INTRODUCTORY. 37 



may be recognised as the essential and invariable features in 

 the new institutions, the only change which should be admitted 

 was that affairs should be invariably administered under the 

 control of Parliament. Statesmen at the end of the seventeenth 

 century were alive to the scandalous anomalies of the system 

 of Parliamentary representation, and had no more liking for Old 

 Sarum and Gatton than their descendants had four generations 

 later. The well-meant but ill-directed efforts of the Commons 

 against Parliamentary corruption and electoral bribery were as 

 frequent as they were later on. They suspected the preten- 

 sions of the House of Lords, so novel and so arrogant, as 

 a section of politicians does in our days. But it seemed 

 dangerous to alter forms, especially if it were possible to put a 

 new spirit into the old forms. Hence the shape of the English 

 Parliament, full of anomalies as it was, remained unaltered for 

 nearly a century and a-half after the Revolution. 



The transfer of the executive from the king and his almost 

 irresponsible ministers to a responsible ministry and to 

 Parliament, especially to the House of Commons, opened a way 

 to an important and novel departure in the administration of 

 public business. For nearly twenty years indeed, Parliament 

 i a great extent undertook, and very unwisely undertook, many 

 of those functions which a maturer experience has conferred 

 the government, and the powers which a government was 

 >und to exercise were constantly crippled by the fact, that 

 ministers clung to office after they had ceased to possess the 

 ifidence of Parliament. This state of unsettlement is com- 

 icnted upon by Macaulay with his usual acuteness, accuracy, 

 id clearness. 



Now among these new duties which Parliament undertook 

 that of regulating trade. In a sense the exigencies of the 

 cnuc indirectly led to the parliamentary control of many 

 idustrics, and not infrequently to their serious injury. But I 

 referring to foreign joint stock trade and to the trade in 



From very early times tli h sovereigns had claimed 



