Parliament has been emphasized sufficiently.[194] Any sort of measure
upon any conceivable subject may be introduced and, if a sufficient
number of the members are so minded, enacted into law. No measure (p. 133)
may become law until it has been submitted for the consideration of
both houses, but under the terms of the Parliament Act of 1911 it has
been rendered easy for money bills, and not impossible for bills of
other sorts, to be made law without the assent of the House of Lords.
In the ordinary course of things, a measure is introduced in one
house, put through three readings, sent to the other house, put there
through the same routine, deposited with the House of Lords to await
the royal assent,[195] and, after having been assented to as a matter
of course, proclaimed as law. Bills, as a rule, may be introduced in
either house, by the Government or by a private member. It is
important to observe, however, in the first place, that certain
classes of measures must originate in one or the other of the houses,
e.g., money bills in the Commons and bills of attainder and other
judicial bills in the Lords, and, in the second place, that with the
growth of the leadership of the Government in legislation the
importance, if not the number, of privately introduced bills has
tended steadily to be decreased, and likewise the chances of their
enactment.
[Footnote 194: See p. 45.]
[Footnote 195: Except that money bills remain in
the custody of the Commons.]
*140. Public Bills: First and Second Readings.*--The steps through which
a public bill, whether introduced by the Government or by a private
member, must pass in the Commons are still numerous, but by the
reduction of some of them to sheer formalities which involve neither
debate nor vote the actual legislative process has been made much more
expeditious than once it was. The necessary stages in the enactment of
a bill in either house are, as a rule, five: first reading, second
reading, consideration by committee, report from committee, and third
reading. Formerly the introduction of a measure involved almost
invariably a speech explaining at length the nature of the proposal,
followed by a debate and a vote, sometimes consuming, in all, several
sittings. Nowadays only very important Government bills are introduced
in this manner. In the case of all other bills the first reading has
become a mere formality, involving nothing more than a motion on the
part of a member, official or private, for permission to bring in a
measure and the giving of leave by the House, almost invariably
without discussion. Upon all measures save the most important
Government projects, opportunity for debate is first afforded at the
second reading, although the discussion at this stage must relate to
general principles rather than to details. By the adoption of a motion
that the bill be read a second time "this day six months" (or at some
other date falling beyond the anticipated limits of the session) a
measure may at this point be killed.
*141. Public Bills: Later Stages.*--A bill which survives the (p. 134)
second reading is "committed." Prior to 1907 it would go normally to
the Committee of the Whole. Nowadays it goes there if it is a money
bill or a bill for confirming a provisional order,[196] or if, on
other grounds, the House so directs; otherwise it goes to one of the
four standing committees, assignment being made by the Speaker. This
is the stage at which the provisions of the measure are considered in
detail and amendments are introduced. After the second reading, however,
a bill may be referred to a select committee, and in the event that
this is done a step is added to the process, for after being returned
by the select committee the measure goes to the Committee of the Whole
or to one of the standing committees. Eventually the bill is reported
back to the House. If reported by a standing committee or, in amended
form by the Committee of the Whole, it is considered by the House
afresh and in some detail; otherwise, the "report stage" is omitted.
Finally comes the third reading, the question now being whether the
House approves the measure as a whole. At this stage any amendment
beyond verbal changes necessitates recommitment. The carrying of a
measure through these successive stages is spread over, as a rule,
several days, and sometimes several weeks, but it is not impossible
that the entire process be completed during the period of a sitting.
Having been adopted by the originating house, a bill is taken by a
clerk to the other house, there to be subjected to substantially the
same procedure. If amendments are introduced, it is sent back in order
that the suggested changes may be considered by the first house. If
they are agreed to, the measure is sent up for the royal approval. If
they are rejected and an agreement between the two houses cannot be
reached, the measure falls.[197]
[Footnote 196: See p. 138.]
[Footnote 197: The legislative process is summed up
aptly by Lowell as follows: "Leaving out of account
the first reading, which rarely involves a real
debate, the ordinary course of a public bill
through the House of Commons gives, therefore, an
opportunity for two debates upon its general
merits, and between them two discussions of its
details, or one debate upon the details if that one
results in no changes, or if the bill has been
referred to a standing committee. When the House
desires to collect evidence it does so after
approving of the general principle, and before
taking up the details. Stated in this way the whole
matter is plain and rational enough. It is, in
fact, one of the many striking examples of
adaptation in the English political system. A
collection of rules that appear cumbrous and
antiquated, and that even now are well-nigh
incomprehensible when described in all their
involved technicality, have been pruned away until
they furnish a procedure almost as simple, direct,
and appropriate as any one could devise."
Government of England, I., 277-278. The procedure
of the House of Commons on public bills is
described in Lowell, Government of England, I.,
Chaps. 13, 17, 19; Anson, Law and Custom of the
Constitution, I., 240-267; Low, Governance of
England, Chap. 4; Moran, English Government, Chap.
14; Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap.
113; Todd, Parliamentary Government, II., 138-163;
Ilbert, Parliament, Chap. 3; Redlich, Procedure of
the House of Commons, III., 85-112; and May,
Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and
Usage of Parliament, Chap. 18. See also G. Walpole,
House of Commons Procedure, with Notes on American
Practice (London, 1902), and C. P. Ilbert,
Legislative Methods and Forms (Oxford, 1901),
77-121.]
*142. Money Bills: Appropriation and Finance Acts.*--The (p. 135)
procedure followed in the handling of money bills differs materially
from that which has been described. Underlying it are two fundamental
principles, incorporated in the standing orders of the House of
Commons during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. One of
them prescribes that no petition or motion for the granting of money
shall be proceeded upon save in Committee of the Whole. The other
forbids the receiving of any petition, or the proceeding upon any
motion, for a charge upon the public revenue unless recommended from
the crown. Although these principles apply technically only to
appropriations, they have long been observed with equal fidelity in
respect to the raising of revenue. All specific measures for the
expending of money and all proposals for the imposing of fresh
taxation or the increase of existing taxation must emanate from the
crown, i.e., in practice from the cabinet. A private member may go no
further in this direction than to introduce resolutions of a wholly
general character favoring some particular kind of expenditure, except
that it is within his right to move to repeal or to reduce taxes which
the Government has not proposed to modify.
Two great fiscal measures are introduced and carried through annually:
the Appropriation Act, in which are brought together all the grants
for the public services for the year, and the Finance Act in which are
comprised all regulations relating to the revenue and the national
debt. Before the close of the fiscal year (March 31) the ministry
submits to the Commons a body of estimates for the "supply services,"
drawn up originally by the government departments, scrutinized by the
Treasury, and approved by the cabinet. Early in the session the House
resolves itself into a Committee of the Whole on Supply, by which
resolutions of supply are discussed, adopted, and reported. These
resolutions are embodied in bills which, for purposes of convenience,
are passed at intervals during the session. But at the close all of
them are consolidated in one grand Appropriation Act.[198] Upwards of
half of the public expenditures, it is to be observed, e.g., the
Civil List, the salaries of judges, pensions, and interest on the
national debt, are provided for by permanent acts imposing charges (p. 136)
upon the Consolidated Fund and do not come annually under parliamentary
review.
[Footnote 198: Before the lapse of a twelvemonth
unforeseen contingencies require invariably the
voting of "supplementary grants."]
*143. The Budget.*--As soon as practicable after the close of the fiscal
year the House, resolved for the purpose into Committee of Ways and
Means, receives from the Chancellor of the Exchequer his Budget, or
annual statement of accounts. The statement comprises regularly three
parts: a review of revenue and expenditure during the year just
closed, a provisional balance-sheet for the year to come, and a series
of proposals for the remission, modification, or fresh imposition of
taxes. Revenues, as expenditures, are in large part "permanent," yet a
very considerable proportion are provided for through the medium of
yearly votes. In Committee of Ways and Means the House considers the
Chancellor's proposals, and after they have been reported back and
embodied in a bill they are carried with the assent of the crown,
though no longer necessarily of the Lords, into law. Prior to 1861 it
was customary to include in the fiscal resolutions and in the bill in
which they were embodied only the annual and temporary taxes, but in
consequence of the Lords' rejection, in 1860, of a separate finance
bill repealing the duties on paper it was made the practice to
incorporate in a single bill--the so-called Finance Bill--provision
for all taxes, whether temporary or permanent. In practice the House
of Commons rarely refuses to approve the financial measures
recommended by the Government. The chamber has no power to propose
either expenditure or taxation, and the right which it possesses to
refuse or to reduce the levies and the appropriations asked for is
seldom used. "Financially," says Lowell, "its work is rather
supervision than direction; and its real usefulness consists in
securing publicity and criticism rather than in controlling
expenditure."[199] The theory underlying fiscal procedure has been
summed up lucidly as follows: "The Crown demands money, the Commons
grant it, and the Lords assent to the grant;[200] but the Commons do
not vote money unless it be required by the Crown; nor impose or
augment taxes unless they be necessary for meeting the supplies which
they have voted or are about to vote, and for supplying general
deficiencies in the revenue. The Crown has no concern in the nature or
distribution of the taxes; but the foundation of all Parliamentary
taxation is its necessity for the public service as declared by the
Crown through its constitutional advisers."[201]
[Footnote 199: Government of England, I., 288.]
[Footnote 200: Since the enactment of the
Parliament Bill of 1911, as has been observed, the
assent of the Lords is not necessary. See p. 112.]
[Footnote 201: The procedure involved in the
handling of money bills is described in Lowell,
Government of England, I., Chap. 14; Anson, Law and
Custom of the Constitution, I., 268-281; Walpole,
Electorate and Legislature, Chap. 7; Todd,
Parliamentary Government, II., 186-271; Ilbert,
Parliament, Chap. 4; Redlich, Procedure of the
House of Commons, III., 113-174; May, Treatise on
the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of
Parliament, Chap. 21. See also E. Porritt,
Amendments in the House of Commons Procedure since
1881, in _American Political Science Review_, Nov.,
1908. Among numerous works on taxation in England
the standard authority is S. Dowell, History of
Taxation and Taxes in England from the Earliest
Times to the Year 1885, 4 vols. (2d ed., London,
1888).]
*144. Private Bills: Nature and Procedure.*--In the matter of (p. 137)
procedure there is no distinction between a Government bill and a
private member's bill. Both are public bills. But a private bill is
handled in a manner largely peculiar to itself. A public bill is one
which affects the general interests of the state, and which has for
its object presumably the promotion of the common good. A private bill
is one which has in view the interest of some particular locality,
person, or collection of persons. The commonest object of private
bills is to enable private individuals to enter into combination to
undertake works of public utility--the building of railways or
tramways, the construction of harbors or piers, the draining of
swamps, the supplying of water, gas, or electricity, and the embarking
upon a wide variety of other enterprises which in the United States
would be regulated chiefly by state legislatures and city councils--at
their own risk and, in part at least, for their own profit. All
private bills originate in petitions, which must be submitted in
advance of the opening of the session during which they are to be
considered. Their presentation and the various stages of their
progress are governed by very detailed and stringent regulations, and
fees are required from both promoters and opponents, so that the
enactment of a private bill of importance becomes for the parties
directly concerned an expensive process, and for the Exchequer a
source of no inconsiderable amount of revenue.
After having been scrutinized and approved by parliamentary officials
known as Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, a private bill is
introduced in one of the two houses.[202] Its introduction is
equivalent to its first reading. At its second reading debate may take
place upon the principle of the measure, after which the bill, if
opposed, is referred to a Private Bill Committee consisting of four
members and a disinterested referee. If the bill be not opposed, i.e.,
if no adverse petition has been filed by property owners,
corporations, or other interests, the committee of reference, under a
standing order of 1903, consists of the Chairman and Deputy Chairman
of Ways and Means, two other members of the House, appointed by (p. 138)
the Committee of Selection, and the Counsel to Mr. Speaker. The
committee stage of a contested bill assumes an essentially judicial
aspect. Promoters and opponents are represented by counsel, witnesses
are examined, and expert testimony is taken. After being reported by
committee, the measure goes its way under the same regulations as
those controlling the progress of public bills.
[Footnote 202: To facilitate their consideration,
such measures are distributed approximately equally
between the two houses. This is done through
conference of the Chairmen of Committees of the two
houses, or their counsel, prior to the assembling
of Parliament.]
