
 before long become a republic in form, or why she does 
 not do so. It has been reported that long ago, while he 
 was still Prince of Wales, Edward VII predicted that 
 he would be the last king of England. If he ever did 
 make such a prediction, there has been since his acces-
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 197 
 
 sion no progress that can be detected towards its ful- 
 fillment. There is no body of opinion in England in 
 favor of such a change, and it is difficult to point out 
 any political advantage that would be gained by it. 
 The peculiar and characteristic features of the English"" 1 
 constitution are certainly as easily adaptable to a 
 republic as to a monarchy, but such a change of external 
 form would not make the actual government more 
 popular or more democratic. On the other hand, as has 
 been already said, there has been a great advantage, in 
 the influence of the British constitution on the world 
 derived from the retention of the monarchy, and it is 
 not yet clear that this advantage may wisely be given up. 
 This may be added that the house of Windsor since its 
 accession has acknowledged so formally and so unre- 
 servedly that it has no title to the throne except the will 
 of the nation that it will never be likely to offer any 
 objection to the change to a republic, if it should be 
 seriously proposed. 
 
 Perhaps the history, considered as constitutional 
 history in the strict sense, should close with the Parlia- 
 ment Act of 1911, but a series of important reforms, 
 parallel in time with the later steps towards democracy, 
 has materially changed the conditions of private life and 
 business in England, and they are important factors in 
 the great change which has taken place in the atmos- 
 phere, spirit and significance of public life. England
 
 198 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 has been transformed in a hundred years in every 
 direction, and these reforms to be briefly named are at 
 once signs of the changes taking place and essential 
 portions of them. The simplification of judicial pro- 
 cedure and of the organization of the courts might 
 properly perhaps be called constitutional. Out of the 
 uninstructed and undirected development of the middle 
 ages the system of criminal and civil justice descended 
 to the nineteenth century full of anomalies and crudi- 
 ties, with an intricate complex of courts of overlapping 
 jurisdiction and a cumbrous and dilatory procedure 
 which favored numerous abuses and made litigation 
 expensive and tedious. The practical results are familiar 
 to us today through the novels of Charles Dickens. By 
 a series of acts beginning in the first reform period of 
 the century, the system has been greatly simplified and 
 expense and delay greatly reduced. There are many 
 differences which strike one between the organization 
 and administration of justice in England and in the 
 United States, but the points of similarity are equally 
 striking in courts and procedure and in the fundamental 
 law administered. 
 
 The progress of democracy in general government was 
 accompanied step by step with the same progress in 
 local government. The first reform act on this subject 
 was passed within two years of the first Reform Bill, 
 and since that date local and municipal government has
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 199 
 
 been made over in the interests of economy, efficiency, 
 and popular control. About the same time reforms in 
 the administration of poor relief began, and a little later 
 in the care of public health, and later still an almost 
 revolutionary system of public schools and popular 
 education was organized. Along with these, other laws 
 were passed regulating work in factories, improving 
 other working conditions, and protecting the interest of 
 labor in many ways, while by a series of acts the Irish 
 church was disestablished and land and other abuses, 
 of which the Irish had long justly complained, done 
 away with. It would be absurd to maintain that no 
 abuses of any kind or in any direction remain to be 
 destroyed, or that the work of the reform age is finished. 
 But if a condensed statement of the progress of the 
 nineteenth century in these ways seems like an exag- 
 geration, the impression would be incorrect. The 
 advance has been beyond question rapid and significant, 
 and the England of today is a different country from 
 the England which emerged from the war with Napoleon 
 a hundred years ago. 
 
 As this writing comes to an end in the midst of the 
 great world war, all minds are occupied as much or more 
 with the future as with the past. Of the great changes 
 which seem foreshadowed by recent events, one directly 
 concerns our subject the federation of the British 
 Empire. The British colonial empire was slowly formed,
 
 200 OUTLINE SKETCH OF ENGLISH 
 
 mainly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and 
 like the British constitution with no foreseen purpose 
 and no definite adaptation of means to end. The 
 process was for a long time drift and accident, and only 
 by slow degrees and by hard experience did England 
 learn how to govern her colonies. The lesson was not 
 really learned until after the Canadian Rebellion of 
 1837, but it was in the end thoroughly learned. 
 
