down to it was Peel Act; sitting members from a list of forty-nine chosen by ballot, to which each party was entitled to add a representative of his own interests.1 That act, at first limited to one year and afterwards made perpetual,2 continued to regulate the proceedings renewed in election cases down to 1839, when Sir Robert Peel secured 1839, when the passage of a new measure designed to remove its admitted superseded deficiencies. Under the Peel Act the trial committee, first by the reduced to six members and then to five,3 was selected by what was called an impartial body, -the general committee of elections, in whose nomination one party or the other had necessarily a majority of one. In order to remove the lin- trial of all gering suspicion of partiality which that fact involved, the trial elections of contested elections was finally transferred in 1868 to the judges of superior courts of law, in accordance with a notable courts in precedent 5 drawn from the history of earlier time. contested transferred to the 1868. the lower strangers prohibit the of its pro No attempt to explain why the house of commons was not, Right of at the accession of George III., a free and representative organ house to through which the nation as a whole could impress its will exclude upon its rulers, would be at all complete, if no mention was and to made of the secrecy of its proceedings, resulting from its right publication to exclude strangers and to prohibit the publication of its pro- ceedings; ceedings and debates. The first named, and the most ancient of these rights, grew, no doubt, out of the necessity felt by motives for members to protect their consultations from the intrusion of emissaries who might come to report their doings and sayings either to the king himself, or to the courts of law. The privilege thus originating in a desire to protect the house against the arbitrary action of the crown was perverted, however, as time advanced, to the sinister purpose of concealing what occurred behind closed doors from the gaze of the constituencies. From the beginning the intrusion of strangers was punishable 1 The design was thus to constitute a tribunal composed of members of the house, and yet independent of it. Cf. Parl. Hist., vol. xvi. pp. 904-923. 2 Parl. Hist., vol. xvii. p. 1071. 8 2 & 3 Vict. c. 38; 4 & 5 Vict. c. 58; 11 & 12 Vict. c. 98. 4 fided, as regards England, to two By 11 Hen. IV. c. 1 the justices 5 31 & 32 Vict. c. 125. By that act, supplemented by the Parliamentary Elections and Corrupt Practices Act of 1879, and by 44 & 45 Vict. c. 68, the trial of controverted elections is con its exercise; sion of strangers was punished; effect of a motion to close the doors; press forbidden to publish either pro ceedings or debates without permission; by their immediate commitment or reprimand; and when the how intru interest excited by the debates finally induced a relaxation of that rule in favor of such as desired to attend, the right was reserved to dismiss them instantly whenever any member saw fit to call upon the speaker to enforce the orders of the house. Thus it became easy to cut off any orator who endeavored to make his influence felt beyond the walls of the chamber simply by a motion from his opponents to close the doors. When the press, as an organ of public opinion, attempted to invade the secrecy of parliament, the right to publish its proceedings and debates, without its consent, was strenuously resisted. Thus, in 1641, the Long Parliament, while permitting the publication of its proceedings under the title of "Diurnal Occurrences in Parliament," for the first time expressly prohibited the printing of speeches without leave of the house. Sometimes when a speech was acceptable to the dominant party its publication was permitted, but when it was not the offender Mr. Dering was liable to suffer the fate of Mr. Dering, who, for printing expelled for publishing a collection of his speeches, was expelled from the house and committed to the Tower, while his book was ordered to be burned by the common hangman. The entire restriction was continued in full force after the Restoration down to 1680, when the house, to insure a correct report of its transactions, ordered its "votes and proceedings "5 to be printed under the direction of the speaker. In order to avoid the prohibition still resting upon the publication of debates, resort was had down to the Revolution to news-letters and pamphlets as circulating mediums, which were supplemented by private memorandums and reports kept by members and published a long expedients time thereafter. Notwithstanding frequent resolutions passed employed after the Revolution to prevent news-letter writers from "givprohibition ing any account or minute of the debates," imperfect reports publication of the more important ones were published by the aid of notes taken by members, in Boyer's "Political State of Great Britain," the "London Magazine," and the "Gentleman's Magazine," with the names of the speakers omitted. How his own speeches; after the Restora tion, house ordered publication of its "votes and proceedings;" to evade against the of debates; 1 Commons' Journals, vol. xxxiii. pp. 8 Commons' Journals, vol. ii. pp. 209, 220. 4 February 2, 1641; Ibid., vol. ii. p. 411. 