*145. Provisional Orders.*--Two things are, however, to be noted. The
first one is that while in theory the distinction between a public and
a private bill is clear, in point of fact there is no little
difficulty in drawing a line of demarcation, and the result has been
the recognition of an indefinite class of "hybrid" bills, partly
public and partly private in content and handled under some
circumstances as the one and under others as the other, or even under
a procedure combining features of both. The second fact to be observed
is that, in part to reduce expense and in part to procure the
good-will of the executive department concerned, it has become common
for the promoters of enterprises requiring parliamentary sanction to
make use of the device known as provisional orders. A provisional
order is an order issued, after minute investigation, by a government
department authorizing provisionally the undertaking of a project in
behalf of which application has been made. It requires eventually the
sanction of Parliament, but such orders are laid before the houses in
groups by the several departments and their ratification is virtually
assured in advance. It is pointed out by Lowell that during the years
1898-1901 not one-tenth of the provisional orders laid before
Parliament were opposed, and but one failed of adoption.[203]
[Footnote 203: Government of England, I., 385. On
private bill legislation see Lowell, I., Chap. 20;
Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I,
291-300; May, Treatise on the Law, Privileges,
Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament, Chaps. 24-29;
Courtney, Working Constitution of the United
Kingdom, Chap. 18; MacDonaugh, The Book of
Parliament, 398-420. The standard treatise upon the
subject is F. Clifford, History of Private Bill
Legislation, 2 vols. (London, 1885-1887). A recent
book of value is F. H. Spencer, Municipal Origins;
an Account of English Private Bill Legislation
relating to Local Government, 1740-1835, with a
Chapter on Private Bill Procedure (London, 1911).]
VII. THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN THE TWO HOUSES
"How can I learn the rules of the Commons?" was a question once put by
an Irish member to Mr. Parnell. "By breaking them," was the
philosophic reply. Representing, as it does, an accumulation through
centuries of deliberately adopted regulations, interwoven and overlaid
with unwritten custom, the code of procedure by which the conduct of
business in the House of Commons is governed is indeed intricate (p. 139)
and forbidding. Lord Palmerston admitted that he never fully mastered
it, and Gladstone was not infrequently an inadvertent offender against
the "rules of the House." Prior to the nineteenth century the rules
were devised, as is pointed out by Anson, with two objects in view: to
protect the House from hasty and ill-considered action pressed forward
by the king's ministers, and to secure fair play between the parties
in the chamber and a hearing for all. It was not until 1811 that
business of the Government was permitted to obtain recognized
precedence on certain days; but the history of the procedure of the
Commons since that date is a record of (1) the general reduction of
the time during which private members may indulge in the discussion of
subjects or measures lying outside the Government's legislative
programme, (2) increasing limitation of the opportunity for raising
general questions at the various stages of Government business, and
(3) the cutting down of the time allowed for discussing at all the
projects to which the Government asks the chambers' assent.[204]
[Footnote 204: Anson, Law and Custom of the
Constitution, I., 253.]
*146. Rules.*--The rules governing debate and decorum are not only
elaborate but, in some instances, of great antiquity. In so far as
they have been reduced to writing they may be said to comprise (1)
"standing orders" of a permanent character, (2) "sessional orders,"
operative during a session only, and (3) "general orders,"
indeterminate in respect to period of application. In the course of
debate all remarks are addressed to the Speaker and in the event that
the floor is desired by more than one member it rests with the Speaker
to designate, with scrupulous impartiality, who shall have it. When a
"division" is in progress and the doors are closed members speak
seated and covered, but at all other times they speak standing and
uncovered. A speech may not be read from manuscript, and it is within
the competence of the Speaker not only to warn a member against
irrelevance or repetition but to compel him to terminate his
remarks.[205] A member whose conduct is reprehensible may be ordered
to withdraw and, upon vote of the House, may be suspended from
service. Except in committee, a member may not speak twice upon the
same question, although he may be allowed the floor a second time to
explain a portion of his speech which has been misunderstood. Undue
obstruction is not tolerated, and the Speaker may decline to put a
motion which he considers dilatory.
[Footnote 205: On parliamentary oratory see Graham,
The Mother of Parliaments, 203-224.]
*147. Closure and the Guillotine.*--For the further limitation of debate
two important and drastic devices are at all times available. One is
ordinary closure and the other is "the guillotine." Closure dates
originally from 1881. It was introduced in the standing orders of (p. 140)
the House in 1882, and it assumed its present form in 1888.[206] It
sprang from the efforts of the House to curb the intolerably
obstructionist tactics employed a generation ago by the Irish
Nationalists, but by reason of the increasing mass of business to be
disposed of and the tendency of large deliberative bodies to waste
time, it has been found too useful to be given up. "After a question
has been proposed," reads Standing Order 26, "a member rising in his
place may claim to move 'that the Question be now put,' and unless it
shall appear to the Chair that such motion is an abuse of the Rules of
the House, or an infringement of the rights of the minority, the
Question 'that the Question be now put' shall be put forthwith and
decided without amendment or debate." Discussion may thus be cut off
instantly and a vote precipitated. Closure is inoperative, however,
unless the number of members voting in the majority for its adoption
is at least one hundred, or, in a standing committee, twenty.
A more generally effective device by which discussion is limited and
the transaction of business is facilitated is that known as "closure
by compartments," or "the guillotine." When this is employed the House
in advance of the consideration of a bill agrees upon an allotment of
time to the various parts or stages of the measure, and at the
expiration of each period debate, whether concluded or not, is closed,
a vote is taken, and a majority adopts that portion of the bill upon
which the guillotine has fallen. In recent years this device has been
employed almost invariably when an important Government bill is
reserved for consideration in Committee of the Whole. Its advantage is
the saving of time and the ensuring that by a given date final action
upon a measure shall have been taken. Prior to the middle of the
nineteenth century liberty of discussion in the Commons was all but
unrestrained, save by what an able authority on English parliamentary
practice has termed "the self-imposed parliamentary discipline of the
parties."[206] The enormous change which has come about is
attributable to two principal causes, congestion of business and the
rise of obstructionism. The effect has been, among other things, to
accentuate party differences and to involve occasional disregard of
the rights of minorities.[207]
[Footnote 206: The name was first employed in
1887.]
[Footnote 207: Redlich, Procedure of the House of
Commons, I., 133-212; Graham, The Mother of
Parliaments, 158-172. An excellent illustration of
the use of the guillotine is afforded by the
history of the passage of the National Insurance
Bill of 1911. See _Annual Register_ (1911),
232-236.]
*148. Votes and Divisions.*--When debate upon the whole or a portion of
a measure is terminated there takes place a vote, which may or may
not involve, technically, a "division." The Speaker or Chairman (p. 141)
states the question to be voted upon and calls for the ayes and noes.
He announces the apparent result and, if his decision is not
challenged, the vote is so recorded. If, however, any member objects,
strangers are asked to withdraw (save from the places reserved for
them), electric bells are rung throughout the building, the two-minute
sand-glass is turned, and at the expiration of the time the doors are
locked. The question is then repeated and another oral vote is taken.
If there is still lack of acquiescence in the announced result, the
Speaker orders a division. The ayes pass into the lobby at the
Speaker's right and the noes into that at his left, and all are
counted by four tellers designated by the Speaker, two from each side,
as the members return to their places in the chamber. This method of
taking a division has undergone but little change since 1836. Under a
standing order of 1888 the Speaker is empowered, in the event that he
considers a demand for a division dilatory or irresponsible, to call
upon the ayes and noes to rise in their places and be counted; but
there is seldom occasion for resort to this variation from the
established practice. The device of "pairing" is not unknown, and when
the question is one of political moment the fact is made obvious by
the activity of the party "whips" in behalf of the interests which
they represent.[208]
[Footnote 208: On the conduct of business in the
Commons see Lowell, Government of England, I,
Chaps. 15-16; Moran, English Government, Chap. 15;
Walpole, Electorate and Legislature, Chap. 8;
Ilbert, Parliament, Chap. 5; Redlich, Procedure of
the House of Commons, II., 215-264, III., 1-41;
May, Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings,
and Usage of Parliament, Chaps, 8-12; Medley,
Manual of English Constitutional History, 231-284;
Graham, The Mother of Parliaments, 225-258; and
MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 217-247.]
*149. Procedure in the Lords.*--The rules of procedure of the House of
Lords are in theory simple, and in practice yet more so. Nominally,
all measures of importance, after being read twice, are considered in
Committee of the Whole, referred to a standing committee for textual
revision, reported, and accorded final adoption or rejection. In
practice the process is likely to be abbreviated. Few bills, for
example, are actually referred to the revision committee. For the
examination of such measures as seem to require it committees are
constituted for the session, and others are created from time to time
as need of them appears, but the comparative leisure of the chamber
permits debate within the Committee of the Whole upon any measure
which the members really care to discuss. Willful obstruction is all
but unknown, so that there has never been occasion for the adoption of
any form of closure. Important questions are decided, as a rule, by a
division. When the question is put those members who desire to
register an affirmative vote repair to the lobby at the right of (p. 142)
the woolsack, those who are opposed to the proposal take their places
in the corresponding lobby at the left, and both groups are counted by
tellers appointed by the presiding officer. A member may abstain from
voting by taking his station on "the steps of the throne," technically
accounted outside the chamber. Prior to 1868 absent members were
allowed to vote by proxy, but this indefensible privilege, abolished
by standing order in the year mentioned, is likely never to be
revived.[209]
[Footnote 209: On the conduct of business in the
Lords see Anson, Law and Custom of the
Constitution, I., 281-291.]
CHAPTER VII (p. 143)
POLITICAL PARTIES
I. PARLIAMENTARISM AND THE PARTY SYSTEM
*150. Government by Party.*--Intimately connected with the parliamentary
scheme of government which has been described is the characteristic
British system of government by party. Indeed, not merely is there
between the two an intimate connection; they are but different aspects
of the same working arrangement. The public affairs of the kingdom at
any given time, as has appeared, are managed by the body of ministers,
acting with and through a supporting majority in the House of Commons.
These ministers belong to one or the other of the two great political
parties, with only occasional and incidental representation of minor
affiliated political groups. Their supporters in the Commons are, in
the main, their fellow-partisans, and their tenure of power is
dependent upon the fortunes of their party in Parliament and
throughout the country. They are at once the working executive, the
guiding agency in legislation, and the leaders and spokesmen of this
party. Confronting them constantly is the Opposition, consisting of
influential exponents of the contrary political faith who, in turn,
lead the rank and file of their party organization; and if at any time
the ministers in power lose their supporting majority in the Commons,
whether through adverse results of a national election or otherwise,
they retire and the Opposition assumes office. The parliamentary
system and the party system are thus inextricably related, the one
being, indeed, historically the product of the other. It was
principally through the agency of party spirit, party contest, and
party unity that there was established by degrees that single and
collective responsibility of ministers which lies at the root of
parliamentary government; and, but for the coherence and stability
with which political activity is invested by party organization, the
operation of the parliamentary system would be an impossibility. The
law of the British constitution does not demand the existence of
parties; on the contrary, it affords them no recognition or place. The
conventions, however, both assume and require them.
*151. Two-Party Organization.*--The relationship which subsists (p. 144)
between parliamentarism and party government is to be accounted for in
no small measure by the fact that the number of great parties in the
United Kingdom is but two. Certain continental nations, notably France
and Italy, possess the forms of parliamentary government, adopted
within times comparatively recent and taken over largely from Great
Britain. In these countries, however, the multiplicity of parties
effectually prevents the operation of the parliamentary system in the
fashion in which that system operates across the Channel. Ministries
must be made up invariably of representatives of a number of
essentially independent groups. They are apt to be in-harmonious, to
be able to execute but indifferently the composite will of the
Government coalition in the popular chamber, and, accordingly, to be
short-lived. Despite the rise in recent decades of the Irish
Nationalist and Labor groups, it is still true in Great Britain, as it
has been since political parties first made their appearance there,
that two leading party affiliations divide between themselves the
allegiance of the mass of the nation. The defeat of one means the
triumph of the other, and either alone is competent normally to govern
independently if elevated to power. This means, on the one hand, a
much more thoroughgoing predominance of the governing party than can
be acquired by a single party in France or Italy and, on the other
hand, a unique concentration of responsibility and, in turn, an
increased responsiveness to the public will. The leaders of the one
party for the time in the ascendancy govern the nation, by reason of
the fact that, _being_ the leaders of this party, they are selected
without doubt or equivocation to fill the principal offices of
state.[210]
[Footnote 210: For a fuller exposition of the
relations of party and the parliamentary system see
Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 24. The
best description of English parties and party
machinery is that contained in Chaps. 24-37 of
President Lowell's volumes. The growth of parties
and of party organization is discussed with
fullness and with admirable temper in M.
Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of
Political Parties, trans. by F. Clarke, 2 vols.
(London, 1902). A valuable monograph is A. L.
Lowell, The Influence of Party upon Legislation in
England and America, in _Annual Report of American
Historical Association for 1901_ (Washington,
1902), I., 319-542. An informing study is E.