 From the middle of the last century an even more 
 profound change has been taking place, a change in the 
 meaning of empire from the idea of dominion and power 
 and exploitation to the idea of national expansion, a 
 change which may be characterized in a word by saying 
 that the term "British empire" is dropping out of 
 political discussion and the term "British Common- 
 wealth of Nations" is taking its place. The great 
 British colonies have become self-governing republics, 
 democratic in character, and practically independent in 
 everything that concerns their government and law. At 
 least it is clearly recognized that there is nothing in 
 which the power of coercion remains to the home 
 government. In the meantime other bonds than legal 
 ones have grown stronger and these have been tested 
 and further strengthened by the war. 
 
 Soon after the middle of the nineteenth century these 
 new ideas of empire and union began to find expression 
 in the discussion of imperial federation, of plans for
 
 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 201 
 
 a united government of the British commonwealth of 
 nations. As yet these plans have led to no practical 
 result but they have grown steadily in definiteness of 
 purpose and detail, and the Boer War and the present 
 war have given them great forward impulse. The 
 proposal of a common constitution for so large a portion 
 of the earth's surface makes a powerful appeal to the 
 imagination. Possibilities to be attained and problems 
 to be solved in constitution making for the British world 
 seem vaster than ever dreamed of heretofore. When 
 the obvious difficulties, however, of bringing together 
 in one government dwellers in five continents are con- 
 fronted with the tremendous progress in the annihilation 
 of space and time since 1787, they do not seem relatively 
 greater than those attacked and overcome in the forma- 
 tion of the American constitution. No actual consti- 
 tution has yet been proposed in any official way nor any 
 official suggestion made looking towards the making of 
 one, but a history of the English constitution may well 
 close with the anticipation of this still greater result 
 to come in the not distant future for it is a normal 
 outgrowth of the past and the next forward step 
 naturally to be expected in the long development which 
 has been sketched.
 
 INDEX 
 
 "Agreement of the People," 
 the, 138 f. 
 
 American race, Anglo-Saxon, 
 5 f . ; constitutional growth 
 separates from English, 9, 
 139 f . ; constitutional law, be- 
 ginning of, 136 f., 138; con- 
 stitution framed, 165 f. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon, a composite race, 
 5. 
 
 Appropriations of revenue, Par- 
 liamentary, beginning of, 
 72 f . ; extension of, 92. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, impeachment of, 
 119. 
 
 Balance of power, 99. 
 
 Ballot, Australian, adopted, 193. 
 
 Baron, the. place in Norman 
 government, 19 ff. ; attitude 
 towards reforms of Henry IT, 
 38 f . ; insurrection against 
 King John, 43 f . ; disappear- 
 ance of, 81. 
 
 Bill of Rights, the, 122, 148 ff., 
 195. 
 
 British Empire, spread of, 2 ; 
 federation of, 199ff. 
 
 Buckingham, duke of, impeach- 
 ment of, 77, 120. 
 
 Cabinet system, the English, 
 origin and growth, 152 ff ., 
 156; practical operation of, 
 179 ff., 185 ff. 
 
 Canada, government framed for 
 in 1791, 167. 
 
 Catholics, plans of James II for, 
 146; disabilities removed, 171. 
 
 Celtic racial element in Anglo- 
 Saxon, 5, 13 ; no influence on 
 constitution, 13. 
 
 Charles I, reign of, 120 ff.; 
 civil war under, 132; trial of, 
 134 f. 
 
 Charles II, reign of, 141 ff., 
 153 f. 
 
 Charter, the Great, 7, 32, 43 ff., 
 55, 80 f., 89 f., 120 ff., 130, 
 148, 149; provisions and prin- 
 ciples of, 45 ff . ; the begin- 
 ning of the limited monarchy, 
 45; confirmations of, 47. 
 
 Charters, the Confirmation of 
 the, 67 f . 
 
 Chartist movement, 190. 
 
 Church, the English, growth in 
 power after the Conquest, 
 
 39 ff . ; conflict with Henry II, 
 
 40 f . ; place in medieval gov- 
 ernment, 101 f. ; brought un-
 
 204 
 
 INDEX 
 
 der Parliamentary control, 
 101 ff. 
 
 Civil rights of the individual at 
 end of fifteenth century, 94 f. 
 
 Coercion of government, the 
 right of, 46 f., 49, 55, 122, 
 130. 
 
