for his minister officer un had acted the minister," he said, "to enforce taxes at the expense of blood." Despite that reverse, however, his supremacy in parliament was maintained down to 1742. The struggle for his struggle overthrow began in February of the year preceding, with a overthrow; motion made in the lords for an address praying the king "to dismiss Sir Robert Walpole from his presence and councils forever." Although defeated by a large majority, the motive for the assault was revealed by a protest entered on the journals by thirty-one peers, who declared that as "a sole, or even a first a first minister, is an officer unknown to the law of Britain, declared inconsistent with the constitution of this country, and destruc- to be an tive of liberty in any government whatsoever;" and that "it known to the law; plainly appearing to us that Sir Robert Walpole has for many years acted as such, by taking on himself the chief, if not sole because direction of affairs, in the different branches of the administra- Walpole tion, we could not but esteem it to be our indispensable duty, as such, the peers asked to offer our most humble advice to his Majesty for the removal the crown "2 to discharge of a minister so dangerous to the king and the kingdom. him; At the same time a like motion was introduced in the com- like motion mons, which assailed him because he had "grasped in his own the lower hands every branch of government; had attained the sole di- house; rection of affairs; monopolized all the favors of the crown; compassed the disposal of all places, pensions, titles, and rewards." While the house rejected the motion by a large majority, a dissolution followed, and in the new body then chosen the fact was soon revealed that Walpole's rule was over by an adverse vote on a mere election petition. Thus that member of the cabinet who was the first to appear in finally the rôle of a modern prime minister was the first as such to resign by resign office, not because he had lost the personal confidence an adverse of his sovereign, but because he could no longer control a body; majority of the house of commons. But in order not to exaggerate the advance actually made by the cabinet system in Walpole's time, three important considerations must be kept steadily in view: first, that the control he managed to establish as the leader of the cabinet perished with him, and that 4 1 Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iv. p. 144. 2 Parl. Hist., vol. ii. pp. 1083, 1126, 1215. 8 Mahon, Hist. Eng., vol. iii. pp. 101155. He resigned all his offices and retired to the house of lords as the earl of Oxford. defeated in forced to vote of that when it became the the cabinet, of inde pendent ments dis appeared; not until the time of the younger Pitt did it become a settled rule of government for the cabinet to contain a prime minister with paramount authority over his colleagues; second, that down to that time the old system of government by departold system ments of state, each independent of the other, and subject only to the general supervision of the crown, refused to yield depart- to the new system resting upon a union of sentiment and responsibility directed and borne by an acknowledged and responsible chief; third, that when Walpole as prime minister gave up his office in obedience to the will of the representative chamber, the rest of the cabinet did not retire with him,—not Lord North until the fall of Lord North in 1782 was there a simultaneous change of the whole cabinet resulting from a conviction upon the part of that minister that his failure to resign would be followed by a vote of a want of confidence in the lower house. Since that time it has been the custom for ministries thus discredited to resign as a whole. not until the fall of did it become the rule to change the whole ministry simulta neously. A minister must resign when in conflict During the period that intervened between the retirement of Walpole to the house of lords as earl of Oxford and the end of the reign of George II., the most important incident with a majority that occurs illustrative of the growth of cabinet government is of his colleagues; that which resulted in 1744 in the resignation of Lord Gran bottom" ville, because of a political difference between that minister and the Pelhams, who were supported by a majority of their colleagues. When the controversy reached an acute stage the king was forced to interfere, and by the advice of Oxford he took part with the majority and indicated to Granville his wish the "broad- that he should resign office. The "broad-bottom" adminis tration, so called because it represented a coalition of all elements, then constituted under the lead of Pelham, continued down to his death in 1754, when he was succeeded by his brother, the duke of Newcastle, who was momentarily driven from office in 1756 by the disastrous beginning of the Seven Years' War. In the hope of turning the tide, the elder Pitt was then called to office as secretary of state, and in the administration; 1 Macaulay, Hist. Eng., vol. iii. p. 14; Quar. Rev., vol. 138, p. 418. 2 The first instance on record of the resignation of a prime minister in deference to an adverse vote of the house of commons, is that of Sir Rob ert Walpole."— Todd, Parl. Govern ment, vol. i. p. 260, citing Cox, Inst. Eng. Government, pp. 249, 251; Knight, Hist. Eng., vol. vi. p. 435. 35. 8 Bedford Corresp., vol. i. pp. 25 ministra tions. house of commons representa independ mechanism course of the year Newcastle returned to the treasury. After a brief struggle for supreme control, the rivals agreed to am- division of icably divide the powers of the cabinet between them, - Pitt between assuming the general direction of affairs, and Newcastle the Pitt and Newcastle; management of parliament, the distribution of patronage,1 and the work of corruption. Upon that strange basis of a union of all that was highest and noble with all that was selfish and last of the purely ignoble was constructed the most brilliant and the last of the Whig adpurely Whig administrations. 