Porritt, The Break-up of the English Party System,
in _Annals of American Academy of Political and
Social Science_, V., No. 4 (Jan., 1895), and an
incisive criticism is H. Belloc and H. Chesterton,
The Party System (London, 1911). There is no
adequate history of English political parties from
their origins to the present day. G. W. Cooke, The
History of Party from the Rise of the Whig and Tory
factions in the Reign of Charles II. to the Passing
of the Reform Bill, 3 vols. (London, 1836-1837)
covers the subject satisfactorily to the end of the
last unreformed parliament. Other party
histories--as T. E. Kebbel, History of Toryism
(London, 1886); C. B. R. Kent, The English Radicals
(London, 1899); W. Harris, History of the Radical
Party in Parliament (London, 1885); and J. B. Daly,
The Dawn of Radicalism (London, 1892)--cover
important but restricted fields. An admirable work
which deals with party organization as well as with
party principles is R. S. Watson, The National
Liberal Federation from its Commencement to the
General Election of 1906 (London, 1907). For
further party histories see p. 160, 166.]
II. PARTIES IN THE LATER EIGHTEENTH AND EARLIER NINETEENTH (p. 145)
CENTURIES
*152. Whigs and Tories.*--The seventeenth-century origins of political
parties in England, the development of Whigs and Tories following the
Revolution of 1688-1689, and the prolonged Whig supremacy during the
reigns of George I. and George II., have been alluded to in another
place.[211] During the eighteenth century the parliamentary system was
but slowly coming into its own, and again and again party lines all
but disappeared. The recurring rivalry of Whig and Tory elements,
however, brought about gradually a habitual recognition of the
responsibility of ministers, and this responsibility, in turn, reacted
to accentuate party demarcation. The efforts of George III. to revive
the royal prerogative had the effect of calling into existence a body
of new Tories, not Jacobite, but Hanoverian, who supported the king in
his purpose, and at the same time, of driving the forces of opposition
to a closer union and more constant vigilance. Throughout the century
the tone of party politics was continuously low. Bribery and other
forms of corruption were rife, and the powers of government, both
national and local, were in the hands regularly of an aristocratic
minority which ruled in its own interest. The high-water mark of
intrigue was reached in 1783 when the old Tories, led by Lord North,
allied themselves with the old Whigs, led by Charles James Fox, to
retain power and to curtail the influence of the king. The coalition
was unsuccessful, and the defeat of Fox's India Bill, in December,
1783, became the occasion of the younger Pitt's elevation to the
premiership, followed within three months by a national election which
precipitated an end of the seventy years of Whig ascendancy.
[Footnote 211: See p. 39.]
*153. The Tory Ascendancy, 1783-1830.*--Throughout the ensuing forty-six
years, or until 1830, the new Tory party continued almost
uninterruptedly in power, although it is to be observed that after
1790 the composition and character of this party underwent important
modification. The first decade of the period covered by the Pitt
ministry (1784-1801) was a time of incipient but active propaganda in
behalf of constitutional, financial, and social reform, and the
government was not disinclined to favor a number of the changes which
were projected. The outbreak and progress of the Revolution in (p. 146)
France, however, completely altered the situation. The great
landowners, who constituted the dominating element in the Whig party,
detested the principles of the Revolution and were insistent in season
and out upon war with France. They secured the support of the
parliamentary classes generally, and Pitt and his colleagues were
forced to surrender to the apprehensions and demands of these
elements. The war was declared by France, but it was provoked mainly
by the hostile attitude of the English people and government. At home
all reform propaganda was stamped out, and Tories and Whigs alike
throughout the quarter-century of international conflict pointed
habitually to the abuses by which the upheaval in France was
accompanied as indicative of what might be expected in England, or
anywhere, when once the way was thrown open for unrestrained
innovation.
The Tories were in power during most of the war period and in 1815
their position was seemingly impregnable. During the years covered by
the ministry of Lord Liverpool (1812-1827), however, their hold was
gradually relaxed. They sought to secure for themselves the support of
the masses and talked much of the aristocratic exclusiveness of the
Whigs, yet they made it their first concern to maintain absolutely
intact the constitution of the kingdom and the political and social
order by which it was buttressed. As long as England was engaged in a
life and death contest with Napoleon the staying of innovation was
easy, but after 1815 the task became one of rapidly increasing
difficulty. In the reign of George IV. (1820-1830) the more
progressive of the Tory leaders, notably Canning, Huskisson, and Peel,
recognized that the demands of the nation would have to be met at some
points, and a number of liberalizing measures were suffered to be
carried through Parliament, though none which touched directly the
most serious problems of the day. In 1830 the resignation of the
ministry of the Duke of Wellington marked the end of the prolonged
Tory ascendancy, and with a ministry presided over by Earl Grey the
Whigs returned to power. With the exception of a few brief intervals
they and their successors, the Liberals, held office thereafter until
1874.[212]
[Footnote 212: The party history of the period
1700-1792 is related admirably and in much detail
in W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the
Eighteenth Century, 7 vols. (new ed., New York,
1903). Beginning with 1815, the best work on
English political history in the earlier nineteenth
century is S. Walpole, History of England from the
Conclusion of the Great War in 1815, 6 vols. (new
ed., London, 1902). A good general account is
contained in I. S. Leadam, The History of England
from the Accession of Anne to the Death of George
II. (London, 1909), and W. Hunt, The History of
England from the Accession of George III. to the
Close of Pitt's First Administration (London,
1905). Briefer accounts of the period 1783-1830
will be found in May and Holland, Constitutional
History of England, I., 409-440, and in Cambridge
Modern History, IX., Chap. 22 and X., Chaps. 18-20
(see bibliography, pp. 856-870). Important
biographies of political leaders include A. von
Ruville, William Pitt, Graf von Chatham, 3 vols.
(Stuttgart and Berlin, 1905); W. D. Green, William
Pitt, Earl of Chatham (London, 1901); E.
Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, 3
vols. (London, 1875-1876); Lord P. H. Stanhope,
Life of Pitt, 4 vols. (London, 1861-1862); Lord
Rosebery, Pitt (London, 1891); and Lord J. Russell,
Life of Charles James Fox, 3 vols. (1859-1867).]
III. THE SECOND ERA OF WHIG [LIBERAL] ASCENDANCY, 1830-1874 (p. 147)
*154. The Liberals and Reform.*--The political history of this second
great era of Whig ascendancy falls into some four or five stages. The
first, extending from the accession of the Grey ministry in 1830 to
the parliamentary elections of 1841, was an epoch of notable reforms,
undertaken and carried through mainly by the Whigs, with the
co-operation of various radical elements and of discontented Tories.
This was the period of the first Reform Act (1832), the emancipation
of slaves in the British colonies (1833), the beginning of
parliamentary appropriations for public education (1833), the Factory
Act of 1833, the New Poor Law (1834), the Municipal Corporations Act
(1835), and a number of other measures designed to meet urgent demands
of humanity and of public interest. This was the time, furthermore, at
which the party nomenclature of later days was brought into use. The
name Whig was superseded altogether by that of Liberal, while the name
Tory, though not wholly discontinued in everyday usage, was replaced
largely by the term Conservative.[213] The Liberals were in these
years peculiarly the party of reform, but it must not be inferred that
the Conservatives resisted all change or withheld support from all
measures of amelioration.
[Footnote 213: The name Conservative was employed
by Canning as early as 1824. Its use was already
becoming common when, in January, 1835, Peel, in
his manifesto to the electors of Tamworth,
undertook an exposition of the principles of what
he declared should be known henceforth as the
Conservative--not the Tory--party.]
*155. From Peel to Palmerston.*--The second stage of the period under
survey was that comprised by the Conservative ministry of Sir Robert
Peel, 1841-1846, established in consequence of the decisive defeat of
the Whigs at the elections of 1841. The memorable achievement of the
Peel government was the repeal of the Corn Laws and the casting off of
substantially the whole of the protective system; but the tariff
policy of the premier divided the Conservative party into the
protectionists or old Conservatives, led by Disraeli and Lord Derby,
and the free trade or liberal Conservatives, led by Aberdeen and (p. 148)
Gladstone, and the breach enabled the Liberals, under Lord John
Russell, to recover office in 1847. A third stage of the period, i.e.,
1847 to 1859, was one of ministerial instability. Disputes between
Russell and Palmerston, the foreign minister, undermined the Liberal
position, and in 1852 the Conservatives, under the leadership of
Derby, returned to power. In 1853, however, the free trade
Conservatives joined the Liberals, overthrew Derby, and placed in
office a coalition ministry under Aberdeen. This government maintained
itself until 1855, when, by reason of discontent aroused by his
management of England's part in the Crimean War, Aberdeen resigned and
was succeeded by Palmerston, at the head of another Liberal ministry.
Foreign difficulties drove Palmerston from office early in 1858, and
the establishment of a second Derby ministry marked a brief return of
the Conservatives to control. Defeated, however, on a resolution
censuring the Government for the inadequacy of the reform bill
introduced by it in 1859, and also for the failure of Lord Derby to
prevent the war between France and Austria, the ministry resigned, in
April, 1859, and Lord Palmerston returned to power, with Gladstone and
Lord John Russell as colleagues. Gladstone's acceptance of office
under Palmerston marked the final severance of the Peelites from the
Conservative party and the abandonment of all hope of the
reconstruction for which both Gladstone and Derby had labored.
*156. Party Regeneration.*--A fourth, and final, stage of the Liberal
period covered the years 1859 to 1874. Its importance arises not
merely from the fact that the culmination of the power of the Liberals
during the nineteenth century was attained at this point, but from the
further fact that it was during these years that the Liberal party was
transformed and popularized so as to be made for the first time really
worthy of the name which it bears. As long as Palmerston lived the
Liberals of the old school, men who disliked radicalism and were
content with the reform of 1832, were in the ascendancy, but after the
premier's death, October 18, 1865, new ideas and influences asserted
themselves and a new Liberal party came rapidly to the fore. This
regenerated party, whose leader was Gladstone, rejected definitely the
ideal of _laissez-faire_, took over numerous principles of the
Radicals, and, with the watchwords of "peace, retrenchment, and
reform," began to insist upon a broader parliamentary franchise and
upon fresh legislation for the protection and general betterment of
the masses. The new liberalism was paralleled, however, by a new
conservatism, whose principal exponent was Disraeli. The new
Conservatives likewise advocated franchise reform and legislation for
the people, although they put more emphasis upon the latter than upon
the former; and they especially favored a firm foreign policy, (p. 149)
an extension of British interests in all parts of the world, and the
adoption of a scheme of colonial federation. They appeared, at least,
to have less regard for peace and for economy than had the Liberals.
The temper and tendencies of the parties as they gradually assumed
shape during the third quarter of the nineteenth century have been
characterized effectively by a recent writer as follows: "The parties
of which Gladstone and Disraeli were the chiefs were linked by
continuous historical succession with the two great sections or
factions of the aristocracy, or hereditary oligarchy, which ruled
Great Britain in the eighteenth century. But each had been transformed
by national changes since the Reform Bill. The Whigs had become
Liberals, the Tories had become Conservatives. The Liberal party had
absorbed part of the principles of the French Revolution. They stood
now for individual liberty, laying especial stress on freedom of
trade, freedom of contract, and freedom of competition. They had set
themselves to break down the rule of the landowner and the Church, to
shake off the fetters of Protection, and to establish equality before
the law. Their acceptance of egalitarian principles led them to adopt
democratic ideals, to advocate extension of the suffrage, and the
emancipation of the working classes. Such principles, though not
revolutionary, are to some extent disruptive in their tendency; and
their adoption by the Liberals had forced the Tory party to range
themselves in defense of the existing order of things. They professed
to stand for the Crown, the Church, and the Constitution. They were
compelled by the irresistible trend of events to accept democratic
principles and to carry out democratic reforms. They preferred, in
fact, to carry out such reforms themselves, in order that the
safeguards which they considered necessary might be respected.
Democratic principles having been adopted, both parties made it their
object to redress grievances; but the Conservatives showed a natural
predisposition to redress those grievances which arose from excessive
freedom of competition, the Liberals were the more anxious to redress
those which were the result of hereditary or customary privilege. The
harmony of the State consists in the equilibrium between the two
opposing forces of liberty and order. The Liberals laid more stress
upon liberty, the Conservatives attached more importance to order and
established authority."[214]
[Footnote 214: S. Leathes, in Cambridge Modern
History, XII., 30-31.]