 Commons, House of, origin of, 
 59 ff., 63 f . ; increase of power 
 in fourteenth century, 64 ff . ; 
 in impeachment trials, 78 ; use 
 made of by Bichard II, 84; 
 privileges of, 92, 116f. ; atti- 
 tude in "Long" Parliament, 
 128 ff.; sole authority after 
 execution of Charles I, 137; 
 reform of representation in, 
 172 ff., 193; how it controls 
 the cabinet, 187 f. 
 
 Constitution, sense in which the 
 word is used, 12, 15; English, 
 elements united in, 12 f. ; 
 Norman origin of, 15; the 
 feudal, 21 f.; constitutional 
 government becomes habitual, 
 88, 91; suspension under Tu- 
 dors, 99 ff. ; progress of in 
 seventeenth century, 112f., 
 140, 151, 153; a written, 
 138 f., 148, 1951; spread 
 throughout the world, 144. 
 
 Contract, idea of, in feudal law, 
 31 f. ; use of to check the 
 king 's power, 32 f ., 44 ; in 
 Bill of Rights, 149 f. 
 
 Council, the, 22, 23 ff., 34, 83, 
 90, 128; the germ of Par- 
 
 liament, 57; not changed by 
 growth of Parliament, 59; 
 legislation by, 73 f . ; orders 
 in, 75; controlled by Parlia- 
 ment, 87, 92. 
 Curia regis, 22, 34. 
 
 Debate, freedom of, 84 f ., 92. 
 
 Democratic movement in seven- 
 teenth century, 134 ff., 150, 
 170; in the nineteenth, 168 ff., 
 1901, 1931 
 
 Deposition of the king, right of, 
 89 1, 147 1 
 
 Divine right of kings, 108, 109, 
 147. 
 
 Economic revolution of eight- 
 eenth and nineteenth centu- 
 ries, 168 ff. 
 
 Edward I, and taxation, 66 f . 
 
 Edward II, growth of Parlia- 
 ment under, 68 ; deposition of, 
 90. 
 
 Edward III, Parliamentary tax- 
 ation under, 71 ff. 
 
 Elizabeth, character of age of, 
 106 1, 108. 
 
 Empire, meaning of, 98, 200 1 
 
 England, a democratic republic, 
 10; likeness and contrast to 
 France in constitutional his- 
 tory, 36 f . ; international po- 
 sition in sixteenth century, 
 981 
 
 England, New, effect of Charles 
 I's policy upon, 122 ff.
 
 INDEX 
 
 205 
 
 Equity system, beginning of, 35, 
 
 74. 
 
 Europe, domination of, 98. 
 Exchequer, origin and business 
 
 of, 27 f . 
 
 Feudalism, introduced by Nor- 
 man Conquest, 17 ff. ; charac- 
 ter of Anglo-Saxon, 18; rela- 
 tion to beginning of limited 
 monarchy, 44; its conception 
 of the state, 52 f . ; decline of, 
 52, 58, 60. 
 
 Foreign policy, democratic con- 
 trol of, 112; the king in rela- 
 tion to at present, 181 f. 
 
 Fortescue, Sir John, on the 
 king's place in government, 
 88 f. 
 
 France, likeness and contrast to 
 England in constitutional his- 
 tory, 36 f. 
 
 George I, and the constitution, 
 159, 160. 
 
 George II, unable to check cab- 
 inet development, 159 f. 
 
 George III, reign and policy, 
 161 ff. ; and the American 
 colonies, 162; failure of his 
 policy, 163. 
 
 German Empire, relation of con- 
 stitution to English, 3. 
 
 German source of English insti- 
 tutions, 13 ff . ; institutions at 
 time of settlement, 14. 
 
 Habeas Corpus, not in Magna 
 Carta, 45 ; perfected in seven- 
 teenth century, 114, 121 . 
 
 Henry I, growth of royal power 
 under, 30 f ., 33 ; coronation 
 charter of, 311, 44, 149; 
 growth of power of church 
 under, 40. 
 
 Henry II, growth of royal 
 power under, 33 ff . ; his insti- 
 tutional reforms, 34 ff . 
 
 Henry IV, 85 f . 
 
 Henry V, 86. 
 
 Henry VI, 86, 105. 
 
 Henry VII, 96, 105. 
 
 Henry VIII, 103, 108. 
 
 Historical argument, the, va- 
 lidity of, 115. 
 
 Impeachment, 10, 56, 82 ; begin- 
 ning of the process of, 76 ff . ; 
 as sign of progress, 80; re- 
 vival under James I, 119f. ; 
 after the Restoration, 155, 
 157 f. 
 
