Conven tion, after declaring itself a parliament, took a recess until October 19. turned into a Bill of Rights; new barriers against a possible catholic William and Mary on the 13th of February; second by the settlement of the principle that an English monarch is now as much the creature of an act of parliament as the pettiest tax-gatherer in his realm.” 1 Ten days after the accession of William and Mary, the royal assent was given to a bill which declared the convention a parliament, "notwithstanding any fault of writ or writs of summons; "2 and on the 20th of August, after seven months of active work, it took a recess until the 19th of October. Then Declaration it was that the act was passed which turned the Declaration of Right into a formal Bill of Rights, whereby two somewhat important additions were made to the original instrument. In order to make more effectual the barriers against a possible catholic sovereign, it was now enacted that every king or queen hereafter succeeding to the crown should repeat and subscribe sovereign, in full parliament the Declaration against Transubstantiation; that no person who should marry a papist should be capable of reigning in England; and that if an actual sovereign should contract such a marriage, the subject should be thereby aband against solved from allegiance. And in order to remove all doubts pensing upon the subject of the dispensing power, which the declarapower; tion had simply declared illegal "as it hath beene assumed and exercised of late," the dreaded and anomalous prerogative was at last entirely taken away. But while deficiencies in the no attempt declaration were thus being supplied, no attempt was made to freedom of secure freedom of speech and of the press to the nation as a discussion; whole. The original instrument, which entirely ignored the the dis to secure of commerce. right last named, only guaranteed the former so far as proregulation ceedings in parliament were concerned. In like manner the right of regulating English commerce, which the houses shortly afterwards silently claimed and obtained, in the discussions on the charter granted to the East India Company, was left as of old to the control of the crown.6 2. In order to give the highest possible security to the sovereignty with which the Revolution had crowned them, the 1 Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, bill or bills to be passed during this vol. iv. p. 44. 21 Will. and Mar. sess. I, c. I. 3 I Will. and Mar. sess. 2, c. 2. 4 " Except in such cases as shall be specially provided for by one or more present session of Parlyament." No such bill or bills were passed. withhold derived houses resolved to assume more perfectly than ever before the Legislation supplecontrol of both the purse and the sword. When the time came mentary to for the parliament of 16901 to make a permanent settlement Bill of Rights': of the revenue, it kept steadily in view the all-important fact that the life-grants made to the last two kings had rendered both largely independent of the coercion incident to the power of withholding supplies. Thus warned, the lower house began power to by agreeing that £1,200,000 2 should be the ordinary annual supplies; revenue of the crown in time of peace, to be provided from two distinct sources, the first consisting of hereditary dues de- revenue rived from fees and fines, from the royal domain, from wine from heredilicenses, from firstfruits and tenths, from the receipts of the tary dues post-office, and from that part of the excise which had been granted forever to Charles II. and his successors, in lieu of the fruits of feudal tenures surrendered upon those terms.3 To all these sources, which produced an annual income estimated at between four and five hundred thousand pounds, parliament added a grant of the excise, in addition to that which was and the hereditary, for the lives of William and Mary and that of the excise; survivor. Still there was a great deficit. The mainspring of mainspring of governgovernment, the second great source of revenue, was the cus- ment the toms, the port duties, settled for life upon Charles and James customs; successively, without which the state machinery could not be kept in motion, and with which a despotic king could rule without parliaments. Upon that vital resource therefore the house, when in grand committee on the supply, resolved to seize, and after several members had pressed for a life-grant to William of the customs or port duties, it was resolved to grant them granted only for a only for a limited term of four years, it being "taken for a short term general maxim, that the revenue for a certain and short term to secure was the best security that the nation could have for frequent parliaparliaments, and the question was settled on that ground." 1 It met March 20, under writs issued upon the dissolution of its predecessors in the month before. 2 Parl. Hist., vol. v. p. 193. It had been fixed at that sum at Restoration. See above, p. 361. 8 Macaulay, vol. ii. p. 155; Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, pp. 41, 42. 4 Commons' Journals, March 28, 1690, and March 1 and 20, 1688-89. 2 Will. and Mar. c. 3. Contin ued by 1 Anne, st. I, c. 7, and 1 Geo. I. 6 Parl. Hist., vol. v. p. 561; 2 Will. frequent ments; tion of supplies; origin of the "Civil List;" necessity for annual appropria The important principle thus settled as to the raising of the revenue was at the same time coupled with an equally important legal rule as to the manner of its expenditure. The principle imperfectly recognized in the reign of Charles II., that appropria- money voted by parliament could be appropriated only by its direction to certain specific heads of expenditure, has since the Revolution become the settled usage. Thus came into being at that time what is known as the "Civil List," a term originally used to designate the sources of revenue appropriated to produce a fund out of which was to be defrayed the expenses of the royal household and of certain civil officers, such as judges, ambassadors, and the like, of which a list had been laid before the house.1 The necessary result of this arrangement was annual appropriation bills, into which were introduced clauses forbidding the lords of the treasury under heavy penaltion bills; ties to order by their warrants the payment of any moneys in the exchequer except such as were specially appropriated. In that way the old idea that taxes once raised were in fact a gift from the houses to the crown was forced to give way to the rigid legal rule of the modern constitution, which provides that not a penny not a penny of the national revenue can be expended without without the authority of some act of parliament. The grant of the parliamen- port duties to William for four years was soon followed by the ity; resolve to make the vote of supplies an annual one, and so it supplies an came to pass that parliament must meet at least once a year in order to keep the machinery of the state in motion. As an addition to the perfect control over the executive power thus practically vested in the house of commons, those who were mindful of the fact that Charles II. had continued his second to the expenses of the royal household."