*157. The First Gladstone Ministry.*--Upon the death of Palmerston in
1865 Lord John Russell became premier a second time, but in the course
of the following year a franchise reform bill brought forward by the
Government was defeated in the Commons, through the instrumentality
chiefly of a group of old Liberals (the "Adullamites") who (p. 150)
opposed modification of the electoral system, and by curious
circumstance it fell to the purely Conservative Derby-Disraeli
ministry of 1866-1868 not only to carry the first electoral reform
since 1832 but to impart to that reform a degree of thoroughness upon
which none save the most advanced radicals had cared to insist. The
results of the doubling of the electorate were manifest in the
substantial majority which the new Liberals acquired at the elections
of 1868, and the Disraeli ministry (Derby had retired early in the
year) gave place to a government presided over by the indubitable
leader of the new Liberal forces, Gladstone. The years 1868-1874,
covered by the first Gladstone ministry, were given distinction by a
remarkable series of reforms, including the disestablishment of the
Church in Ireland (1869), the enactment of an Irish land bill (1870),
the institution of national control of elementary education (1870),
and the adoption of the Australian ballot in parliamentary elections
(1872). Defeated at last, however, on an Irish university bill, the
ministry resigned, and when, at the elections of 1874, the country was
appealed to, the Conservatives obtained a clear parliamentary majority
of fifty seats. This was the first really dependable majority, indeed,
which the party had possessed since 1842. Disraeli became prime
minister and Derby minister for foreign affairs.[215]
[Footnote 215: The political history of the period
1830-1874 is covered very satisfactorily in W. N,
Molesworth, History of England from the Year
1830-1874, 3 vols. (London, 1874). Other general
works include: Walpole, History of England, vols.
3-6, extending to 1856; H. Paul, History of Modern
England, 5 vols. (London, 1904-1906), vols. 1-3,
beginning with 1845; J. McCarthy, History of Our
Own Times from the Accession of Queen Victoria, 7
vols. (1877-1905), vols. 1-3, beginning with the
events of 1837; J. F. Bright, History of England, 5
vols. (London, 1875-1894), vol. 4; and S. Low and
L. C. Sanders, History of England during the Reign
of Victoria (London, 1907). Briefer treatment will
be found in May and Holland, Constitutional History
of England, I., 440-468, III., 67-88, and in
Cambridge Modern History, XI., chaps. 1, 11, 12
(see bibliography, pp. 867-873). Biographies of
importance include S. Walpole, Life of Lord John
Russell, 2 vols. (London, 1889); H. Maxwell, Life
of the Duke of Wellington, 2 vols. (London, 1899);
J. Morley, Life of William E. Gladstone, 3 vols.
(London, 1903); J. R. Thursfield, Peel (London,
1907); W. F. Monypenny, Life of Benjamin Disraeli,
Earl of Beaconsfield (London, 1910-1912), vols.
1-2, covering the years 1804-1846; and S. Lee,
Queen Victoria, a Biography (rev. ed., London,
1904).]
IV. THE SECOND ERA OF CONSERVATIVE ASCENDANCY, 1874-1905
*158. The Question of Irish Home Rule.*--During the five years covered
by the life of the second Disraeli ministry British imperialism
reached flood tide. The reforms of the Gladstone government were (p. 151)
not undone, but the Conservative leaders interested themselves
principally in foreign and colonial questions, and home affairs
received but scant attention. The result was public discontent, and at
the elections of 1880 the Liberals obtained a parliamentary majority
of more than one hundred seats. It remained for the second Gladstone
government, established at this point, to adjust a number of
difficulties on the frontiers of the Empire; but the heart of the
ministry was not in this sort of work and the way was cleared as
speedily as possible for a return to the consideration of problems of
a domestic nature. In 1884 the Representation of the People Act was
carried, and in 1885 the Redistribution of Seats Act. But now, and
throughout a decade and a half following, the question which
overshadowed all others was that of Home Rule for Ireland. Upon this
issue, in its variety of aspects, governments henceforth rose and
fell, parties were disrupted and re-aligned. In 1885 the Parnellites,
or Irish Nationalists, incensed because of Gladstone's indifference to
Home Rule, and taking advantage of the ministry's unpopularity arising
from the failure of its Egyptian policy, compassed the defeat of the
Government on a measure relating to the taxing of beer and spirits.
The Marquis of Salisbury, who after the death of Lord Beaconsfield, in
1881, had become leader of the Conservatives, made up a government;
but, absolutely dependent upon the Irish Nationalist alliance and yet
irrevocably committed against Home Rule, the Salisbury ministry found
itself from the outset in an impossible position.
*159. The Liberal Unionists.*--The elections at the end of 1885 yielded
the Conservatives 249 seats, the Irish Nationalists 86, and the
Liberals 335, and January 28, 1880, the Salisbury ministry retired.
Gladstone returned to power and Home Rule took its place in the formal
programme of the Liberal party. Then followed, April 8, 1886, the
introduction of the first of Gladstone's memorable Home Rule bills.
The measure accorded the Irish a separate parliament at Dublin, cut
them off from representation at Westminster, and required them to bear
a proportionate share of the expenses of the Imperial Government. It
was thrown out by the Commons on the second reading. The Conservatives
opposed it solidly, many of the Irish Nationalists were dissatisfied
with it, and upwards of a hundred Liberal members, led by Joseph
Chamberlain, flatly refused to follow the majority of their
fellow-partisans in voting for it. Under the name of Liberal Unionists
these dissenters eventually broke entirely from their earlier
affiliation; and, inclining more and more toward the position occupied
by the Conservatives, they ended by losing their identity in the ranks
of that party. Their accession, however, brought the Conservatives
new vigor, new issues, and even a new name, for in more recent (p. 152)
days the term Conservative has been supplanted very generally by that
of Unionist.
*160. Second Salisbury and Fourth Gladstone Ministries.*--The defeat of
Home Rule was followed by a national election, the result of which was
the return of 316 Conservatives, 78 Liberal Unionists, 191 Gladstonian
Liberals, and 85 Irish Nationalists. The combined unionists had a
majority of 118, and July 26, 1886, the short-lived third Gladstone
government was succeeded by a second ministry presided over by the
Marquis of Salisbury. Home Rule, however, was not dead. During the
years of the Salisbury ministry (1886-1892) the authorities were
obliged to devote much attention to Irish affairs, and in 1892 the
Liberals were returned to office on a platform which stipulated
expressly Home Rule for Ireland.[216] The Conservative appeal to the
country at this time was made on the ground, first, that Home Rule
should be resisted, and, second, that the Government's achievements in
reform and constructive legislation entitled the party to continuance
in power; but in the new parliament there was an adverse majority of
forty, and August 18 Gladstone, for the fourth time, was requested to
form a ministry.[217] The elections of 1892 are of interest by reason
of the fact that they marked the first appearance of independent labor
representatives in Parliament. Miners' delegates and an agricultural
laborer had been elected before, but they had identified themselves in
all instances with the radical wing of the Liberals. There were now
returned, however, four members, including John Burns and Keir Hardie,
who chose to hold aloof and, as they expressed it, "to sit in
opposition until they should cross the house to form a labor
government." The Home Rule bill which Gladstone introduced February
13, 1893, differed from its predecessor of 1886 principally in not
excluding the Irish from representation at Westminster. It was passed
in the House of Commons, although by an ultimate majority of but
thirty-four, but in the Lords it was rejected by a vote of 419 to 41.
In the face of an obstacle so formidable as that imposed by the
adverse majority in the upper chamber it appeared useless to press the
issue. The Lords, whose power in legislation became at this point
greater than at any time since 1832, systematically balked the
Government at every turn, and March 3, 1894, Gladstone, aged and (p. 153)
weary of parliamentary strife, retired from office. His last speech in
the Commons comprised a sharp arraignment of the House of Lords, with
a forecast of the clash which eventually would lead (and, in point of
fact, has led) to the reconstitution of that chamber.
[Footnote 216: This was the "Newcastle Programme,"
drawn up at a convention of the National Liberal
Federation at Newcastle in October, 1891. Items in
the programme, in addition to Home Rule, included
the disestablishment of the Church in Wales and
Scotland, a local veto on the sale of intoxicating
liquors, the abolition of the plural franchise, and
articles defining employers' liability and limiting
the hours of labor.]
[Footnote 217: C. A. Whitmore, Six Years of
Unionist Government, 1886-1892 (London, 1892).]
*161. Third and Fourth Salisbury Ministries.*--For the time the Earl of
Rosebery, who had been foreign secretary, assumed the premiership and
there was no break in the Government's policy. In June, 1895, however,
the ministry suffered a defeat on the floor of the Commons, and the
Marquis of Salisbury was a third time invited to form a government.
The retirement of Gladstone brought to light numerous rifts within the
Liberal party, and when the new ministry, in July, appealed to the
country, with Home Rule as a preponderating issue, its supporters
secured in the Commons a majority of 152 seats over the Liberals and
Nationalists combined. The Liberal Unionists returned 71 members, and
to cement yet more closely the Conservative-Unionist alliance Lord
Salisbury made up a ministry in which the Unionist elements were ably
represented by Joseph Chamberlain as Colonial Secretary, Viscount
Goschen as First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Duke of Devonshire as
President of the Council. The premier himself returned to the post of
Foreign Secretary, and his nephew, Arthur J. Balfour, now become again
Government leader in the Commons, to that of First Lord of the
Treasury. The accession of the third Salisbury ministry marked the
beginning of a Unionist ascendancy which lasted uninterruptedly a full
decade. In 1902 Lord Salisbury, whose fourth ministry, dating from the
elections of 1900, was continuous with his third, retired from public
life, but he was succeeded in the premiership by Mr. Balfour, and the
personnel and policies of the Government continued otherwise
unchanged.[218]
[Footnote 218: The most useful works on the party
history of the period 1874-1895 are Paul, History
of Modern England, vols. 4-5, and Morley, Life of
W. E. Gladstone, vol. 3. J. McCarthy's History of
Our Own Times, vols. 4-6, covers the ground in a
popular way. Useful brief accounts are May and
Holland, Constitutional History of England, III.,
88-127, and Cambridge Modern History, XII., Chap. 3
(bibliography, pp. 853-855). An excellent book is
H. Whates, The Third Salisbury Administration,
1895-1900 (London, 1901).]
*162. Unionist Imperialism: the Elections of 1900.*--During the larger
part of this Unionist decade the Liberal party, rent by factional
disputes and personal rivalries, afforded but ineffective opposition.[219]
The Home Rule question fell into the background; and although (p. 154)
the Unionists carried through a considerable amount of social and
industrial legislation, the interests of the period center largely in
the Government's policies and achievements within the domain of
foreign and colonial affairs. The most hotly contested issue of the
decade was imperialism; the most commanding public figure was Joseph
Chamberlain; the most notable enterprise undertaken was the war in
South Africa. In 1900 it was resolved by the ministerial leaders to
take advantage of the public spirit engendered by the war to procure
for the Unionists a fresh lease of power. Parliament was dissolved
and, on the eve of the announcement of the annexation of the
Transvaal, a general election was held. The Liberals, led since early
in 1899 by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, charged the Unionists with
neglect of social and industrial matters, pledged themselves to
educational, housing, and temperance reform, and sought especially to
convince the electorate that they might be intrusted with safety to
defend the legitimate interests of the Empire. The Government forced
the fight upon the issue of South African policy almost exclusively,
and, representing the opposition as "Little-Englanders," went before
the people with the argument that from the course that had been
entered upon in South Africa there could be no turning back, and that
the present ministry was entitled to an opportunity to carry to
completion the work that it had begun. The appeal was altogether
successful. The Conservatives obtained 334 seats and the Liberal
Unionists 68--a total of 402; while the Liberals and Laborites carried
but 186 and the Nationalists 82--a total of 268. The Government
majority in the new parliament was thus 134, almost precisely that of
1895.[220]
[Footnote 219: The two principal aspirants to the
Gladstonian succession were Lord Rosebery and Sir
William Vernon-Harcourt. Rosebery represented the
imperialistic element of Liberalism and advocated a
return of the party to the general position which
it had occupied prior to the split on Home Rule.
Harcourt and the majority of the party opposed
imperialism and insisted upon attention rather to a
programme of social reform. From Gladstone's
retirement, in 1894, to 1896 leadership devolved
upon Rosebery, but from 1896 to the beginning of
1899 Harcourt was the nominal leader, although
Rosebery, as a private member, continued hardly
less influential than before.]
[Footnote 220: W. Clarke, The Decline in English
Liberalism, in _Political Science Quarterly_,
Sept., 1901; P. Hamelle, Les élections anglaises,
in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Nov., 1900.]
After the elections dissension within the Liberal ranks broke out
afresh. The Rosebery wing maintained that, the South African war
having been begun, it was the duty of all Englishmen to support it,
and that the Unionist government should be attacked only on the ground
of mismanagement. In July, 1901, Campbell-Bannerman, impelled by the
weakness of his position, demanded of his fellow-partisans that they
either ratify or repudiate his leadership of the party in the (p. 155)
Commons. Approval was accorded, but no progress was realized toward an
agreement upon policies. To careful observers it became clear that
there could be no effective revival of Liberalism until the war in
South Africa should have been terminated and the larger imperial
problems involved in it solved. For a time the only clear-cut
parliamentary opposition offered the Government was that of the
frankly pro-Boer Nationalists.
