700 



HIUTA1N. 



the security of the subject, as in Ilritnin. In 

 this way, royal orders which art- in violation of the 

 law, arc set aside either by a recurrence to express 

 liiniuitions or on the ground that tin- sovereign was 

 deceived. 3. The parliament ami tin- judicial tri- 

 bunals have also the right to discuss freely such royal 

 acts, and in particular parliament, and each individual 

 member of the upper house, has the right to make 

 remonstrances to the crown. Every peer of the realm 

 is by birth a counsellor of the crown, and as such has 

 a right to demand a private audience, for the purpose 

 of expressing his opinion on subjects of national con- 

 cern. For the case of an attempt on the part of the 

 crown to subvert the constitution, the English law 

 can make no provision, since the maxim, that the king 

 cannot even think any wrong, bars the possibility of 

 such a supposition. An open and direct attack on 

 tlie constitution, implies in itself an abdication of the 

 crown ; but as to what particular act constitutes such 

 an attack, no precedent exists. " If any future 

 prince," says the loyal Blackstone, " should endea- 

 vour to subvert the constitution by breaking the ori- 

 ginal contract between king and people, should vio- 

 late the fundamental laws, and withdraw himself out 

 of the kingdom, such a conjunction of circumstances 

 would amount to an abdication, and the throne 

 would thereby be vacant." 4. Individuals are pro- 

 tected from any abuses of the royal power by the 

 habeas corpus act (q. v.), the liability of the agents to 

 prosecution, the right of complaining to parliament, 

 and the liberty of the press. 



B. The Parliament is defined to be the legislative 

 brunch of the supreme power of Great Britain (al- 

 though it has been shown above to exercise both 

 executive and judicial functions), consisting of the 

 king, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the knights, 

 citizens, and burgesses, representatives of the com- 

 mons of the realm. The term is, however, often con- 

 fined to the two houses, and it is in this sense that we 

 shall use it. We have already spoken of the general 

 assembly, or great council of the realm, of the Saxon 

 period. The origin of the British parliament has 

 been traced to these Saxon assemblies ; but it cannot 

 be denied, that it acquired a new form in the Norman 

 times, when the sovereign summoned the chief of his 

 immediate vassals, three times a year, at Christmas, 

 Easter, and Whitsuntide, to consult about the public 

 affairs of the kingdom. In the reign of Henry 

 III., Simon de Montford, earl of 'Leicester, assembled 

 a parliament, fixed on a more popular basis than any 

 which had been previously summoned. Besides the 

 barons of his own party, and several ecclesiastics who 

 were not immediate tenants of the crown, he ordered 

 returns to be made of two knights from each shire , 

 and of deputies from the boroughs. This period 

 (1265) is commonly esteemed the epoch of the house 

 of commons in England ; and if, as some think, this 

 was rather a revival of an old custom, than an inno- 

 vation, it is certain that it was continued by Henry 

 III., after his liberation and restoration to power by 

 the battle of Evesham. These estates often sat to- 

 gether ; but, in difficult cases, each estate, the pre- 

 lates, barons, and knights of the shire with the 

 burgesses, sat by itself; but even in this case, they 

 gave their answer in common. In the reign of 

 Edward III. (132777), the separation of the three 

 estates into two houses, the house of lords, consisting 

 of the lords spiritual and the lords temporal, and the 

 house of commons, consisting of the knights, citizens, 

 and burgesses, became settled. The lords spiritual, 

 the archbishops and bishops, are supposed to hold 

 certain ancient baronies under the king, William I., 

 the Conqueror, Laving changed the spiritual tenure 

 frankalmoigne into the feudal or Norman tenure by 

 barony, which subjected their estates to all the feudal 



charges from which they were before exempt. Pre 

 vious to the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry 

 VIII., there were also 26 mitred abbots and 2 priors, 

 which made the whole number 54, the number of 

 lords temporal being, at that time, but 106. The 

 lords temporal consist of all the peers of the realm ; 

 some of them sit by descent, as do all ancient peers , 

 some by creation, as do all new made ones ; and 

 others, since the union of Scotland and Ireland, by 

 election. All the peers were not originally entit In 1 

 to a scat as a matter of right, but only those who were 

 expressly summoned by the king. .'Hie number is 

 indefinite, and may be increased at the pleasure of the 

 crown, which, however, cannot deprive a peer of the 

 dignity once bestowed. In the reign of queen Anne, 

 twelve new peers having been created at once, a bill 

 was introduced, and passed the house of lords, in the 

 reign of George I., for restricting this prerogative of 

 the crown ; but the bill was thrown out in the house 

 of commons, whose leading members are naturally 

 desirous of keeping open the avenues to the peerage. 

 No king lias made such frequent use of this preroga- 

 tive as George III. From 17GO to 1820, were 

 created 2 dukes, 16 marquises, 47 earls, 17 viscounts, 

 and 10G barons, in England alone, without reckoning 

 the Scottish and Irish titles. The whole number of 

 English peers, at the end of his reign (February, 

 1820), was 291. By the act of union with Scotland, 

 16 representatives of the Scottish peerage are elected 

 by the Scottish nobility, for life ; and 2ti are elected, 

 in the same manner, by the peers of Ireland ; so that 

 the whole number of lords temporal was 335. On 

 the union with Ireland, 4 lords spiritual were also 

 added from the clergy of that country (the 4 arch- 

 bishops and 18 bishops of Ireland sit by rotation). 

 The whole number of the house of lords was, there- 

 fore, inclusive of the 2 English archbishops and 22 

 bishops, at that time, 363. It is at present, 401. The 

 house of commons before the late reform bill, con- 

 sisted of 658 members ; 513 for England and Wales, 



45 for Scotland, and 100 for Ireland. The distribu- 

 tion of these members was proportioned neither to 

 population nor property. In the first place, the coun- 

 ties were of unequal extent ; yet every county sent 

 2 knights, elected by the freeholders. Each of the 

 12 counties of Wales, and of the 33 counties of Scot- 

 land, sent 1, except that the 6 smallest Scottish coun- 

 ties sent but 3, in the following way : Caithness and 

 Bute, 1 ; Clackmannan and Ross, 1 ; Nairn and Cro- 

 marty, 1. The 32 counties of Ireland sent each 2 

 members. Every freeholder, having a freehold of 

 the clear annual value of 40 shillings, was entitled to 

 vote for the knights. In Ireland, the 40 shilling 

 freeholders were disfranchised in 1829 (10 George 

 IV., c. 8), and a freehold of^he clear yearly value of 

 10 sterling required to give the right of voting. 

 The number of electors was very different in different 

 counties: in York, there were 16,000. In some 

 counties, the landed property of single families was so 

 great, that they returned one or both the members. 

 In Scotland, the case was still worse, as only the im 

 mediate vassals of 'the crown had the right of voting; 

 and their number was very small. In no county 

 was it greater than 220; in most of them it was 

 less than 100 ; and in Clackmannan it was but 

 16; in Nairn, 20; in Peebles, 34; in Suther- 

 land, 35. The 30 commissioners (as they were 

 called) from Scotland were elected by 2767 pro- 

 prietors. In Ireland, it was found necessary to ad- 

 mit the mere tenants for life to vote, on account of the 

 small number of proprietors. Of the 92 knights of 

 the shire, for the 40 English and 12 Welsh counties, 



46 were returned by single great proprietors, prin- 

 cipally nobles ; yet these were considered the most 

 independent members of the house. The citizens and 



