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composing

finally decided to retain the appellate jurisdiction of the former. It was provided, however, that no appeal should be entertained in the upper house unless there shall be present at least three "lords of appeal," that is, peers who have held high judicial office.1 The court of appeal as now constituted is judges therefore an intermediate court between the high court and court of appeal. the house of lords, and as such it is composed of five ex officio judges, of "ordinary" judges, whose number depends upon the will of the crown, and of "three additional ordinary judges," -at present nine in all.

took pos

It was originally intended that the act of 1873 should come When Judicature into operation in November, 1874; but it was found necessary Acts of to amend it twice, and in that way the second amending act, 1873 and 1875 took the Supreme Court of Judicature Act of 1875,2 together with effect; the principal act of 1873, did not take effect until the 1st of November, 1875. As early as 1865 parliament had authorized the construction of the splendid pile known as the "Royal Courts of Justice," for the express purpose of "bringing together into one place or neighborhood all the Superior Courts of Law and Equity, the Probate and Divorce Court, and the Court of Admiralty." In 1882 the new structure was dedi- consolicated by the queen, and at the beginning of the Hilary sit-dated court tings, 1883, the consolidated court, moving from its old habita- session of tions in Lincoln's Inn and from the quarters adjoining Westminster Hall, took up its abode in one place, where it can the more conveniently execute its mission of administering law and equity concurrently. The entire code of procedure of the its code of procedure. Supreme Court of Judicature was originally embodied as a whole in the schedule to the act of 1875; and as such it was divided into orders, each order being subdivided into rules. The power to alter such rules is vested in the "Rule Committee" of the judges, who are directed to present all changes to each house of parliament; and upon the address of either house the crown may be required to annul the same by an order in council.4

8. Such in brief is the present condition of the vital organs

1 The Appellate Jurisdiction Act, Concentration Act, 1865, 28 & 29 Vict. 1876, s. 5.

238 & 39 Vict. c. 77.

C. 49.

4 Upon the whole subject, see the 3 Preamble to the Courts of Justice excellent treatise of Lely and Foulkes,

its new

home in

1883;

Judicature Acts, 4th ed.

of the

growth of

ministerial

system;

of 1688

centre of

gravity of

the state

from the crown to

the popular chamber;

at first but little more

ical theory,

the elector

ate from which the

Summary of the English constitution, and such their relations to each other at the end of ten centuries of unbroken development, the modern which has adapted the primitive institutions of the Old English commonwealth, without any break in their continuity, to the ever-increasing wants of one of the most progressive and powerful of modern societies. As heretofore explained, the Revolution result of the Revolution of 1688 was to shift the centre of shifted the gravity of the state from the crown to the popular branch of the legislature. The statesmen of the Revolution did little more, however, than establish irrevocably a political theory which their posterity have been able to press only in our time to its ultimate and logical conclusion, a conclusion which was not fully reached until the reform bills of the last sixty than a polit- years widened the electorate of the house of commons from finally about 400,000 in 1832 to nearly six millions and a half in established 1897. From that electorate the popular chamber, that emthrough the widening of bodies and enforces the new principle of sovereignty to which the Revolution gave birth, draws its authority. The mighty transformation thus brought about in the internal mechanism of the constitution has been effected with the least possible change in its outward forms. As Bagehot has happily extion with pressed it, this "ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth; what you see of him is still the same; what you do not see is wholly altered." That profound change thus concealed beneath ancient forms is embodied in the practical effect finally given to the results of in the func the Revolution, by virtue of the arrangement under which the cabinet as a representative chamber now administers the royal authority through a committee of its own members called the cabinet. The outcome of the first efforts made to establish such an George III. arrangement during the reigns of William III., Anne, and the in retarding first two Georges was so unsubstantial that George III., during the growth of the new the first ten years of his reign, was able to eliminate it almost entirely. So completely was he successful that when the members of the federal convention that met at Philadelphia in 1787 took the English constitution for their model, the modern cabinet system was found to have no place in it either in theory or in fact. That it did not then exist in theory is put beyond

lower house
draws its
authority;
a mighty
transforma-

but little

change in outward forms;

the real change embodied

tions of the

committee

of the house of commons;

success of

system;

during a part of his

reign it existed neither in

theory nor in fact;

1 The Eng. Const., p. 2.

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that concep

existing

all question by the contemporary works of Blackstone, De Lolme, Paley, and others, who, without even referring to the existence of the cabinet,1 formulated a doctrine of "checks and balances" absolutely incompatible with it; that it did not then exist in fact is equally certain because at that time the king himself and not the prime minister was the real executive.2 It was, therefore, held by the doctrinaires at that mo- the concepment that the supreme sovereignty was vested in a balanced tion of sov ereignty union of three elements, democratic, aristocratic, and mon- that then prevailed; archical; that without the concurrence on equal terms of king, lords, and commons, sovereignty could not be properly exercised. The cornerstones of the theory as thus expounded were, first, that the king had the exclusive right to exercise the entire executive authority through ministers appointed by himself and responsible to him alone; second, that the legislative authority was divided between king, lords, and commons as coördinate powers. Only by contrasting that con- only by ception of the constitution with that which exists to-day can contrasting we estimate the immense change that has actually taken place tion with during the intervening period. The modern ministerial sys- conditions tem was so completely in eclipse a century ago that it could perceive not be perceived even by the most acute observers; to-day actually it is the central figure in the picture, the great driving-wheel taken place; that moves the entire constitutional machinery. The indirect source of its power is the electorate; the direct, the house of commons, which is no longer looked upon as a coördinate department, but as a corporate entity in which the supreme sovereignty is vested. Upon the one hand stands the crown, with all its prerogatives vested in a committee of its members; on the other, the house of lords as a mere revising chamber to counsel against the making of rash and ill-advised decrees, to which it must always bow in the last instance. Thus the old old literary literary theory of "checks and balances," based upon the idea theory of of a coördination between separate and coequal powers, has tion has yielded to completely broken down in the presence of the incontestable the fact that fact that the English constitution now embodies "the close and legislaunion, the nearly complete fusion, of the executive and legis- tive powers lative powers. No doubt, by the traditional theory as it exists blended; in all the books, the goodness of our constitution consists in

1 See above, p. 503, 504.

2 Vol. i. p. 69, note 3.

can we

what has

coördina

executive

are now

the entire separation of the legislative and executive authority, but in truth its merit consists in their singular approximation. The connecting link is the cabinet. By that new word we mean a committee of the legislative body selected to be the executive body."1 As that committee draws its authority from an electorate so broad as to be removed only by a single step from manhood suffrage, it may now be safely assumed that the cycle has come round; that the gradual and silent process of change has been fully worked out through which formed into the mediaval monarchy has been finally transformed into the hereditary republic, in which, under the ancient and still useful forms of the throne and the regalia, the English people is king.

mediæval monarchy

trans

an heredi

tary re

public.

1 Bagehot, pp. 10, 11.

INDEX.

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