V. THE LIBERAL REVIVAL
*163. The Issue of Tariff Reform.*--The rehabilitation of the Liberal
party came during the years 1902-1905. It was foreshadowed by the
famous Chesterfield speech of Lord Rosebery, delivered December 16,
1901, although the immediate effect of that effort was but to
accentuate party cleavages,[221] and it was made possible by a
reversion of the national mind from the war to domestic questions and
interests. More specifically, it was the product of opposition to the
Government's Education Act of 1902, of public disapproval of what
seemed to be the growing arrogance of the Unionist majority in the
House of Lords, and, above all, of the demoralization which was
wrought within the ranks of Unionism by the rise of the issue of
preferential tariffs. In a speech to his constituents at Birmingham,
May 15, 1903, Mr. Chamberlain, but lately returned from a visit to
South Africa and now at the height of his prestige, startled the
nation by declaring that the time had come for Great Britain to
abandon the free trade doctrines of the Manchester school and to knit
the Empire more closely together, and at the same time to promote the
economic interests of both the colonies and the mother country, by the
adoption of a system of preferential duties on imported foodstuffs.
Later in the year the gifted exponent of this revolutionary programme
entered upon a vigorous speaking campaign in defense of his proposals,
and there was set up a large and representative tariff commission
which was charged with the task of framing, after due investigation, a
tariff system which would meet the needs alleged to exist. Among the
Unionist leaders there arose forthwith a division of opinion which
portended open rupture. The rank and file of the party was (p. 156)
nonplussed and undecided, and throughout many months the subject
engrossed attention to the exclusion of very nearly everything
else.[222]
[Footnote 221: In this speech, delivered at a great
Liberal meeting, there was outlined a programme
upon which Rosebery virtually offered to resume the
leadership of his party. The question of Boer
independence was recognized as settled, but
leniency toward the defeated people was advocated.
It was maintained that at the close of the war
there should be another general election. And the
overhauling of the army, of the navy, of the
educational system, and of the public finances, was
marked out as an issue upon which the Liberals must
take an unequivocal stand, as also temperance
reform and legislation upon the housing of the
poor.]
[Footnote 222: The literature of the Tariff Reform
movement in Great Britain is voluminous. The nature
of the protectionist proposals may be studied at
first hand in J. Chamberlain, Imperial Union and
Tariff Reform; speeches delivered from May 15 to
November 4, 1903 (London, 1903). Worthy of mention
are T. W. Mitchell, The Development of Mr.
Chamberlain's Fiscal Policy, in _Annals of American
Academy of Political and Social Science_, XXIII.,
No. 1 (Jan., 1904); R. Lethbridge, The Evolution of
Tariff Reform in the Tory Party, in _Nineteenth
Century_, June, 1908; and L. L. Price, An Economic
View of Mr. Chamberlain's Proposals, in _Economic
Review_, April, 1904. A useful work is S. H. Jeyes,
Life of Joseph Chamberlain, 2 vols. (London,
1903).]
In this situation the Liberals found their opportunity. All but
unanimously opposed to the suggested departure, they assumed with
avidity the rôle of defenders of England's "sacred principle of free
trade" and utilized to the utmost the appeal which could now be made
to the working classes in behalf of cheap bread. Mr. Chamberlain
denied that his scheme meant a wholesale reversal of the economic
policy of the nation, but in the judgment of most men the issue was
joined squarely between the general principle of free trade and that
of protection. Throughout 1904 and 1905 the Government found itself
increasingly embarrassed by the fiscal question, as well as by
difficulties attending the administration of the Education Act, the
regulation of Chinese labor in South Africa, and a number of other
urgent tasks, and the by-elections resulted so uniformly in Unionist
defeats as to presage clearly the eventual return of the Liberals to
power.
*164. The Liberals in Office: the Elections of 1906.*--Hesitating long,
but at the last bowing somewhat abruptly before the gathering storm,
Mr. Balfour tendered his resignation December 4, 1905. The Government
had in the Commons a working majority of seventy-six, and the
Parliament elected in 1900 had still another year of life. In the
Lords the Unionists outnumbered their opponents ten to one. The
administration, however, had fallen off enormously in popularity, and
the obstacles imposed by the fiscal cleavage appeared insuperable.
Unable wholly to follow Mr. Chamberlain in his projects, the premier
had grown weary of the attempt to balance himself on the tight rope of
ambiguity between the free trade and protectionist wings of his party.
Not caring, however, to give his opponents the advantage which would
accrue from an immediate dissolution of Parliament and the ordering of
an election which should turn on clear issues raised by the record of
the ten years of Unionist rule, he chose simply to resign and so to
compel the formation of a new government which itself should be (p. 157)
immediately on trial when the inevitable elections should come.
On the day of Mr. Balfour's resignation the king designated as premier
the Liberal leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who forthwith made
up a cabinet of rather exceptional strength in which the premier
himself occupied the post of First Lord of the Treasury, Sir Edward
Grey that of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Herbert H. Asquith that of the
Exchequer, Mr. Richard B. Haldane that of War, Lord Tweedmouth that of
the Navy, Mr. David Lloyd-George that of President of the Board of
Trade, Mr. John Burns that of President of the Local Government Board,
Mr. Augustine Birrell that of President of the Board of Education, and
Mr. James Bryce that of Chief Secretary for Ireland. January 8, 1906,
the "Khaki Parliament" was dissolved, a general election was ordered,
and the new parliament was fixed to meet at the earliest legal date,
February 13. The campaign that followed was the most animated, except
that of 1910, in recent British history. The Unionists, being
themselves divided beyond repair on the question of the tariff, pinned
their hope to a disruption of the Liberal forces on the issue of Home
Rule. The Liberal leaders, however, steadfastly refused to allow the
Irish question to be brought into the foreground. Recognizing that
Home Rule in the immediate future was an impossibility, but pledging
themselves to a policy contemplating its establishment by degrees,
they contrived to force the battle principally upon the issue of free
trade _versus_ protection and, in general, to direct their most
telling attack upon the fiscal record and fiscal policies of their
opponents. The result was an overwhelming Liberal triumph. In a total
of 6,555,301 votes,[223] 4,026,704 were cast for Liberal, Nationalist,
and Labor candidates, and only 2,528,597 for Conservatives and
Unionists. There were returned to the House of Commons 374 Liberals,
84 Nationalists, 54 Laborites, 131 Conservatives, and 27 Liberal
Unionists, assuring the Liberals and their allies a clear
preponderance of 354.[224] Prior to the elections careful observers
believed the return of the Liberals to power inevitable, but a victory
of such proportions was not dreamed of by the most ardent of the
party's well-wishers.[225]
[Footnote 223: The number of electors in the United
Kingdom in 1906 was 7,266,708.]
[Footnote 224: Of the Opposition 102 were Tariff
Reformers of the Chamberlain school, while but 16
were thoroughgoing "Free Fooders."]
[Footnote 225: M. Caudel, Les élections générales
anglaises (janvier 1906), in _Annales des Sciences
Politiques_, March, 1906; E. de Noirmont, Les
élections anglaises de janvier 1906; les résultats
généraux in _Questions Diplomatiques et
Coloniales_, March 1, 1906; E. Porritt, Party
Conditions in England, in _Political Science
Quarterly_, June, 1906.]
VI. THE RULE OF THE LIBERALS, 1906-1912 (p. 158)
*165. The Liberal Mandate.*--The Liberal ascendancy, made thus secure by
the elections of 1906, has continued uninterruptedly to the date of
writing (1912), and the years covered by it have been in many respects
the most important in the political history of modern Britain. The
significance of the period arises principally from the vast amount of
social and economic legislation that has been attempted within it. A
considerable portion of this legislation has been successfully carried
through and is now in effect. Some important portions, however, have
failed of eventual adoption, chiefly in consequence of the opposition
of the Unionist majority in the Lords; and a direct outcome of the
series of clashes between the Liberals and the Lords has been the
important constitutional readjustments comprised within the Parliament
Act of 1911 already described. Speaking broadly, the Liberals were
restored to power in 1906 because the nation desired the doing of
certain things which the Unionists seemed unable or disinclined to do.
Most important among these things were: (1) the reduction of public
expenditures and the curbing of national extravagance; (2) the
remission of taxation imposed during the South African war; (3) the
reform of the army; and (4) the undertaking of an extended programme
of social reform, embracing the establishment of old age pensions, the
remedying of unemployment, the regulation of the liquor traffic, and
the liberation of education from ecclesiastical domination. The nation
was solicitous, too, that the system of free trade be maintained
without impairment. To all of these policies, and more, the Liberals
were committed without reserve when they entered office.
*166. The Party's Performance.*--During the years intervening between
the elections of 1906 and those of 1910 the Liberal governments
presided over successively by Mr. Campbell-Bannerman and Mr.
Asquith[226] made honest effort to redeem the election pledges of the
party. They stopped the alarming increase of the national debt and
made provision for debt reduction at a rate equalled at but two brief
periods since the middle of the nineteenth century. They repealed
approximately half of the war taxes which were still operative when
they assumed office. In the matter of national expenditures they
accomplished a momentary reduction, although the normal increase (p. 159)
of civil outlays, the adoption of old age pensions, and, above all,
the demand of the propertied interests for the maintenance of a
two-power naval standard brought about eventually an increase rather
than a diminution of the sums carried by the annual budget. In
accordance with a scheme worked out by Mr. Haldane they remodelled the
army. They maintained free trade. They made no headway toward Home
Rule, but they enacted, in 1909, an Irish Universities bill and an
Irish Land Purchase bill which were regarded as highly favorable to
Irish interests. Above all, they labored to meet the demand of the
nation for social legislation. The prevalence of unemployment, the
misery occasioned by widespread poverty, the recurrence of strikes and
other industrial disorders, the growing volume of emigration, and
other related aspects of England's present social unsettlement, have
served to fix unshakably in the public mind the idea that the state
must plan, undertake, and bear the cost of huge projects of social and
industrial amelioration and of democratization and reform. In the
realization of those portions of their programme which relate to these
matters the Liberals have been only partially successful. They enacted
important labor legislation, including an eight-hour working day in
mines, a Labor Exchanges act, and a Trades Disputes act, and they
established, by act of 1908, an elaborate system of old age pensions.
By reason of the opposition of the House of Lords, however, they
failed to enact the bill of 1906 for the abolition of plural
voting, the hotly contested measure of 1906 providing for the
undenominationalizing of the schools, the Aliens Bill of 1906, the
Land Values Bill of 1907, the Licensing Bill of 1908, the London
Elections Bill of 1909, and, finally, the Finance Bill of 1909, whose
rejection by the Lords precipitated a dissolution of Parliament and
the ordering of the elections of January, 1910.
[Footnote 226: Mr. Campbell-Bannerman resigned
April 5, 1908. His successor was Mr. Asquith, late
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Most of the ministers
were continued in their respective offices, but Mr.
Lloyd-George became Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Mr. Winston Churchill President of the Board of
Trade, Lord Tweedmouth President of the Council,
and the Earl of Crewe Secretary of State for the
Colonies.]
*167. The Liberals Versus the Lords: the Elections of January,
1910.*--Four years of conflict with the overpowering Opposition in the
upper chamber brought the Liberals to a place from which they neither
could nor would go on until certain fundamentals were settled. The
first was the assurance of revenues adequate to meet the growing
demands upon the treasury. The second was the alteration of the status
of the Lords to make certain the predominance of the popular branch of
Parliament in finance and legislation. During the two years
(1909-1911) while these great issues were pending the nation was
stirred to the depths and party conflict was unprecedented in
intensity. On the side of finance, Unionists and Liberals were in
substantial agreement upon the policies--especially old age pensions
and naval aggrandizement--which rendered larger outlays inevitable;
they differed, rather, upon the means by which the necessary funds (p. 160)
should be obtained. The solution offered in the Lloyd-George budget of
1909 was the imposition of new taxes on land and the increase of
liquor license duties and of the taxes on incomes and inheritances.