4. In view of the preceding statement that the modern par- why the liamentary system would have been substantially complete before the end of the reign of George II., if the house of com- was neither mons had been at that time both representative and inde- tive nor pendent, the effort must now be made to explain somewhat in ent; detail why it was neither the one nor the other. In the first chapter devoted to the origin and growth of parliament a careful examination was made, first,. of the internal mechanism of internal the shire and town communities, with special emphasis upon of shire and their peculiar methods of election and representation; second, towns, of the process through which their elected representatives were drawn together in one house, -a process that reached its completion with the assembling of Edward's model parliament of 1295, whose representative chamber embraced seventy-four knights of the shire and two hundred citizens and burgesses.2 Of the two elements that entered into the representative sys- the elastic tem, as thus constituted, one was elastic by reason of the fact the system; that under the writ directing the sheriff to return members from every city and borough in his county, he possessed the power not only to extend the right of representation to any town he saw fit to recognize, but also to ignore others equally worthy, or even such as had once enjoyed the right of electing members.3 The immense power thus vested in the crown to abuse by control the composition of the house of commons does not of its power seem to have been abused, however, until a motive was given to conver for such abuse by its increasing importance. Then it was that house; efforts began to be made by courtiers to influence the elections by recommendations in favor of particular candidates; 2 Vol. i. pp. 445-466. 1 Jesse, Life of George III., vol. i. p. 123; Earl of Shelburne's Life, vol. i. pp. 85, 91; Todd, Parl. Government, vol. i. p. 271. 8 Ibid., p. 470. munities; element in the crown the control of incorpo body; and, as we learn from "The Paston Letters," when it was doubted whether such means would be efficacious to secure the return of a particular candidate, the suggestion was made that "there were many decayed boroughs in England which ought to return members to parliament, but did not; and that from one of those he might be returned." In the reign preceding that in which this suggestion was made, the crown had inaugurated a new policy for the control of the borough communities that was momentous in its consequences. In 1438 first charter (18th of Henry VI.) the first charter of incorporation to a muniration to a cipal body was granted to Kingston-upon-Hull. The effect of municipal like grants that followed was greatly to accelerate the process, already advancing by virtue of natural causes, through which the right of the burgesses—that is, "the inhabitant householders resident, paying scot and lot"-to govern the communities without the aid of town councils or other representative bodies was being gradually usurped by such bodies, whose members, originally elected, perpetuated themselves in power by self-election. Thus the tendency was for the more wealthy inhabitants to take away from the inferior townsmen municipal all municipal authority by vesting it in governing bodies whose composition was not controlled by the suffrages of burgesses gradually taken away and freemen. In order to give legal sanction to this process many and through which the self-elected few were drawing to themselves the power to govern the borough communities, the elected few; crown inaugurated the policy of incorporation, whereby each community was given its own constitution, in which was confirmed the right of the selected few not only to carry on the local government, but also, in many instances, to return the thorized to borough members to parliament. "By the doctrines from return the time to time applied to the artificial creation of corporations, borough members to the control of the select bodies and the capricious election parliament; of corporators and non-residents were gradually introduced. Those abuses arose from slight beginnings in the reign of Elizabeth, increased in the reigns of James and Charles I., from the vested in the self who were often au were carried to the greatest extent by the violent acts perpetrated in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and were finally confirmed in the time of William III. and Queen Anne."1 1 For the best exposition of the whole subject, see Merewether and Stephens' Hist. of Boroughs, Introd. return such vested in council, accession of last royal charter In the charters of incorporation, which began to be issued to municipalities after the accession of the house of Tudor, the right of electing representatives in parliament was usually right to vested in the governing body styled the mayor and common members council, nominated by the crown in the first instance, and then usually, perpetuated by self-election. Thus those boroughs not already mayor and under the control of the great landed proprietors became sub- after the ject to the control of the crown, acting through the local mag- the house nates known as high stewards, by whom, in many instances, of Tudor; the royal and aristocratic influence was directly exercised.1 With such an instrument in their hands, it is not strange that the sovereigns of the houses of Tudor and Stuart should have systematically pursued a policy of creating petty parliamentary boroughs, in localities where the crown had the greatest influence, for the express purpose of packing the lower house with members obedient to the royal will. Thus between the reigns of Henry VIII. and Charles II. a hundred and eighty members were added to the house of commons by royal charter,2the last being that granted to Newark in 1673, which declared that it to be "a borough town, with power to elect and send two granted to burgesses to serve in parliament, who should be chosen by the 1673; mayor and aldermen, or the major part of them." From that time down to the Reform Bill of 1832 no new boroughs were created in England or Wales, for the reason that the house of commons then took the issuance of writs into its own hands. The house also undertook to determine, in the case of the determinaborough of Newark, that while the crown had the undoubted lower house right to create boroughs, "upon which creation would follow as to right all the legal consequence," it did not have the right to say in that case; "who should be the voters for members of parliament." Upon that basis it held that the right of election in Newark, despite the terms of its charter, was vested in the mayor and aldermen, and "all the inhabitants who pay, or ought to pay scot and lot." And finally, in the hope of doing something to settle the endless conflicts arising out of the uncertain and confused last deterrights of election claimed in the different boroughs, the house, mination of "in the reign of William III., passed the act (7 Will. III. c. 7) should govcompelling the sheriffs to make returns from the elections cases; 1 Cf. May, Const. Hist., vol. iii. p. 279. 2 Glanville's Reports, cii.; May, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 329, note 2. Newark in tion of the of election rule that commons ern in all |