CHAPTER XVII. PROGRESS OF THE CONSTITUTION SINCE THE REVOLU TION (CONTINUED). IN the preceding chapter we have discussed the Act of Settlement and the various topics arising out of its provisions, including that most important topic of all-the growth and present working of the Cabinet system. Much more remains to be said on the progress of the Constitution since the Revolution; and with a view as well to clearness of exposition as to conciseness of statement the chief remaining constitutional facts may be conveniently grouped under the five heads of (1) the Kingship, (2) the House of Lords, (3) the House of Commons, (4) Religious Liberty, and (5) the Liberty of the Press. I. Kingship since the Revolution. since the Revolution. Crown un The legal prerogatives of the Crown were untouched I. Kingship by the Revolution settlement. It was only the recent innovations which were swept away, leaving to the Kingship the legal character which it had possessed prior to the usurpations of the Tudors and Stewarts. By the written Legal preroconstitution the King still retains the supreme executive gatives of the and a co-ordinate legislative power. He calls Parliament touched at together, prorogues or dissolves it at pleasure, and may tion. refuse the royal assent to any bills. He is the fountain of justice,' and as such dispenses royal justice through judges appointed to preside, in his name, over the various courts. of judicature. As supreme magistrate and conservator of the Revolu but now vested in its the peace, he nominally prosecutes criminals, and may pardon them after conviction. As supreme military commander, he has the sole power of raising, regulating, and disbanding armies and fleets. As the 'fountain of honour,' he alone can create peers (a power of the highest constitutional importance) and confer titles, dignities and offices of all kinds. He is the legal head and supreme governor of the National Church, and in that capacity convenes, prorogues, regulates, and dissolves all ecclesiastical synods or convocations. As the representative of the majesty of the State in its relations with foreign powers, he has the sole power of sending and receiving ambassadors, of contracting treaties and alliances, and of making war and peace. But in practice these vast prerogatives have now long practically been exercised not at the will of the Sovereign, but of the responsible responsible ministers of the Crown, who represent the will of the majority in the House of Commons. In outer ministers. Convocation. 6 On the early history of Convocation and its relations to the king and Parliament something has been said supra, pp. 247, 248. From the passing of the Act 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19 (supra, p. 425). Convocation has ceased to possess any independent legislative power, Church and State being alike subjected to the supreme power of Parliament. Under Elizabeth it was occasionally consulted on questions affecting the national religion, and it confirmed, in 1562-3, the xxxix. Articles. By the king's licence Convocation established certain canons in 1604 (which, however, not having been confirmed by Parliament, are not binding on the laity); and attempted to make further regulations in 1640 (supra, pp. 490, 576); but from the year 1664, when the practice of ecclesiastical taxation was discontinued, even discussions in Convocation practically ceased. About the time of the Revolution attempts were made to resuscitate the action of Convocation, more especially by Atterbury (afterwards Bishop of Rochester), who published a book entitled 'The Rights and PriviSuspended, leges of an English Convocation.' In 1717, the religious ferment excited by 1717. the Bangorian controversy (arising out of the denunciation by the Lower House of Convocation of a sermon in favour of religious liberty preached by Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor,) induced the ministers of George I. to suddenly prorogue the would-be ecclesiastical Parliament. From this time Convocation, though regularly summoned, was for more than a century as regularly prorogued immediately after it had assembled. In 1850 it was again allowed to resume the discussion of Church matters; and in 1861 was empowered by Royal licence to alter the 29th Canon of 1603, which prohibited parents from acting as sponsors to their children: but it was specially provided in the licence that no alterations should be of any validity until confirmed by letters patent under the great seal. In 1872, letters of business were issued by the Crown empowering Convocation to frame resolutions on the subject of public worship, and these were afterwards incorporated in an Act of Parliament (Act of Uniformity Amendment Act, 35 36 Vict. c. 35). See Hallam, Const. Hist. iii. 242-247; Stephen, Commentaries, ii. 544-546. Resumed, 1850. See Stephen, Com., 5th ed, ii. 473-547; and for an exhaustive list, Comyn's Digest, suo voce Prærogative. seeming,' it has been well observed, 'the Revolution of 1688 had only transferred the sovereignty over England from James to William and Mary. In actual fact, it was transferring the sovereignty from the King to the House of Commons. From the moment when its sole right to tax the nation was established by the Bill of Rights, and when its own resolve settled the practice of granting none but annual supplies to the Crown, the House of Commons became the supreme power in the State. It was impossible permanently to suspend its sittings, or, in