The new burdens were contrived to fall almost wholly upon the
propertied, especially the landholding, classes. To this plan the
Unionists offered the alternative of Tariff Reform, urging that the
needed revenues should be derived from duties laid principally upon
imported foodstuffs, although the free trade members of the party
could not with consistency lend this proposal their support. The
rejection of the Finance Bill by the Lords, November 30, 1909,
sweeping aside as it did three centuries of unbroken precedent,
brought to a crisis the question of the mending or ending of the
Lords, and although the electoral contest of January, 1910, was fought
immediately upon the issue of the Government's finance proposals, the
question of the Lords could by no means be kept in the background. The
results of this election were disappointing to all parties save the
Nationalists. The final returns gave the Liberals 274 seats, the
Unionists 273, the Nationalists 82, and the Laborites 41. The Asquith
government found itself still in power, but absolutely dependent upon
the co-operation of the Labor and Nationalist groups. Upon the great
issues involved there was no very clear pronouncement, but it was a
foregone conclusion that the tax proposals would be enacted, that some
reconstitution of the House of Lords would be undertaken, and that
free trade would not yet be in any measure abandoned.[227]
[Footnote 227: R. G. Lévy, Le budget radical
anglais, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_,
Oct. 10, 1909; G. L. Fox, The Lloyd-George Budget,
in _Yale Review_ (Feb., 1910); E. Porritt, The
Struggle over the Lloyd-George Budget, in
_Quarterly Journal of Economics_, Feb., 1910; P.
Hamelle, Les élections anglaises, in _Annales des
Sciences Politiques_, May 15, 1910; S. Brooks, The
British Elections, in _North American Review_,
March, 1910; W. T. Stead, The General Elections in
Great Britain, in _Review of Reviews_, Feb., 1910.
A useful survey is Britannicus, Four Years of
British Liberalism, in _North American Review_,
Feb., 1910, and a more detailed one is C. T. King,
The Asquith Parliament, 1906-1909; a Popular
History of its Men and Measures (London, 1910). A
valuable article is E. Porritt, British Legislation
in 1906, in _Yale Review_, Feb., 1907. A French
work of some value is P. Millet, La crise anglaise
(Paris, 1910). A useful collection of speeches on
the public issues of the period 1906-1909 is W. S.
Churchill, Liberalism and the Social Problem
(London, 1909).]
*168. The Liberal Triumph: the Elections of December, 1910.*--The
developments of the ensuing year and a half have been sketched
elsewhere.[228] They comprised, in the main: (1) the re-introduction
and the enactment of the Finance Bill of 1909: (2) the bringing
forward by Mr. Asquith of the Government's proposals relative to (p. 161)
the alteration of relations between the two houses of Parliament; (3)
the adoption by the House of Lords of the principle of Lord Rosebery's
projected scheme of upper chamber reform; (4) the interruption and
postponement of the contest by reason of the death of Edward VII.; (5)
the failure of the Constitutional Conference in the summer of 1910;
(6) the adoption by the second chamber of the reform resolutions of
Lord Lansdowne; (7) the dissolution of Parliament, after an existence
of but ten months, to afford an opportunity for a fresh appeal to the
country on the specific issue of second chamber reform; (8) the
elections of December, 1910, and the assembling of the new parliament
in January, 1911; and (9) the re-introduction and the final enactment,
in the summer of 1911, of the Government's momentous Parliament Bill.
At the December elections the contending forces were so solidly
entrenched that the party quotas in the House of Commons remained all
but unchanged. Following the elections they stood as follows:
Liberals, 272; Unionists, 272; Nationalists, 76; Independent
Nationalists (followers of William O'Brien), 8; and Laborites, 42. The
Unionists gained substantially in Lancashire, Devonshire, and
Cornwall, but lost ground in London and in several boroughs throughout
the country. Still dependent upon the good-will of the minor parties,
the Government addressed itself afresh to the limitation of the veto
power of the Lords and to the programme of social amelioration which
during the recent months of excitement had been accorded meager
attention. Effort in the one direction bore fruit in the Parliament
Act, approved by the crown August 18, 1911; while upon the other side
substantial results were achieved in the enactment, December 16, 1911,
of a far-reaching measure instituting a national system of insurance
against both sickness and unemployment.[229]
[Footnote 228: See pp. 108-111.]
[Footnote 229: On the elections of December, 1910,
see P. Hamelle, La crise anglaise: les élections de
décembre 1910, in _Revue des Sciences Politiques_,
July-Aug., 1911; E. T. Cook, The Election--Before
and After, in _Contemporary Review_, Jan., 1911;
Britannicus, The British Elections, in _North
American Review_, Jan., 1911; and A. Kann, Les
élections anglaises, in _Questions Diplomatiques et
Coloniales_, Jan. 16, 1911. The best account of the
adoption of the Parliament Bill is A. L. P. Dennis,
The Parliament Act of 1911, in _American Political
Science Review_, May and Aug., 1912. For other
references see p. 115. On the National Insurance
Act see E. Porritt The British National Insurance
Act, in _Political Science Quarterly_, June, 1912;
A. Gigot, La nouvelle loi anglaise sur l'assurance
nationale, in _Le Correspondant_, May 10, 1912; O.
Clark, The National Insurance Act of 1911 (London,
1912); and A. S. C. Carr, W. H. Stuart, and J. H.
Taylor, National Insurance (London, 1912). The text
of the Insurance Act is printed in _Bulletin of the
United States Bureau of Labor_, No. 102
(Washington, 1912).]
VII. THE PARTIES OF TO-DAY (p. 162)
*169. Significance of "Liberal" and "Conservative."*--Of the four
political parties of Great Britain to-day one, the Irish Nationalist,
is localized in Ireland and has for its essential purpose the
attainment of the single end of Irish Home Rule;[230] another, the
Labor party, is composed all but exclusively of workingmen, mainly
members of trade-unions, and exists to promote the interests of the
laboring masses; while the two older and more powerful ones, the
Liberal and the Conservative or Unionist, are broadly national in
their constituencies and well-nigh universal in the range of their
principles and policies. It is essential to observe, however, that
while the programme of the Nationalists is, at least to a certain
point, perfectly precise, and that of the Laborites is hardly less so,
there is no longer, despite the heat of recurring electoral and
parliamentary combats, much that is fundamental or permanent in the
demarcation which sets off the two major parties the one against the
other. Even the names "Liberal" and "Conservative" denote in reality
much less than might be supposed. During the generation which began
with the Reform Act of 1832 the Liberals, indeed, extended the
franchise to the middle classes, reformed the poor law, overhauled the
criminal law, introduced a new and more satisfactory scheme of
municipal administration, instituted public provision for elementary
education, enacted statutes to safeguard the public health, removed
the disabilities of dissenters, and assisted in the overthrow of the
protective system. But if the Conservatives of the period 1830-1870
played, in general, the rôle implied by their party designation, their
attitude none the less was by no means always that of obstructionists,
and in the days of the Disraelian leadership they became scarcely less
a party of reform than were their opponents. Beginning with the Reform
Act of 1867, a long list of progressive and even revolutionizing
measures must be credited to them, and in late years they and the
Liberals have vied in advocating old age pensions, factory
legislation, accident insurance, housing laws, and other sorts of
advanced and remedial governmental action. The differences which
separate the two parties are not so much those of principle or of (p. 163)
political dogma as those of policy respecting immediate and particular
measures, and especially those of attitude toward certain important
organizations and interests. The Liberals assert themselves to be more
trustful of the people and more concerned about the popular welfare,
but the Conservatives enter a denial which possesses plausibility. It
is probably true that the Liberals have fostered peace and economy
with more resoluteness than have their rivals, yet so far as
expenditures go the Liberal administration to-day is laying out more
money than was ever laid out by a Conservative government in time of
peace. The Liberals are seemingly more regardful of the interests of
Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, but the difference is not so large as is
sometimes supposed.
[Footnote 230: A recent and important work on party
history is F. H. O'Donnell, A History of the Irish
Parliamentary Party, 2 vols. (London, 1910). See
Earl of Crewe, Ireland and the Liberal Party, in
_New Liberal Review_, June, 1901; E. Porritt,
Ireland's Representation in Parliament, in _North
American Review_, Aug., 1905; J. E. Barker, The
Parliamentary Position of the Irish Party, in
_Nineteenth Century_, Feb., 1910; and P. Sheehan,
William O'Brien and the Irish Centre Party, in
_Fortnightly Review_, Dec, 1910.]
*170. Present-day Issues.*--Aside from the tariff question (and the
Conservatives are far from united upon the Chamberlain programme), the
principal issues which separate the two leading parties to-day are
those which arise from the Conservative attitude of friendliness
toward the House of Lords, the Established Church, the landowners, and
the publicans. Most of the political contests of recent years have
been waged upon questions pertaining to the constitution of the upper
chamber, denominational control of education, disestablishment, the
taxation of land, and the regulation of the liquor traffic, and in all
of these matters the Liberals have been insisting upon changes which
their opponents either disapprove entirely or desire to confine within
narrower bounds than those proposed. In the carrying through of the
Parliament Bill of 1911, providing a means by which measures may be
enacted into law over the protest of the Conservative majority in the
Lords, the Liberals achieved their greatest triumph since 1832. The
party stands committed to-day to a large number of far-reaching
projects, including the extension of social insurance, the revision of
the electoral system, the establishment of Home Rule, and, ultimately,
a reconstitution of the second chamber as promised in the preamble of
the Parliament Act. At the date of writing (October, 1912) there are
pending in Parliament a momentous measure for the granting of Home
Rule to Ireland[231] and another for the overhauling of the electoral
system,[232] an important bill for the disestablishment of the Church
in Wales, a measure virtually annulling the principle involved in the
Osborne Decision,[233] and several minor Government proposals. The
recent victories of the Liberals have been won with the aid of Labor
and Irish Nationalist votes, and the concessions which have been, (p. 164)
and are being, made to the interests of these auxiliary parties may be
expected to affect profoundly the course of legislation during the
continuance of the Liberal ascendancy.[234] There are, it may be said,
indications that the Liberals possess less strength throughout the
country than they exhibited during the critical years 1910-1911. At
thirty-eight by-elections contested by the Unionists since December,
1910, the Liberals have suffered a net loss of eight seats; and one of
the contests lost was that in Midlothian, long the constituency
represented by Gladstone, which returned, in September, 1912, a
Conservative member for the first time in thirty-eight years. There is
a tradition that when a Liberal government is defeated in Midlothian
the end of that government is not far distant. Prophecy in such
matters, however, is futile. Meanwhile the Unionists continue to be
divided upon the tariff, but in the main they are united in opposition
to the overturning of the ancient constitutional system, although they
no longer generally oppose a moderate reform of the House of Lords. In
a speech delivered at Leeds, November 16, 1911, the new parliamentary
leader of the party, Mr. Bonar Law,[235] enumerated as the immediate
Unionist purposes (1) to oppose the Government's Welsh Disestablishment
scheme, (2) to resist Home Rule, (3) to labor for tariff reform as the
only practicable means of solving the problem of unemployment, and (4)
to defend at all costs the unity of the Empire.
[Footnote 231: W. J. Laprade, The Present Status of
the Home Rule Question, in _American Political
Science Review_, Nov., 1912.]
[Footnote 232: See p. 90.]
[Footnote 233: See p. 127.]
[Footnote 234: H. Seton-Karr, The Radical Party and
Social Reform, in _Nineteenth Century_, Dec, 1910.]
[Footnote 235: Mr. Law was chosen Opposition leader
in the Commons November 13, 1911, upon the
unexpected retirement of Mr. Balfour from that
position.]
*171. Party Composition.*--Both of the great parties as constituted
to-day possess substantial strength in all portions of the kingdom
save Ireland, the Liberals being in the preponderance in Scotland,
Wales, and northern England, and the Conservatives in the south and
southwest. Within the Conservative ranks are found much the greater
portion of the people of title, wealth, and social position; nearly
all of the clergy of the Established Church, and some of the
Dissenters; a majority of the graduates of the universities[236] and
of members of the bar; most of the prosperous merchants,
manufacturers, and financiers; a majority of clerks and approximately
half of the tradesmen and shopkeepers; and a very considerable mass,
though not in these days half, of the workingmen. During the second
half of the nineteenth century the well-to-do and aristocratic (p. 165)
Whig element in the Liberal party was drawn over, in the main, to the
ranks of the Conservatives,[237] and to this day the Liberal party
contains but a small proportion of the rank and wealth of the kingdom.
It is pre-eminently an organization of the middle and popular classes.
[Footnote 236: At the election of 1906, 21,505 of
the 25,771 votes recorded in the university
constituencies were cast for Unionist candidates.
Since 1885 not a Liberal member has been returned
from any one of the universities.]
[Footnote 237: The defection was largest at the
time of the Liberal Unionist secession in 1886.]