 Impositions, the, 113, 117. 
 
 Independents, the, democratic 
 wing of Puritan party, 
 134 ff., 137, 170; break with 
 the past, 135, 136. 
 
 "Instrument of Government," 
 the, 139. 
 
 "Interpreter," Cowell's, 117. 
 
 James I, character and policy 
 
 cf, 108 ff., 150. 
 James II, character and reign, 
 
 146 ff.
 
 206 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Japan, relation of constitution 
 to English, 3. 
 
 Jews, disabilities removed, 171. 
 
 John, character and history, 
 42 ff. 
 
 Judicial organization, begin- 
 ning of modern, 34 f . 
 
 Judicial reform in nineteenth 
 century, 198. 
 
 Judiciary, the, independence of, 
 112, 150 f . 
 
 Jury trial, introduction of, 
 34 f . ; not in Magna Carta, 
 45; as protection of individ- 
 ual, 94 f . 
 
 Justices, itinerant, established 
 by Henry II, 34 f . 
 
 King, the, place in Norman gov- 
 ernment, 21 ; .power limited 
 by the barons, 31 ff. ; bound 
 to keep the laws, 45 f., 80 f., 
 149; new conception of his 
 duty, 53; can do no wrong, 
 77; perceives result of con- 
 stitutional growth, 83 ; place 
 in government in fifteenth 
 century, 88 f . ; left in form 
 supreme at Eestoration, 142 f ., 
 155; position in present gov- 
 ernment, 179 ff. See Mon- 
 archy. 
 
 Lancastrian period, constitu- 
 tional character of, 85 ff ., 
 90 ff., 93, 110. 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, 123, 124, 126. 
 
 Law, supremacy of, 5, 122, 130; 
 
 beginning of, 45 f ., 49 ; as 
 against the Stuarts, 109 ff. ; 
 James I and, 116 ff.; affirmed 
 by the Bill of Rights, 149 f. 
 
 Legislation, modern methods of, 
 beginning, 73 ff., 92. 
 
 Lords, House of, origin of, 59; 
 in impeachment trial, 78; at- 
 titude in impeachment of 
 Strafford, 129 f . ; in the trial 
 of Charles I, 135; position of 
 in the constitution, 152, 
 182 ff.; attitude on first Re- 
 form Bill, 175 ff. 
 
 Magna Carta, see Charter, the 
 Great. 
 
 Monarchy, English, influence on 
 the world, 10; origin and 
 character of Saxon, 14; Nor- 
 man, introduced by the Con- 
 quest, 17; growth in power 
 after the Conquest, 28 ff., 
 37 f . ; beginning of the lim- 
 ited, 43, 45, 57, 82; impeach- 
 ment as expression of the lim- 
 ited, 77 f . ; growth of the lim- 
 ited, 91 f.; in the sixteenth 
 century, 99 ff., 142 ff. ; see 
 King. 
 
 Montfort, Simon de, 60. 
 
 Nation, the, non-existent in 
 eleventh century, 16; begin- 
 ning as political force, 51 ff. ; 
 attitude towards Tudors, 
 100 f . ; growth of in fifteenth 
 century, 105 f .
 
 INDEX 
 
 207 
 
 Nobility, rise of modern, 81 ; 
 factional attitude of, 83, 87, 
 93, 105. 
 
 Nonconformists, disabilities re- 
 moved, 171. 
 
 Norman Conquest, beginning 
 of our constitutional history, 
 6 ; changes made by, 16 ff., 24. 
 
 North, Lord, as minister of 
 George III, 162. 
 
 Orders in Council, 75. 
 Oxford, the Provisions of, 51, 
 55 f ., 79. 
 
 Parliament, 7; not in Magna 
 Carta, 45; beginning and 
 growth, 57 ff. ; the model, 61 ; 
 why of two houses, 63; en- 
 largement of fundamental 
 law by, 80 ff. ; becomes guard- 
 ian of the constitution, 82 ; 
 attacked by Richard II, 84 f . ; 
 growth of power in fifteenth 
 century, 91 ff. ; under the Tu- 
 dors, 100 f., 103 ff.; as op- 
 posed to the Stuarts, 109 ff. ; 
 supremacy of after 1660, 
 141 ff. 
 
 Parliament, the "Short," 127; 
 the "Long," 128 ff., 140; 
 legislation of, 131 f. ; Presby- 
 terians expelled from, 134; 
 the "Bump," 134, 137. 
 
