duty of the committee of ways and means; to which chancellor of exchequer addresses financial statement called "The Budget;" origin of the "Consoli- dated Fund;" all moneys disbursed through permanent appropriation acts, or through an annual appropriation act that closes the financial business of the When questions can be put to ministers and other members; the rule adopted in 1854; government can be asked as to its intentions; answer may be refused upon ground of public interest; no question can be put that reflects upon crown or sovereign; question to members outside of the cabinet; how limited . . 563 The offence known as obstruction defined; down to 1877 rules failed to provide for closure of debate; urgency resolutions of 1881 and 1882; standing orders of 1887 now governing the subject. 6. Surviving Functions of the Privy Council: remains of its judicial authority as exercised by its judicial committee; its administrative functions; powers of crown and council have flourished and declined together; its numbers unlim- ited; tenure of a privy councillor, 6 Anne, c. 7; qualification and duties; oath 7. Great Acts of the Reformed Parliaments: how the franchise was with- Reform of the municipal system; corporations preserved as political engines; after reform bill of 1832, borough system reorganized on a broad popular basis; Royal Commission of 1833; Municipal Corporations Act, 1835; its leading features; after forty-two amendments, whole subject recast and condensed into Municipal Corporations Act, 1882 Municipal Corporations Acts not extended to the City of London; it retains its ancient constitution and boundaries; governed by three assemblies; charter granted by William the Norman; charter granted by John; chief legislative and executive organ, court of common council; City of London must be distin- guished from vast surrounding district known as the "Metropolis;" its area and Growth of greater London; lack of municipal organization in outlying districts; Decline of the parish; the parish as the agent of the state under the great act of Elizabeth (1601); results of that act as they appeared in 1834; system remod- elled by the act of 1834; the Poor Law Board; board of guardians; how the parish as such was affected by the new statutory system; a central bureau at London; how the civil parish was separated from the ecclesiastical; effect of Sir J. Hobhouse's Vestry Act, 1831; attempt to restore ancient popular constitu- tion of the parish; act permissive; repealed as to the Metropolis; has failed to check tendency of parish to become obsolete; still a unit for taxation and Declining importance of county government; period of its greatest influence; As military head of the county, sheriff superseded by lord lieutenant; revival of Decline of the ancient police system; liability of every man to serve as constable Subdivision of counties for judicial and parliamentary purposes; jurisdiction of ancient county courts limited to forty shillings; new system of county courts organized under act of 1846; their simple procedure; trial by jury; geographi- cal areas; all England divided, regardless of county lines, into 491 districts, which are grouped in circuits; county cut up into divisions for electoral pur- Origin of the system of national education; annual grant first applied through two religious societies; how Education Department of privy council was consti- tuted; Elementary Education Act of 1870; scheme embodied in it; duty of Education Department when local authorities fail; sources of the school fund; how the rate is levied in boroughs and parish; settlement of the religious diffi culty; a "conscience clause;" how far the system is compulsory; act of 1876 providing for School Attendance Committees; Mr. Mundella's act of 1880; act Creation of a central Board of Health under the act of 1848; how local boards created in municipal boroughs, excepting the Metropolis; Public Health Act of 1875 the present sanitary code; functions of original Board of Health finally vested in Local Government Board; how the boundaries of rural sanitary dis- tricts are defined; inadequacy of parish organization to demands of modern The Local Government Board; inadequacy of ancient local machinery forced creation of a controlling central authority; "power may be localized, but know- ledge to be most useful must be centralized;" Poor Law Board, 1847; Local Government Board, 1871; general scope of its powers and duties Transfer of personal obligations of citizenship to paid officials; the case as stated by Dr. R. Gneist; his predictions based upon an unfounded assumption; the new building raised upon the old groundwork Reform of the judicial system; creation of new county courts; how the curia regis was subdivided; three courts of common law; courts of chancery, admi- ralty, probate, and divorce; the conflict between law and equity; first effort made in 1850 to blend the two systems in one court; Report of Judicature Commission, 1869; Judicature Act of 1873; Supreme Court of Judicature; the High Court of Justice; how constituted; the court of appeal; appellate juris- diction of lords; judges composing court of appeal When Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875 