I9OI-2 TRA'^SACTIONTS. 8I 



responsibility for the neglio-ence of Departmental officers and 

 servants. But, in order to understand how it came to dis- 

 charge this function we must take an extensive survey of 

 political history. 



The Norman Conquest imposed on England the 

 feudal system in all the vigor which it had obtained in 

 France at that period. By that system, the fabric of which 

 was built from foundation to turret of usurpation and force, 

 the King assumed not only the paramount ownership of all 

 the land within his dominions but also the political over- 

 lordship, which recognized no superior. This, of course, was 

 radically different constitutional doctrine from that which the 

 Anglo-Saxons had evolved before the Conquest. In the days 

 of the Heptarchy the supreme sovereignty of the people of 

 the several kingdoms was demonstrated in the fact that tlie 

 Witenagemot not only claimed but actually practiced the 

 rights to make laws, impose taxes, negotiate treaties, and, 

 mirabiU dictu^ even to elect and depose the King himself (r). 



Now the Witenagemot was not only the germ of the pre- 

 sent British Parliament, but we find in it all the constituent 

 parts of that august body. The King was generally present 

 in person, and at his summons came the prelates, the abbots, 

 the earldormen and \\\c tliegns — foreshadowing- the House of 

 Lords; on the other hand, the democratic element of Parlia- 

 ment potentially inhered in this ancient assembly by reason 

 of every freeman in the land theoretically having the 

 right to attend. We all can recall how our youthful imagina- 

 tions were fired by the picture drawn in our school books of the 

 crowd of freemen present at the deliberations of the Witan, 

 signifying their approval of, or dissent from, its decisions by 

 loud shoutings or the clash of arms. Professor Freeman 

 says (2) : 



Down at least to the Norman Conquest, the body which claimed to speik in the 

 name of the nation was, at all events in legal theory, the nation itself .... There 



(1) Cf. Green's Conquest of England, i. p II ; Kemble's Saxons, ii. 219. 

 2) Orowth of Const, cap. I. 