 Parliament Bill, of 1911, 184 f., 
 1941 
 
 People, the, non-existent in 
 eleventh century, 16; devel- 
 
 opment of in fifteenth cen- 
 tury, 105 f . 
 
 Petition of Eight, the, 114, 
 120 ff. 
 
 Pitt, William, earl of Chatham, 
 in the ministry against the 
 king's will, 161; George III 
 and, 162. 
 
 Pitt, William, the Younger, 
 struggle of with the House of 
 Commons, 164 f. 
 
 Precedents, historical, use of in 
 seventeenth century, 113 ff. 
 
 Presbyterian party, political at- 
 titude of, Scotch, 108, 126, 
 133 f.; expelled from 
 "Long" Parliament, 134. 
 
 Primogeniture, law of, 90. 
 
 Puritan party, effect of Charles 
 I 's policy upon, 122 ff . ; con- 
 stitutional ideas of, 123 f., 
 132, 137; in America, 124, 
 136, 140; reform of Parlia- 
 mentary representation, 172. 
 
 Race, meaning of in history, 5 f . 
 
 Reform Bill, of 1832, 171 ff., 
 185, 189; of 1867, 191 f.; of 
 1884, 192 f . 
 
 Reformation, the, international 
 effect of, 99; the English, 
 102 f. 
 
 Representative system, origin of, 
 59, 62. 
 
 Responsible ministry, the, 10, 51, 
 55 f., 112, 144 f., 153, 156; 
 impeachment and, 77 f . ; ori- 
 gin of the modern, 157; de-
 
 208 
 
 INDEX 
 
 velopment of, 157 ff., 165; 
 why not in American consti- 
 tution, 165 f . ; not understood 
 at end of eighteenth century, 
 165 ff. ; practical operation of, 
 179 ff., 187. 
 
 Bestoration, the, 141 f . ; com- 
 promise made at, 142 ff., 153. 
 
 Revolution, American, 163. 
 
 Eevolution of 1688, 147, 157. 
 
 Richard II, his attempt against 
 the constitution, 83 ff ., 93 ; 
 revolution against, 85. 
 
 Richard III, 84, 93, 96. 
 
 Roman Empire, influence of, 1 ; 
 conception of, 98; sovereignty 
 in, 119; Roman influence on 
 English constitution, 13 f . 
 
 Roses, Wars of the, 87, 93, 96, 
 105. 
 
 Settlement, act of, 158 f., 195. 
 
 Sheriff, the, 22 f., 27. - 
 
 Slavery, negro, in British colo- 
 nies, abolished, 171. 
 
 Sovereignty of the people, 8, 56, 
 89, 118, 133, 135 f., 148, 150, 
 170, 183, 185; declared by 
 Thomas Hooker in Connecti- 
 cut, 135 f. 
 
 Sovereignty in the state, 111 f., 
 113, 1181, 129, 143, 153; in 
 Parliament after 1660, 142 f. 
 
 Strafford, the earl of, 127; his 
 impeachment, 1 29 f . 
 
 Stuart period, 108 ff. 
 
 Succession to crown, right of 
 Parliament over, 89 f ., 94, 96, 
 109, 147. 
 
 Suffrage, Parliamentary, 92, 
 172 ff., 189, 191 ff. 
 
 Taxation, consent to, not in 
 Magna Carta, 45; brought 
 into, 67; growth of Parlia- 
 ment 's power over, 65 ff . ; 
 right of House of Commons 
 in, 92; non-Parliamentary by 
 Charles I, 124 f. 
 
 Treason, against king or nation? 
 129 f., 134 f. 
 
 Tudors, the, age of, 96 ff., 110. 
 
 United States, the, independ- 
 ent, 2; share in English his- 
 tory, 4; Anglo-Saxon in race, 
 5 f . ; impeachment in, 76 ; 
 constitution of, *138. 
 
 Victoria, Queen, her relation to 
 government, 180, 182. 
 
 Walpole, Sir Robert, develop- 
 ment of cabinet under, 160 f. 
 
 William I, the Conqueror, 16, 
 34, 39. 
 
 William II, Rufus, increases the 
 royal power, 30. 
 
 William III, 147, 152 ff., 162. 
 
 World domination, 98. 
 
 York, House of, title to crown, 
 90, 94 ; the constitution under, 
 93 f., 110.
 
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