took effect; consolidated court took possession of its new home in 1883; its code of procedure Summary of the growth of the modern ministerial system; Revolution of 1688 shifted the centre of gravity of the state from the crown to the popular cham- ber; the new doctrine, at first but little more than a political theory, finally established through the widening of the electorate from which the lower house draws its authority; a mighty transformation with but little change in outward forms; the real change embodied in the functions of the cabinet as a committee of the house of commons; success of George III. in retarding the growth of the new system; during a part of his reign it existed neither in theory nor in fact; the conception of sovereignty that then prevailed; only by contrasting that conception with existing conditions can we perceive what has actually taken place; old literary theory of coördination has yielded to the fact that exec- utive and legislative powers are now blended; medieval monarchy transformed BOOK IV. THE YORK AND TUDOR MONARCHY. THE FOUNDERS, CHAPTER I. EDWARD IV. AND HENRY VII. of the Con I. IN the preceding volume the attempt was made to draw Summary out, as one unbroken story, that marvellous process of change tents of and of growth through which the English constitutional sys- vol. i. tem passed during the period intervening between the Teutonic conquest and settlement of Britain and the end of the fifteenth century. The first step consisted of a somewhat careful examination of the primitive Teutonic system of local self-governing communities as originally established in Britain, — the next of the process through which those communities became bound up in the seven or eight larger aggregates generally known as the heptarchic kingdoms, finally united, after a prolonged and bitter internal struggle for supremacy, under the permanent sway of the royal house of Wessex. The Old-English Old-EngCommonwealth which thus finally emerged as the product of monwealth; a gradual process of aggregation was strongest in the cohesion and permanence of its local machinery, and weakest in the higher ranges of power, in its central or national organization. The national unity which grew up through the premature and imperfect concentration of powers around a single throne was continually strained and weakened by the counterforce of the provincial spirit, — a spirit which, at the critical moment, disabled the right arm of Harold and opened the way for the Norman Conquest. When the Norman came, he Norman brought with him the cohesive force which in the insular system had been wanting. He reorganized the central powers of the state, and, upon the Old-English system of local self-gov lish Com Conquest; erning communities as a substructure, he built up a system of central administration as a superstructure, and out of the fusion between the two has grown the modern constitution. This process of process of fusion involved no less than the adjustment of the fusion; compact and despotic system embodied in the Norman curia regis to the tenacious though less closely organized system of Old-English local freedom embodied in the township, the hundred, and the shire. The Norman administrative system was simply an incorporation of the new kingship to which the Conquest had given birth, —a kingship which strove to concentrate all the great powers of the state in the person of the sovereign, who acted ordinarily through his continual council, from which emanated all the more important acts of government, whether administrative, legislative, judicial, fiscal, or political. The story has been told of how the grinding weight of the feudal monarchy as thus organized was wantonly applied, during the Norman and early Angevin reigns, to the oppression of all classes and conditions of men; and how, under the heel of the common oppression, the united nation, composed both of English and Norman elements, finally awoke to a sense of its oneness. In the spirit of resistance thus aroused, the struggle for struggle for the charters had its birth, a struggle in which the contending forces were the new kingship, on the one hand, and the nation marshalled in the ranks of the three estates, on the other. The history of the struggle was then continued down to the great day at Runnymede, when the monarchy and the three estates entered into a treaty or compact which, without attempting to wipe out the permanent effects of the Conquest as embodied in the system of central administration to which it had given birth, underto such system should be permitted to freedom in the time to come. The fact was then emphasized that the great treaty of Runnymede marked the beginning, not the end of a conflict; that it embodied not a final statement of concessions to the nation from the crown, but rather a definite programme of reform, in which the nation resolved to persevere until it should be finally accepted by the crown as an irrevocable basis of government. The full fruit of the treaty of Runnymede was never finally secured to the nation until, under the lines which it defined, a representative national the char ters; treaty of Runnymede; define how far the immemorial |