*172. The Independent Labor Party.*--The Labor party of the present day
is the product largely of the twin agencies of socialism and
trade-unionism. As early as 1868 two persons sought seats in
Parliament as representatives of labor, and at the elections of 1874
there were no fewer than thirteen labor candidates, two of whom were
successful. Great industrial upheavals of succeeding years, notably
the strike of the London dock laborers in 1889, together with the rise
of new organizations composed of unskilled labor and pronouncedly
infected with socialism, created demand for the interference of the
state for the improvement of labor conditions and led eventually to
the organization of the Independent Labor Party in 1893. The aim of
this party as set forth in its constitution and rules is essentially
socialistic, namely, "the establishment of collective ownership and
control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange"; and
the working programme as originally announced includes (1) a universal
eight-hour day, (2) the abolition of over-time, piece-work, and the
employment of children under fourteen, (3) state provision for the
ill, the invalid, and the aged, (4) free, non-sectarian education of
all grades, (5) the extinction by taxation of unearned incomes, and
(6) universal disarmament. To this programme has been added woman's
suffrage, a second ballot in parliamentary elections, municipal
control of the liquor traffic and of hospitals, and a number of other
proposed innovations. At the elections of 1895 the party named
twenty-eight candidates, but no one of them was successful and Keir
Hardie, founder and president, lost the seat which he had occupied
since 1892. In 1900 it attained, in the re-election of Hardie, its
first parliamentary victory, and in 1906 when the tide of radicalism
was running high seven of its candidates and sixteen of its members
were elected to the House of Commons.
*173. The Labor Party To-day.*--The Independent Labor Party has been
throughout its history avowedly socialistic. It has sought and
obtained the adherence of thousands of laboring men, some of whom are,
and some of whom are not, socialists. But its character is too radical
to attract the mass of trade-union members and alongside it there has
grown up a larger and broader organization known simply as the Labor
Party. A trade-union congress held at London in September, 1899, (p. 166)
caused to be brought together an assemblage of representatives of all
co-operative, trade-union, socialist, and working-class organizations
which were willing to share in an effort to increase the representation
of labor in Parliament. This body held its first meeting at London in
February, 1900, and an organization was formed in which the ruling
forces were the politically inclined but non-socialistic trade-unions.
The object of the affiliation was asserted to be "to establish a
distinct labor group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips,
and agree upon their own policy, which must embrace a readiness to
co-operate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in
promoting legislation in the direct interest of labor." The growth of
the organization was rapid, and in 1906 the name which had been
employed, i.e., Labor Representation Committee, gave place to that of
Labor Party. At the elections of 1906 twenty-nine of the fifty-one
candidates of this party were chosen to the House of Commons. Taking
into account eleven members connected with miners' organizations and
fourteen others who were Independent Laborites or Liberal Laborites
("Lib.-Labs."), the parliament chosen in 1906 contained a labor
contingent aggregating fifty-four members. Since 1908 there has been
in progress a consolidation of the labor forces represented at
Westminster and, although at the elections of 1910 some seats were
lost, there are in the House of Commons to-day forty-two labor
representatives. The entire group is independent of, but friendly
toward, the Liberal Government; and since the Liberals stand in
constant need of Labor support, its power in legislation is altogether
disproportioned to its numbers.[238]
[Footnote 238: Two satisfactory volumes on the
political activities of labor in the United Kingdom
are C. Noel, The Labour Party, What it is, and What
it wants (London, 1906) and A. W. Humphrey, A
History of Labor Representation (London, 1912). See
E. Porritt, The British Socialist Labor Party, in
_Political Science Quarterly_, Sept., 1908, and The
British Labor Party in 1910, ibid., June, 1910; M.
Alfassa, Le parti ouvrier au parlement anglais, in
_Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Jan. 15, 1908;
H. W. Horwill, The Payment of Labor Representatives
in Parliament, in _Political Science Quarterly_,
June, 1910; J. K. Hardie, The Labor Movement, in
_Nineteenth Century_, Dec, 1906; and M. Hewlett,
The Labor Party of the Future, in _Fortnightly
Review_, Feb., 1910. Two books of value on English
socialism are J. E. Barker, British Socialism; an
Examination of its Doctrines, Policy, Aims, and
Practical Proposals (London, 1908) and H. O.
Arnold-Foster, English Socialism of To-day (London,
1908).]
CHAPTER VIII (p. 167)
JUSTICE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
I. ENGLISH LAW
The preponderating principle in the governmental system of Great
Britain to-day is the rule of law, which means, in effect, two things:
first, that no man may be deprived of liberty or property save on
account of a breach of the law proved in one of the ordinary courts
and, second, that no man stands above the law and that for every
violation of the law some reparation may be obtained, whatever the
station or character of the offender.[239] Upon these fundamental
guarantees has been erected through the centuries a fabric of personal
liberty which lends the British nation one of its principal
distinctions. The influence of English concepts and forms of law has
counted for much, furthermore, in the shaping of continental legal
systems; and outside of Europe, and especially in the English-speaking
countries of both hemispheres, the law of England has been, within
modern times, much the most universal and decisive formative agency in
legal development.
[Footnote 239: The only exception to this general
proposition is afforded by the fact that the
sovereign may not be sued or prosecuted in the
ordinary courts; but this immunity, as matters now
stand, is of no practical consequence.]
*174. Statute Law and Common Law.*--From at least the seventeenth
century law has been conceived of in England as exclusively the body
of rules, of whatsoever origin or nature, which can be enforced in the
regular courts. As it has taken form, it falls into two principal
categories. The one is statute law, the other is the Common Law.
Statute law consists of specific acts of Parliament, supplemented by
by-laws, rules, and regulations made under parliamentary sanction by
public officials and bodies. Chronologically, it begins in 1235, in
the reign of Henry III.; and inasmuch as it is amended and amplified
at substantially every parliamentary session, the bulk of it has come
to be enormous. The more comprehensive and fundamental part of English
law, however, is, and has always been, the Common Law. The Common Law
is a product of growth rather than of legislation. No definite time
can be assigned for its beginning, for at as early a period as (p. 168)
there are reports of judicial decisions the existence of a body of
law not emanating from law-makers was taken for granted. Long before
the close of the Middle Ages the essentials of the Common Law had
acquired not only unquestioned sanction but also thoroughgoing
coherence and uniformity. Despite the greatly increased legislative
activity of modern times, it still may be said that the rules of the
Common Law are fundamental, the laws of Parliament but incidental.
Statutes regularly assume the principles of the Common Law, and are
largely, as one writer has put it, "the addenda and errata" of this
law, incomplete and meaningless save in co-ordination with the legal
order by which they are supported and enveloped.[240] Thus no act of
Parliament enjoins in general terms that a man shall pay his debts, or
fulfill his contracts, or pay damages for trespass or slander.
Statutes define the _modes_ in accordance with which these obligations
shall be met, but the obligations themselves are derived entirely from
the Common Law. It is, however, a fixed rule that where statutes fall
in conflict with the Common Law it is the statutes that prevail. The
limitless competence of Parliament involves the power to set aside or
to modify at any time any Common Law principle or practice, while, on
the other hand, no development of the Common Law can repeal an act of
Parliament.
[Footnote 240: W. M. Geldart, Elements of English
Law (London and New York, 1912), 9. As this author
further remarks, "if all the statutes of the realm
were repealed, we should have a system of law,
though, it may be, an unworkable one; if we could
imagine the Common Law swept away and the Statute
Law preserved, we should have only disjointed rules
torn from their context, and no provision at all
for many of the most important relations of life."]
*175. The Form of the Law.*--Statute law takes invariably, of course,
written form. The acts of Parliament are to be found in imposing
printed collections, to which a substantial volume is added every
year. Of the Common Law, however, there is no single or authoritative
text. The Common Law grew up originally as unwritten law, and in a
large measure it preserves still that character. The sources, however,
from which knowledge of it must be drawn are mainly in writing or in
print. The most important are (1) the decisions of the judges of the
English courts (reported anonymously in Year Books from the reign of
Edward I. to that of Henry VIII., and thereafter by lawyers reporting
under their own names) which from at least the sixteenth century
acquired weight as precedents and are nowadays all but absolutely
decisive in analogous cases; (2) the decisions of courts of other
countries in which there is administered a law derived from the English,
such decisions being, of course, not binding, yet highly influential;
and (3) certain "books of authority" written by learned lawyers (p. 169)
of earlier times, such as Coke's seventeenth-century Commentary on
Littleton's Tenures and Foster's eighteenth-century treatise on Crown
Law. Some small branches of the Common Law have, indeed, been codified
in the form of statutes, among them the law of partnership, that of
sales, and that of bills of exchange.
*176. The Rules of Equity.*--There is one other body of English law
which requires mention, namely, the rules of equity. These rules had
their origin in the administration of an extraordinary sort of justice
by the king's chancellor in mediæval times, a practice which arose
from the sheer necessity of redressing grievances occasioned by the
omissions or commissions of the regularly constituted tribunals.
Interference on the part of the chancellor, which started as a matter
of special favor in unusual cases, became gradually an established
practice, and, contrary to the original intention, there was brought
into existence a body of definite and separate rules of equity which
by the seventeenth century acquired systematic character, and likewise
a court of chancery in which these rules were at all times
enforceable. Reports of equity cases became continuous, and lawyers of
eminence began to specialize in equity procedure. The rules of equity
thus developed partake largely of the nature of the Common Law, of
which, indeed, they are to be considered, in effect, a supplement or
appendix; and practically, though not theoretically, they prevail as
against any provisions of the ordinary Common Law with which they may
be inconsistent. Their general purpose is to afford means of
safeguarding rights which exist in morals, but which the Common Law
courts cannot or will not protect. Until 1875 they were administered
by tribunals separate from the ordinary courts. Nowadays they are not
separately administered, but they preserve, none the less, their
highly distinctive character.[241]
[Footnote 241: Two monumental works dealing with
the earlier portions of English legal development
are F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of
English Law to the Time of Edward I., 2 vols.
(Cambridge, 1898) and W. S. Holdsworth, History of
English Law, 3 vols. (London, 1903-1909). The first
volume of Holdsworth contains a history of English
courts from the Norman Conquest to the present day;
the other volumes deal exhaustively with the growth
of the law itself. Books of value include H.
Brunner, The Sources of the Law of England, trans.
by W. Hastie (Edinburgh, 1888); R. K. Wilson,
History of Modern English Law (London, 1875). J. F.
Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, 3
vols. (London, 1883); Ibid., Commentaries on the
Laws of England, 4 vols. (London, 1908); O. W.
Holmes, The Common Law (Boston, 1881); and H. Broom
and E. A. Hadley, Commentaries on the Laws of
England, 4 vols. (London, 1869). A recent treatise
by a German authority is J. Hatschek, Englisches
Staatsrecht mit Berücksichtigung der für Schottland
und Irland geltenden Sonderheiten (Tübingen, 1905).
An incisive work is A. V. Dicey, Law and Public
Opinion in England in the Nineteenth Century
(London, 1905). A good single volume history of the
law is E. Jenks, Short History of the English Law
(Boston, 1912). A satisfactory introduction to both
the history and the character of the law is W. M.
Geldart, Elements of English Law (London and New
York, 1912). Another is F. W. Maitland, Outlines of
English Legal History, in Collected Papers
(Cambridge, 1911), II., 417-496. Other excellent
introductory treatises are Maitland, Lectures on
Equity (Cambridge, 1909), and C. S. Kenny, Outlines
of Criminal Law (New York, 1907). Maitland's
article on English Law in the Encyclopædia
Britannica, IX., 600-607, is valuable for its
brevity and its clearness. On the English
conception of law and the effects thereof see
Lowell, Government of England, II., Chaps. 61-62.
The character and forms of the statute law are
sketched to advantage in C. P. Ilbert, Legislative
Methods and Forms (Oxford, 1901), 1-76.]
II. THE INFERIOR COURTS (p. 170)
*177. The Hierarchy of Tribunals.*--In the majority of continental
countries a distinction is drawn between ordinary law and what is
known as administrative law, i.e., the body of rules governing the
conduct of public officials and, more particularly, the adjudication
of disputes between these officials, in their public capacity, and
private citizens. This differentiation of law entails customarily the
maintenance of administrative courts, separate from the ordinary
tribunals, in which administrative cases are heard and decided. In
Great Britain, however, there is no such thing as administrative law,
and in consequence there is no need of administrative courts. Public
officials, from the ministers downwards, are amenable to the processes
of the ordinary tribunals precisely as are all other classes of
people. Simpler, therefore, at this point than the continental systems
of courts, the English system is none the less one of the most
elaborate and complicated in the world. There are features of it which
in origin are mediæval, others which owe their existence to the
reforming enterprises of the earlier nineteenth century, and still
others which have a history covering hardly more than a generation.