5 Ibid., vol. ix. p. 74. of Sir R. accurate and impartial such clandestine reports were we may infer not only from the humorous complaint made by Sir complaint Robert Walpole, of the ridiculous account published of a de- Walpole; bate that took place in 1738, but also from the confession of Dr. Johnson, who was then engaged in the manufacture of confession such reports, that "he took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it." 1 of Dr. Johnson. opinion as Whitefield Wesleys; During the period in which the various causes which have Public now been briefly reviewed were making the house of com- a factor in mons "the representative of nominal boroughs, of ruined and politics; exterminated towns, of noble families, of wealthy individuals, of foreign potentates," a new political force was being rapidly evolved out of the moral consciousness of the people that was destined after a prolonged and bitter struggle to abolish alike the antiquated customs and the modern corruptions that rendered it impossible for the representative chamber to be, as Burke expressed it, "the express image of the feelings of the nation." While Whitefield and the Wesleys were bringing influence of about by their asceticism and their stirring eloquence a revival and the of religious enthusiasm, William Pitt, the grandson of a wealthy William governor of Madras, and the fiery spokesman of that younger Pitt group of public men generally known as "the patriots," 2 undertook to break the political torpor, the studied indifference to all nobler political aims, so long and so carefully nourished by the cold cynicism of Walpole. Pitt was the first to see that out of the progress of English commerce and industry there had been born a great middle class that was fast becom- born of the growing ing the dominant force in the nation, and yet without adequate middle representation in the legislature. It was from that growing class inadequately element that Pitt had sprung, and it was by virtue of its power represented and sympathy that he hoped to rule. When he attempted legislature; to save Byng by appealing to the sentiment of parliament, George II. taunted him with the reminder: "You have taught me to look for the voice of my people in other places than within the house of commons; " and when upon the acces 1 Upon the whole subject, see Prefaces to Cobbett's Parl. Hist., vols. ix.-xiii.; Walpole's Mem., vol. iv. p. 278; Parl. Hist., vol. x. pp. 300, 800; Cavendish, Deb., vol. ii. pp. 244, 257; May, Const. Hist., vol. ii. pp. 34-60. 2 These were reinforced by the younger Whigs, whom Walpole called the " boys." 8 Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iv. p. 180. in the first to advocate a reform of the repre sion of George III. his purpose to declare war against Spain was successfully resisted by his colleagues, he resigned office, declaring to the cabinet council that he had been called to power by the voice of the people, to whom he considered himself accountable for his conduct. It was as the leader of this new political force embodied in the corporate person of the people, whose aggregate voice made up what was called public opinion, that Pitt won his highest title of "the great commoner." In the hope of establishing harmony between the political machinery of the state and the new force by which it was destined to be impelled, Pitt was the first to advocate such a reform of the representative system as would enable the sovereign people to speak through the sovereign parliament. Thus before the end of the reign of George II., EngFrederick land, in the words of Frederick of Prussia, after having been declared "for a long time in labor at last brought forth a man," and that man it was who, after widening the limits of the British empire in two hemispheres, was the first to give direction and force to the new-born power of public opinion which, with the rude weapons at its command, finally broke the hold of the crown and the aristocracy upon the legislature, and thus made possible the completion of the ministerial system in the form in which it exists to-day. The progress made during the reigns of George III. and George IV. by the liberalizing movement thus begun will be drawn out in the following chapter. sentative system; that England had "at last brought forth a man." CHAPTER II. ITS PROGRESS DURING THE REIGNS OF GEORGE III. AND GEORGE IV. ministerial accession III.; mother's I. JUST as the new ministerial system under the leadership Growth of of Pitt, who was the first to arouse the nation to a sense of its system new and higher destiny, had made England the first maritime checked by and colonial power in the world, its growth was suddenly of George checked by the accession of George III., who was the first and the last of the Hanoverian kings who aspired not only to reign but to rule. Defective as the education of the young king was, it had been so directed as to imbue him with a love for arbitrary principles of government, and the tendency thus begun was stimulated and encouraged by his mother's con- his .tinual precept of "George, be king." 1 Unlike his two imme- precept, diate predecessors he was native born, and in order the more "George, be king;" perfectly to play the part of "a patriot king," as Bolingbroke 2 had conceived it for him, he added with his own hand to his first speech to parliament the stirring declaration, "Born and he gloried educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton." 3 In the review already made of the growth of cabinet government during the reigns of George I. and George II., the fact was emphasized that their foreign birth and personal incompetency, coupled with a consequent willingness to surrender their personal right to rule into the hands of their constitutional advisers, had gone far to develop the idea of the impersonal- impersonality of the ity of the sovereign, the cornerstone of the existing system. sovereign Under such conditions it was that the Whig ministry that developed came into power as a whole, upon the accession of George I., foreign prewere able to meet apart from the king under the presidency of one of their own number; and so before the end of the 1 Rockingham's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 3. 2 Works, vol. iv. p. 274, "The Idea of a Patriot King; " May, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 9-12. 8 Rose's Corr., vol. ii. p. 189. As to the composition of the speech and "in the name of Briton;" under his decessors; |