LAW AND POLITICS. 187 



Common Pleas ; but they are not prohibited from 

 pleading in other courts ; and all judges, who must 

 first be sergeants, call them brothers. They are 

 called by the king's mandate or writ, and some are 

 peculiarly king's sergeants, who plead for him in all 

 cases, especially of treason. 



The Power of the Parliament. 



The parliament can do every thing except make a 

 man a woman, and vice versa. 



In every government whatever be its form, a con- 

 trolling power, perfectly despotic, must exist some- 

 where. In England it rests with the parliament. 



Acts of Parliament. 



The most usual method of citing acts of parliament 

 is by naming the year of the king's reign in which the 

 statute was made, together with the chapter or par- 

 ticular act according to its numerical order ; Geo. II. 

 c. 4. All the acts of one session of parliament make 

 properly but one statute, and therefore when two 

 sessions have been held in one year, it is usual to 

 mention stat. 1. or 2. 



The House of Peers. 



Henry VII. could only summon 28 temporal 

 peers to his first parliament ; and only 36 were sum- 

 moned to the first parliament of Henry VIII. 



A.D. 1670, the temporal peers were 154, the pre- 

 lates 26=180. 



In 1735 the house of peers consisted of 194 no- 

 blemen and 26 bishops =220, which includes the 

 Scottish peers. The dukes were then 30. 



Since that date the dukedoms of Cleveland, Buck- 

 inghamshire, Montague, Dover, Kent, Newcastle, 



