The device, none the less, met a serious need; in truth, it may be said to have been ultimately indispensable. "If fully carried out in practice," says a leading authority, "the compromise [involved in the Restoration of 1660] would mean the direct supervision and control of all lines of government policy and executive action by the legislative assembly. Such an arrangement was new to all human experience and naturally there existed no machinery by which it could be carried out in practice, no institutional forms through which a legislature could exercise an executive authority which in theory it did not have. Constitutional machinery for the practical operation of the compromise must be devised, and the origin and growth of this machinery is the origin and growth of the cabinet with the principle of ministerial responsibility to Parliament. Or we may state the fact in another way: the English system of vesting the executive authority in a cabinet virtually chosen by the legislature and held under a close control by it, was the method finally devised to carry out in the practical operation of the country the sovereignty of Parliament which had resulted from the constitutional advance of the seventeenth century." 1

In 1688 the cabinet was still a half-formed and misunderstood institution, and the "cabinet system" was not conceived of at all. But the events of that and the succeeding year, insuring the permanent supremacy of Parliament, made the development of cabinet government inevitable. William III retained complete freedom in the choice of ministers and considerable control over their actions. But his reign brought one important step forward. Failing in the attempt to govern with a ministry including both Whigs and Tories, the king, in 1693-96, gathered around himself a body of advisers composed exclusively of Whigs; and, although this was at first a matter of convenience and not of principle, it gradually became an axiom that the chief ministers should be selected from that party alone which had a majority in the House of Commons. Parliament, perceiving but not understanding what was going on, continued to be apprehensive; in the Act of Settlement, in 1701, it actually sought to stifle the new system, although that part of the measure which bore upon the subject was amended before being put into operation.2 The reigns of George I and George II-a period of fortyfive years in which the sovereign took no active part in public affairs became the great formative period in cabinet history. 1 Adams, Outline Sketch of English Constitutional History, 153. 2 See p. 97.

Successive groups of Whig ministers banded themselves firmly together to keep up a Whig majority in the House of Commons and to uphold the Hanoverian line against the Tories and Jacobites; and in 1742, when Sir Robert Walpole - the first of prime ministers-lost the support of this majority, he promptly, and as a matter of course, resigned. In this same period the king ceased to attend cabinet meetings, and Parliament, beginning to understand how the cabinet system enabled it to enforce the responsibility of ministers, for the first time. became willing to permit the old rights of impeachment and bill of attainder to be tacitly dropped. By the end of the eighteenth century the conception of the cabinet was definitely fixed as a body normally consisting (a) of members of Parliament (b) of the same political views (c) chosen from the party having a majority in the House of Commons (d) prosecuting a concerted policy (e) under a common responsibility to be signified by collective resignation in the event of parliamentary censure, and (f) acknowledging a common subordination to one chief minister. Not much before the middle of the nineteenth century, however, were the implications and bearings of the cabinet system fully and generally understood; and the system was for the first time clearly and fully described in writing in Walter Bagehot's "English Constitution," published in 1867.2

Beginnings of Political Parties. A fourth development in the period under survey is the rise of political parties and the fixing of the broader aspects of the present party system. In no nation to-day does party play a rôle of larger importance than in Great Britain. Unknown to the written portions of the constitution, and almost unknown to the ordinary law, party management and party operations are, none the less, of constant and fundamental importance in the actual conduct of government. The origins of political parties in England are not easy to trace. Some writers will not admit that there was true party organization and life before the reign of Anne, or even before the ripening of the cabinet system under the early Georges. Others

1 H. D. Traill, Central Government (London, 1881), 24-25.

2 On the rise of the cabinet see, in addition to the general histories, M. T. Blauvelt, Development of Cabinet Government in England (New York, 1902), Chaps. i-viii; E. Jenks, Parliamentary England; the Evolution of the Cabinet System (New York, 1903); H. B. Learned, "Historical Significance of the Term 'Cabinet' in England and the United States," in Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev., August, 1909; H. W. V. Temperley, "The Inner and Outer Cabinet and the Privy Council, 1679-1683," in Eng. Hist. Rev., Oct., 1912; W. R. Anson, "The Cabinet in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," ibid., Jan., 1914; E. R. Turner, "The Cabinet in the Eighteenth Century," ibid., Apr., 1917.

find party beginnings in the reign of James II; still others push them back, ministry by ministry, to the Restoration; Macaulay, indeed, thought that the first English parties were the Cavalier and Roundhead factions as aligned after the adoption of the Grand Remonstrance by the Long Parliament in 1641.