Reduced to its simplest aspect, the system comprises, at the bottom,
three principal varieties of tribunals--the county courts for civil
cases and the courts of the justices of the peace and the borough
criminal courts for criminal cases--and, at the top, a Supreme Court
of Judicature in two branches, i.e., the High Court of Justice and
the Court of Appeal, in addition to the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council, the House of Lords, and a number of other occasional or
special central tribunals.[242]
[Footnote 242: It should be noted that the judicial
system herein to be described is that of England
alone. The systems existing in Scotland and Ireland
are at many points unlike it. In Scotland the
distinction between law and equity is virtually
unknown and the Common Law of England does not
prevail. In Ireland, on the other hand, the Common
Law is operative and judicial organization and
procedure are roughly similar to the English.]
*178. The County Courts.*--The county courts of the present day (p. 171)
were established under provision of the County Court Act of 1846, and
it is to be observed that they are in no manner connected with the
historic courts of the shire or county. They are known as county
courts, but in point of fact the area of their jurisdiction is a
district which not only is smaller than the county but bears no
relation to it. There are in England at present some five hundred of
these districts, the object of the arrangement being to bring the
agencies of justice close to the people and so to reduce the costs and
delays incident to litigation.[243] The volume of business to be
transacted in a district is insufficient to occupy a judge during any
considerable portion of his working time, and the districts are
grouped in some fifty circuits, to each of which is assigned by the
Lord Chancellor one judge who holds court in each district of his
circuit approximately once a month. The judge sits almost invariably
without a jury, although unless the amount involved is very small
either party to a suit is privileged to request the employment of a
jury of eight persons. The jurisdiction of the county courts has been
enlarged a number of times, notably by a statute of 1905, but it is
still not as extended as many people believe it should be. In a few
matters, such as certain claims of workingmen for injuries, this
jurisdiction is exclusive, but at most points it is concurrent with
the jurisdiction of the High Court of Justice, and Common Law, equity,
bankruptcy, probate, and admiralty cases may be brought, at the
discretion of the plaintiff, in either tribunal, subject to the
restriction that the county court may not assume jurisdiction when the
value in dispute exceeds a certain amount, commonly £100 in Common Law
cases and £500 in cases of equity. On all points of law appeal lies to
the High Court; but appeals are rare.[244]
[Footnote 243: Prior to 1846 justice in civil cases
could be obtained only at Westminster, or, in any
event, by means of an action instituted at
Westminster and tried on circuit.]
[Footnote 244: A few inferior civil courts of
special character have survived from earlier days,
but they are anomalous and do not call for comment.
It may be added that the judges of the county
courts receive a salary of £1,500.]
*179. The Justices of the Peace.*--The county courts exist for the
adjudication of civil cases exclusively. The corresponding local
tribunals for the administration of criminal justice are the courts of
the justices of the peace, and, in certain towns, other courts to
which the powers of the justices have been transferred. The county is
normally the area of the jurisdiction of the justices, and with a few
exceptions every county has a separate "commission of the peace,"[245]
consisting of all the judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature, all
members of the Privy Council, and such other persons as the crown, (p. 172)
acting through the Lord Chancellor, may designate as justices on
recommendation of the Lord Lieutenant or independently.[246] The Lord
Lieutenant is chief of the justices and keeper of the county records.
In many counties the list of justices contains three or four hundred
names (in Lancashire eight hundred), but it is to be observed that
some of the appointees do not take the oaths required to qualify them
for magisterial service and that the actual work is performed in each
county by a comparatively small number of persons. The justices serve
without pay, but the office carries much local distinction and
appointments are widely coveted. Until 1906 a property qualification[247]
was required of all save certain classes of appointees whose station
was deemed a sufficient guarantee of fitness, but in the year
mentioned the Liberals brought about its abolition. The justices are
drawn still, in large part, from the class of country gentlemen. They
are removable by the crown, but tenure is almost invariably for life.
[Footnote 245: The three ridings of Yorkshire and
the three divisions of Lincolnshire have separate
commissions, and there are a few "liberties" or
excepted jurisdictions.]
[Footnote 246: A royal commission created to
consider the mode of appointment reported in 1910;
but no important modification of the existing
practice was suggested.]
[Footnote 247: Ownership of land, or occupation of
a house, worth £100 a year.]
*180. Powers of the Justices.*--At one time the functions of the
justices of the peace were administrative as well as judicial, but by
the Local Government Act of 1888 functions of an administrative nature
were transferred all but completely to the newly created county
councils,[248] and the justices to-day are judicial officials almost
exclusively. Their judicial labors may be performed under three
conditions, namely, by justices acting singly, by two or more justices
meeting in petty sessions, and by the whole body of justices of the
county assembled in quarter sessions. The powers of a justice acting
alone are those largely of the ordinary police magistrate. He may
order the arrest of offenders; he conducts preliminary examinations
and releases the accused or commits them for indictment by a grand
jury; and he hears cases involving unimportant breaches of the law and
imposes small penalties. The justices sitting by twos in petty
sessions exercise an extensive summary jurisdiction over offenses
specified minutely by the law.[249] They sit without a jury, but
appeal can be carried, as a rule, to the justices at quarter sessions
and even, on questions of law, to the High Court. Four times a year
all of the justices of the county, or such of them as care to be
present, meet in quarter sessions. The jurisdiction here exercised is
in part appellate and in part original. The court tries, without a
jury, all cases appealed from petty sessions, and it tries, with a (p. 173)
jury, and after indictment by a grand jury, all cases involving
offenses not of a minor nature, save that the most serious offenses,
punishable in most instances with death or life imprisonment, are
reserved for trial in the assizes, i.e., by judges from Westminster
travelling on circuit. By means of the writs of _mandamus_ and
_certiorari_ the actual proceedings of quarter sessions are controlled
not infrequently by the superior courts.[250]
[Footnote 248: See p. 183.]
[Footnote 249: Chiefly by the Summary Jurisdiction
Act of 1879.]
[Footnote 250: Medley, Manual of English
Constitutional History, 392-400. An excellent
monograph is C. A. Beard, The Office of Justice of
the Peace in England, in _Columbia University
Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law_,
XX., No. 1. (New York, 1904).]
*181. Special Borough Arrangements.*--The smaller boroughs, having no
separate commissions of the peace, are for purposes of criminal
justice merely portions of the counties in which they lie. In many of
the larger ones, however, there have been set up judicial arrangements
in consequence of which the borough is withdrawn from the county
jurisdiction. Some have a commission of the peace but no quarter
sessions. In them the justices can exercise, in addition to the usual
functions of police magistrate, only a summary jurisdiction. Others
have a court of quarter sessions; though it is to be observed that
where this tribunal exists its work is performed actually by the
recorder, a barrister appointed by the crown and paid by the borough.
III. THE HIGHER COURTS
*182. Supreme Court of Judicature: the High Court.*--The higher
tribunals within the judicial system were once numerous and extremely
complex. As reconstituted, however, by the great Judicature Act of
1873, which, together with an Amending Act, took effect near the close
of 1875, they have acquired a considerable degree of orderliness and
even of simplicity. The measure of 1873 abolished the appellate
jurisdiction of the House of Lords, but the Amending Act three years
later rescinded this modification, and, as has been explained
elsewhere, the House of Lords is still a court of very great
importance.[251] Aside from the Lords, however, the higher courts of
the realm--the Chancery, the three great Common Law courts, the
Admiralty, Probate, and Divorce courts, and the intermediate courts of
appeal from these tribunals of first instance--were consolidated by
the legislation of 1873-1875 to form one grand organization, the
Supreme Court of Judicature, which was thereupon cut into two
branches, the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal. The High
Court of Justice was assigned a general jurisdiction, civil and
criminal, as a court of first instance and also as a court of (p. 174)
appeal from inferior courts. Its jurisdiction represents essentially
the aggregate of jurisdictions of the tribunals which it superseded,
and the various divisions into which it falls perpetuate in a measure
the names and functions of those tribunals. There were originally five
of these divisions. To-day there are three: Chancery, King's Bench
(with which the Common Pleas and Exchequer divisions were united by
order in council of December 16, 1880), and Probate, Divorce, and
Admiralty. Any High Court judge may sit in a tribunal belonging to any
one of these divisions. The Lord Chancellor presides over the Chancery
division, the Chief Justice over the King's Bench. The number of
judges is variable. The Chancery division contains at present six, the
King's Bench fifteen, and the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty division
but two. All save the Chancellor (who is a cabinet official, owing his
position to selection by the premier) are appointed by the crown upon
advice of the Chancellor, and all hold office during good behavior but
may be dismissed on addresses of the two houses of Parliament. The
judges of the High Court sit both singly and in groups. The ordinary
trial of cases is conducted, under a variety of stipulated conditions,
by a single judge, either at Westminster or on circuit. The judges who
go on circuit are taken as a rule from the King's Bench division, and
when both civil and criminal cases are to be adjudicated they travel
ordinarily in pairs, one attending to the civil and the other to the
criminal business. Judges sit also, without juries, in divisional
courts, composed of two or more members, to hear appeals from inferior
tribunals, motions for new trials, and applications for writs. The
High Court never sits as a single body, nor does even the Chancery or
the King's Bench division.
[Footnote 251: See p. 130.]
*183. Supreme Court of Judicature: the Court of Appeals.*--The second
branch of the Supreme Court of Judicature is the Court of Appeal. This
tribunal is composed of the Master of the Rolls and five Lords
Justices of Appeal, all appointed by the crown upon the advice of the
Lord Chancellor. The presidents of the three divisions of the High
Court are also members, but they rarely participate in the work of the
court; and since 1891 men who have occupied the office of Chancellor
are _ex-officio_ members, although they sit only if they choose to
comply with a request of the Chancellor that they do so. The court
performs its functions regularly in two sections of three members
each, although for some matters the presence of but two judges is
required. Sittings are held only in London. The jurisdiction of the
court is exclusively appellate, and its business consists very largely
in the hearing of appeals in civil cases carried from the High Court.
Prior to 1907 there was no general right of appeal in criminal cases.
By the Criminal Appeal Act of that year, however, there was (p. 175)
established a Court of Criminal Appeal to which any person convicted
may appeal on a question of law and, under stipulated conditions, on a
question of fact also. This tribunal is composed of the Lord Chief
Justice and eight judges of the King's Bench appointed by him with the
assent of the Lord Chancellor. It, therefore, has no immediate
connection with the Court of Appeal.
*184. The House of Lords and the Judicial Committee.*--Of superior
tribunals there are two others of large importance, the House of Lords
and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The functions of the
House of Lords as a court of last resort have been described
elsewhere.[252] By the act of 1876 the appellate jurisdiction of the
Lords, withdrawn by the act of 1873, was restored and provision was
made for the strengthening of the legal element in the chamber by the
creation of life peers to be known as Lords of Appeal in Ordinary.
Under existing law appeal lies to the Lords from any order or judgment
of the Court of Appeal in England and of all Scottish and Irish courts
from which appeals might, prior to 1876, be carried. The Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council was constituted in 1833 to assume
jurisdiction over a variety of cases formerly heard and decided
nominally by the Council as a whole. The composition of the body has
been changed a number of times. The members at present comprise the
Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, such members of the Privy Council as hold
or have held high judicial office, two other Privy Councillors
designated at pleasure by the crown, and, as a rule, one or two paid
members who have held judicial office in India or the colonies. The
membership is thus large, but only four members need be present at the
hearing of a case, and it may be pointed out that the working members
of the Committee are predominantly the four "law lords" who comprise
also the working judicial element in the House of Lords. It is the
business of the Judicial Committee to consider and determine any
matter that may be referred to it by the crown, but, in the main, to
hear final appeals from the ecclesiastical courts, from courts in the
Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, from the courts of the colonies
and dependencies, and from English courts established by treaty in
foreign countries. Its decisions are tendered under the guise of
"advice to the crown" and, unlike the decisions of the Lords, they
must bear the appearance, at least of unanimity.[253]
[Footnote 252: See p. 130.]
[Footnote 253: For brief descriptions of the
English judicial system see Lowell, Government of
England, II., Chaps. 59-60; Anson, Law and Custom
of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1., Chap. 10;
Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap. 14;
and Macy, The English Constitution, Chap. 7. As is
stated elsewhere (p. 169), the first volume of
Holdsworth's History of English Law contains an
excellent history of the English courts. A useful
handbook, though much in need of revision, is F. W.
Maitland, Justice and Police (London, 1885).
Perhaps the best brief account of the development
of the English judicial system is A. T. Carter,
History of English Legal Institutions (4th ed.,
London, 1910). Mention may be made of Maitland,
Constitutional History of England, 462-484, and
Medley, Manual of English Constitutional History,
318-383. Two valuable works by foreign writers are
C. de Franqueville, Le système judiciaire de la
Grande-Bretagne (Paris, 1898), and H. B. Gerland,
Die englische Gerichtsverfassung; eine
systematische Darstellung, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1910).
On the Judicature Acts of 1873-1876 see Holdsworth,
I., 402-417.]
IV. LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT, 1835 (p. 176)