— Macaulay, vol. ii. p. 155. tary author vote of annual one; 1 Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, vol. ii. pp. 43, 44. The amount of the civil list was fixed in 1689 at £600,000, and to that purpose was applied the hereditary excise, the other hereditary revenues, and the ordinary excise, what remained being set apart for other public expense and contingent expenditure. Parl. Hist., p. 193. "The expenses of the royal household are now entirely separated from the expenses of civil government; but, by a whimsical perversion, the name of Civil List has remained attached to that portion of the revenue which is appropriated 2 "This authority may be given by a permanent Act, as for example by the Civil List Act, 1 & 2 Vict. c. 2, or by the National Debt and Local Loans Act, 1887; or it may be given by the Appropriation Act, that is, the annual Act by which Parliament appropriates' or fixes the sums payable to objects (the chief of which is the support of the army and navy) which are not provided for, as is the payment of the National Debt, by permanent Acts of Parliament."— Dicey, The Law of the Constitution, p. 295. parliament for seventeen years resolved to prevent in future Triennial houses early in 1693, was destroyed by the royal veto; and then, after reenactment, received the royal assent in November Bill of 1694. of the following year.1 the army. Mutiny Act annual re neither be The statesmen of the Revolution, imbued with the hatred of Control of a standing army which began in the days of the Commonwealth, resolved, after providing that no such thing should exist in time of peace, without the consent of parliament, to make its support and discipline at all times dependent absolutely upon the will of that body. With that end in view was passed the first first Mutiny Act of 1689,8 whose object and principles are the of 1689; same as the Army Act, 1881, under which the regular army of the land is now substantially governed. The two vital principles underlying that system of government are these: first, without its that no pay can be issued to the troops without a previous enactment appropriation by parliament; second, that no officer or soldier army can can be punished for disobedience, nor any court-martial held, paid nor disciplined; save through an annual reënactment of the Mutiny Bill, without which "no man may be forejudged of life or limb, or subjected to any kind of punishment by martial law, or in any other manner than by the judgment of his peers." By Eng- every sollish law a soldier, although a member of a standing army, is citizen; still a subject endowed with all the rights and duties of an ordinary citizen, and as such is amenable to "the ordinary process of law." It is therefore only in his military capacity, only in his military which is simply superimposed upon his civil, that he can be capacity tried and punished by court-martial. The civil courts, how- tried by ever, reserve the right to determine what persons are subject courtmartial, to military law; and in the event that either an officer or a court-martial exercises authority over a soldier not authorized review by by that law, such courts also reserve the right of supervision, tribunals 6 "5 expressly. I Will. & Mar. c. 5, s. 6. dier still a subject to civil through habeas corpus proceed ings. Act of Settlement constitu stone of which may be enforced by prohibition, certiorari, or habeas corpus, according to the facts of the particular case.1 Thus by simply refusing to pass the Mutiny Act, which like the grant of supplies has been an annual measure since the Revolution,2 parliament can at a blow destroy the standing army, not only by withholding its supplies, but by dissolving the code of military law by which its discipline is maintained. Despite the supplementary legislation which has now been mentioned, the deficiencies of the Bill of Rights, made obvious tional cap by time and change of circumstances, were never fully remeRevolution, died until the passage in 1701 of the famous Act of Settlement, the constitutional capstone of the Revolution. In December, 1694, Queen Mary had been carried off by small-pox, and in July, 1700, the duke of Gloucester had died, leaving Anne, then only in her thirty-sixth year, childless. Ignoring James' son, the next in line, according to the ordinary rules, were the descendants of Henrietta of Orleans, the daughter of Charles I., whose daughter, Anna Maria, had married the catholic duke of Savoy, in April, 1694. Under that condition of things parliament resolved to cling to the Stuart blood, and and source yet secure a protestant succession, by vesting the crown in the house of Sophia, wife of the late and mother of the then elector of HanHanover; over, who was nearly the youngest of the thirteen children of of title of Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia, and daughter of James L5 At the time of the making of the Declaration of Right, William, anxious to unite the house of Hanover to the Grand Alliance, suggested that the reversion to the crown should be settled on Sophia, but the commons rejected the amendment as unnecessary in view of the fact that Anne was then pregnant. But as the death of the duke of Gloucester had left Anne as well as William childless, the Act of Settlement provided "That the 1 Manual of Military Law, pp. 177, 178. "It should, however, be noted that the courts of law will not, in general at any rate, deal with rights dependent on military status and military regulations." Dicey, The Law of the Constitution, p. 287, note 1. 2 Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iv. p. 45. 8 12 & 13 Will. III. c. 2. 4 "The duchess of Savoy entered an unavailing protest against the new settlement. She lived to see it take effect, dying on the 26th of August, 1728."— Bailey, p. 233. 5 As to her marriage, see above, p. 243. It has also been said that William, after the death of the duke of Gloucester, wished to set aside Anne in favor of Sophia. 1 Cf. Succession to the English Crown, Bailey, pp. 227-237. |