It will not strike far from the truth to say that the first groups that can be thought of as parties in the present-day sense of the term-groups having a distinctive theory of government, a reasonably stable and continuous organization, and a purpose to control legislation by means of a majority in the House of Commons were the Whigs and Tories, sprung from the Petitioners and Abhorrers, and, back of them, the Country and Court parties, of the reign of Charles II. Dividing upon the exclusion of James, as a Catholic, from the throne, and upon other issues, these two elements gradually assumed well-defined and fundamentally irreconcilable positions upon the great public questions of the day. Broadly, the Whigs stood for toleration in religion and for parliamentary supremacy in government; the Tories for Anglicanism and the royal prerogative. And long after the Stuart monarchy was a thing of the past these two great parties kept up their struggles upon these and other issues. After an unsuccessful attempt to govern with the coöperation of both parties William III, as has been stated, fell back upon the support of the Whigs. At the accession of Anne, in 1702, the Whigs were turned out of office and the Tories (who already had had a taste of power in 1698-1701) were put in control. They retained office during the larger portion of Anne's reign, but at the accession of George I they were compelled to give place to their rivals, and the period 1714-61 was one of unbroken Whig ascendancy. As has been pointed out, this was the period of the development of the cabinet system, and between the rise of that system and the growth of government by party there was a close and inevitable connection. By the end of the eighteenth century the rule had become inflexible that the cabinet should be composed of men who were in sympathy with the party at the time dominant in the House of Commons, and that whenever the nation elected to the popular branch a majority hostile to the ruling ministry, that ministry should forthwith resign.'

The Creation of "Great Britain": the Union with Scotland (1707). — Finally may be mentioned the important changes

On the rise of political parties consult W. C. Abbott, "The Origin of English Political Parties," in Amer. Hist. Rev., July, 1919. For other references see p. 241.

that flowed from the reorganization of the British Isles under a single compact governmental system. The United Kingdom, as we know it to-day, represents a union of four formerly independent countries England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. After much hard fighting, a large part of Wales was incorporated into English territory by Edward I in 1284. Six Welsh counties were created, on the English model; the English legal system was introduced; the Welsh bishoprics were brought under the influence of the ecclesiastical province of Canterbury. Henry VIII completed the work in 1535 by setting up six more counties and extending to both the counties and the leading towns the right of sending representatives (twenty-three in all) to the House of Commons. Thenceforth Wales was fully united, for governmental purposes, with England; indeed, "England " now includes Wales unless special exception is made.

Edward I, the conqueror of Wales, undertook also to subjugate Scotland. But the Scottish sense of nationality proved too strong to be overcome at that time, and the northern kingdom remained entirely separate until, in 1603, its sovereign, James VI, ascended the throne of England as James I. Barring a brief interval during the Protectorate, the legal relation between the two realms continued for more than a century to be simply that of a personal union through the crown. The kingdom north of the Tweed had its own parliament, its own established church, its own laws, its own courts, its own army, and its own system of finance. The arrangement produced a good deal of confusion and strife, and many people in both countries believed a closer union necessary and inevitable. By the opening of the eighteenth century Scottish national pride and local prejudice had been sufficiently overcome, and the desired change was made in an act of union passed by the two parliaments in 1707. The two neighboring lands were erected into a single kingdom, known henceforth as Great Britain. The Scottish parliament was abolished, and representation was given the Scottish nobility and people in the British parliament at Westminster. The quota of commoners was fixed at forty-five, thirty to be chosen by the counties and fifteen by the boroughs; that of peers at sixteen, to be elected by the entire body of Scottish peers at the beginning of each parliament. All laws concerning trade, excises, and customs were required to be uniform throughout the two countries; but the separate laws of each country - both common law and statutes upon other matters were continued in operation, subject to revision by the common Parliament.

The Scottish judicial system, which was in some respects superior to the English system, went on as before, and the two are still separate; the Scottish schools, which were also superior to the English, were to continue unchanged; and the independence of the established Presbyterian Church was guaranteed. The separate identity of Scotland persists also in most branches of administration. The union, however, is as close as the interests of good government require; and, although the Highlands were not entirely won over until after the middle of the century, the new system has proved in later days both successful and popular.1

The Creation of the United Kingdom: the Union with Ireland (1800). The history of Ireland, in most of its phases, is that of a conquered territory, and until late in the eighteenth century the country, in its constitutional status, approximated a modern non-self-governing colony. During the Middle Ages the common law and the political institutions of England were introduced in the settled portions of the island (the Pale), and a crude sort of parliament came into existence, although only the English settlers were represented, or greatly cared to be represented, in it. In 1494 the lord deputy, Sir Edward Poynings, convened a parliament at Drogheda which passed a law providing that thereafter no parliament should be held in Ireland until the Irish executive and privy council had informed the king of the legislation intended, and until the proposed laws had been approved by the king and his (English) council. Existing English laws, so far as applicable, were to have force in Ireland; and most parts of the old Statute of Kilkenny, passed in 1367 with a view to a strict segregation of the English and Irish peoples in the island, were revived. The first of these provisions, commonly known thereafter as Poynings's Law, effectually stifled parliamentary development for three hundred years. The parliament lived on, but it made no pretense of being representative of the whole population, and it had no independence and little initiative. In 1541 Irish members were admitted, but they never counted for much; after the failure of the rising in aid of James II, in 1688-89, Catholics were debarred, and a little later they were definitely excluded from voting at parliamentary elections. The government of Ireland in the eighteenth century was carried on by a Lord Lieutenant, or, in his absence, by lords justices, in

1 J. Mackinnon, The Union of England and Scotland (London, 1896). This scholarly volume covers principally the period 1695-1745. See also P. H. Brown, The Legislative Union of England and Scotland (Oxford, 1914). On the superiority of the Scottish public organization and life in 1707 see Alison, "The Old Scottish Parliament," in Blackwood's Mag., Nov., 1834.