the long run, to oppose its will, when either course must end in leaving the Government penniless, in breaking up the army and navy, and in rendering the public service impossible." fluence of the The mode in which the executive power of the Crown Personal inhas gradually been transferred to what has been aptly Sovereign. termed a board of control chosen by the legislature to rule the nation,' has been already sketched in treating of the growth of the Cabinet. But though greatly weakened at the Revolution, the personal influence of the Sovereign over the administration of affairs long continued to be openly exercised, and is still potent, to an extent which can be known only to the parties themselves, in the confidential intercourse of Ministers with the Head of the State." Several general causes tended to bring about a decline Causes J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, p. 680. 3 There is not a doubt that the aggregate of direct influence normally exer- which tended to induce its decline. in the personal influence of the Sovereign subsequent to the Revolution. Foremost among these may be placed the disputed succession to the Crown. The Hanoverian succession was in very serious danger at the death of Queen Anne; and the continuing power of Jacobite intrigues was evidenced by the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. The divine right of kings, though permanently negatived at the Revolution, still continued for a time to be inculcated by the Tory party and by the great majority of the clergy, who taught the duty of passive obedience and the sin fulness of rebellion. But with the accession of the House of Hanover, the doctrine of divine right became attributable, in the minds of those who believed in it, not to the King de facto but to the heir of the Stewarts. Moreover George I., from the necessity of the case, placed himself in the hands of the Whig party, who had secured his accession to the throne; and the Tories, influenced alike by party opposition and by personal objection to the new dynasty, found themselves in the somewhat unnatural position of opponents to the royal prerogative. And while on the one hand the personal influence of the Sovereign was opposed by the Tories both on account of his lack of hereditary right and of his alliance with their political foes, that influence itself was rapidly diminished by the increased development of the system of party government working by means of the Cabinet system.1 One very important factor in the declension of the Sovereign's personal influence was his abstention, since the death of Queen Anne, from presiding at Cabinet councils. In early times the King had been accustomed to preside in person at the council board, and necessarily exercised an immense influence upon its determinations. Abandoned about the close of the 14th century, this practice was revived by the Tudor and Stewart monarchs, and was maintained, after the Revolution, by William III. and by Anne. William III., a man of consummate political ability, 1 See Lecky, Hist. of Eng. i. 217-227. was, indeed, his own prime minister, his own foreign minis and George ter, and his own commander-in-chief. Queen Anne not only regularly presided at Cabinet Councils, but occasion- Reaches its lowest point ally attended debates in the House of Lords. It was only under at the accession of George I. that the King's ignorance of George I. the English language and his indifference to English poli- II. tics caused the introduction of the practice of Cabinet Councils being held, as in the ante-Tudor times Privy Councils had been held, without the presence of the Sovereign. This practice-so essential to the free development of Parliamentary government-has ever since been maintained, and on the principle optimus interpres usus may now be regarded as having ripened into a fixed rule of the Constitution. It is remarkable, however, that like some other important features of our political Institutions, such as the division of the legislative assembly into two instead of three Houses, the disappearance of the Sovereign from the meetings of the Cabinet should be due not to deliberate design but to a happy accident. It is to the credit of George II.-narrow-minded and ignorant as he was-that throughout his long reign of thirtythree years he discharged the duties of a constitutional king with honourable fidelity, loyally supporting the ministers to whom he had given his confidence, even at the expense of his own predilections. But it was not without an inward struggle that he did so. "Ministers are the King in this country' he once bitterly exclaimed; and relying upon his legal right to choose his own ministers, he occasionally opposed the accession to office of persons whom he disliked. William Pitt, the Great Commoner,' was an especial object of his antipathy, having made himself personally offensive to 1 The presence of the King at the Cabinet either means personal government-that is to say, the reservation to him of all final decisions which he may think fit to appropriate-or else the forfeiture of dignity by his entering upon equal terms into the arena of general, searching, and sometimes warm discussion; nay, and even of voting too, and of being outvoted, for in Cabinets, and even in the Cabinets reputed best, important questions have sometimes been found to admit of no other form of decision.' Gladstone, Gleanings of Past Years, i. 85. 2 Supra, p. 260. 3 Lord Mahon, Hist. of Eng. iii. 280. |