The Governments of Europe Part 2

[Footnote 21: Excellent works of a general nature on the Tudor period are H. A. L. Fisher, History of England from the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of Henry VIII. (London, 1906); A. F. Pollard, History of England from the Accession of Edward VI.

to the Death of Elizabeth (London, 1910); and A. D.

Innis, England under the Tudors (London, 1905). For inst.i.tutional history see Taylor, English Const.i.tution, II., Bk. 4. More specialized treatment will be found in Smith, History of the English Parliament, I., Bk. 5; Dicey, The Privy Council, 76-130; and Taswell-Langmead, English Const.i.tutional History, Chaps. 10, 12. An excellent survey of English public law at the death of Henry VII. is contained in F. W. Maitland, Const.i.tutional History of England (Cambridge, 1911), 165-236.

Books of large value on the period include W.

Busch, England under the Tudors, trans. by A. M.

Todd (London, 1895), the only volume of which published covers the reign of Henry VII.; A. F.

Pollard, Henry VIII. (London, 1902 and 1905), and England under the Protector Somerset (London, 1900); and M. Creighton, Queen Elizabeth (new ed., London, 1899).]

VIII. THE STUARTS: CROWN AND PARLIAMENT (p. 026)

*27. Absolutism Becomes Impracticable.*--Throughout the larger portion of the seventeenth century the princ.i.p.al interest in English politics centers in the contest which was waged between the nation represented in Parliament and the sovereigns of the Stuart dynasty. The question, as one writer has put it, was "at first whether government should be by the king or by the king in parliament, afterwards whether the king should govern or whether parliament should govern."[22] The Stuart sovereigns brought with them to the English throne no political principles that were new. When James I., in a speech before Parliament March 21, 1610, declared that monarchy "is the supremest thing upon earth," and that, "as to dispute what G.o.d may do is blasphemy, ... so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a King may do in the height of his power,"[23] he was but giving expression to a conception of the royal prerogative which had been lodged in the mind of every Tudor, but which no Tudor had been so tactless as publicly to avow. The first two Stuarts confidently expected to maintain the same measure of absolutism which their Tudor predecessors had maintained--nothing more, nothing less. There were, however, several reasons why, for them, this was an impossibility. The first arose from their own temperament. The bluntness, the lack of perception of the public will, and the disposition perpetually to insist upon the minutest definitions of prerogative, which so pre-eminently characterized the members of the Stuart house must have operated to alienate seventeenth-century Englishmen under even the most favorable of circ.u.mstances. A second consideration is the fact, of which the nation was fully cognizant, that under the changed conditions that had arisen there was no longer the need of strong monarchy that once there had been. Law and order had long since been secured; all danger of a feudal reaction had been effectually removed; foreign invasion was no more to be feared. Strong monarchy had served an invaluable purpose, but that purpose had been fulfilled.

[Footnote 22: C. Ilbert, Parliament, its History, Const.i.tution, and Practice (London and New York, 1911), 28-29.]

[Footnote 23: Prothero, Statutes and Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments, 293-294.]

*28. The Rights of the Commons a.s.serted.*--Finally there was the (p. 027) fact of the enormous growth of Parliament as an organ of the public will. The rapidity of that development in the days of Elizabeth is, and was at the time, much obscured by the disposition of the nation to permit the Queen to live out her days without being seriously crossed in her purposes. But the magnitude of it becomes apparent enough after 1603. In a remarkable doc.u.ment known as the Apology of the Commons, under date of June 20, 1604, the popular chamber stated respectfully but frankly to the new sovereign what it considered to be its rights and, through it, the rights of the nation. "What cause we your poor Commons have," runs the address, "to watch over our privileges, is manifest in itself to all men. The prerogatives of princes may easily, and do daily, grow; the privileges of the subject are for the most part at an everlasting stand. They may be by good providence and care preserved, but being once lost are not recovered but with much disquiet. The rights and liberties of the Commons of England consisteth chiefly in these three things: first, that the s.h.i.+res, cities, and boroughs of England, by representation to be present, have free choice of such persons as they shall put in trust to represent them; secondly, that the persons chosen, during the time of the parliament, as also of their access and recess, be free from restraint, arrest, and imprisonment: thirdly, that in parliament they may speak freely their consciences without check and controlment, doing the same with due reverence to the sovereign court of parliament, that is, to your Majesty and both the Houses, who all in this case make but one politic body, whereof your Highness is the head."[24] The shrewdness of the political philosophy with which this pa.s.sage opens is matched only by the terseness with which the fundamental rights of the Commons as a body are enumerated. To the enumeration should be added, historically, an item contained in a pet.i.tion of the Commons, May 23, 1610, which reads as follows: "We hold it an ancient, general, and undoubted right of Parliament to debate freely all matters which do properly concern the subject and his right or state; which freedom of debate being once foreclosed, the essence of the liberty of Parliament is withal dissolved."[25] The occasion for this last-mentioned a.s.sertion of right arose from the king's habitual a.s.sumption that there were various important matters of state, e.g., the laying of impositions and the conduct of foreign relations, which Parliament possessed no right so much as to discuss.

[Footnote 24: Petyt, Jus Parliamentarium (London, 1739), 227-243. Portions of this doc.u.ment are printed in Prothero, Statutes and Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments, 286-293.]

[Footnote 25: Commons' Journals, I., 431; Prothero, Statutes, 297.]

*29. The Parliaments of James I. and Charles I.*--The tyranny of (p. 028) James I. and Charles I. a.s.sumed the form, princ.i.p.ally, of the issue of proclamations without the warrant of statute and the exaction of taxes without the a.s.sent of Parliament. Parliament, during the period 1603-1640, was convened but seldom, and it was repeatedly prorogued or dissolved to terminate its inquiries, thwart its protests, or subvert its projected measures. Under the disadvantage of recurrent interruption the Commons contrived, however, to carry on a contest with the crown which was essentially continuous. During the reign of James I. (1603-1625) there were four parliaments. The first, extending from 1604 to 1611, was called in session six times. It sorely displeased the king by remonstrating against his measures, and especially by the persistency with which it withheld subsidies pending a redress of grievances. The second, summoned in 1614, vainly reiterated the complaints of its predecessor and was dissolved without having enacted a single measure. The third, in 1621, revived the power of impeachment (dormant since the days of Henry VII.), rea.s.serted the right of the chambers to debate foreign relations, and avenged by a fresh protestation of liberties the arrest of one of its members. The fourth, in 1624, abolished monopolies and renewed the attack upon proclamations. The first parliament of Charles I., convoked in 1625, criticised the policy of the new sovereign and was dissolved. The second, in 1626, was dissolved to prevent the impeachment of the king's favorite minister, the Duke of Buckingham. The third, in 1628-1629, drew up the memorable Pet.i.tion of Right, to which the king gave reluctant a.s.sent, and in which arbitrary imprisonment, the billeting of soldiers, the establishment of martial law in time of peace, and the imposition of gifts, loans, benevolences, or taxes without the consent of Parliament were specifically prohibited.[26]

The fourth of Charles's parliaments, the so-called Short Parliament of 1640, followed a period of eleven years of personal government and showed no disposition to surrender the rights that had been a.s.serted.

The fifth--the Long Parliament, convoked also in 1640--imprisoned and executed the king's princ.i.p.al advisers, abolished the Star Chamber and the several other special courts and councils of Tudor origin, p.r.o.nounced illegal the levy of s.h.i.+p-money and of tonnage and poundage without parliamentary a.s.sent, made provision for the a.s.sembling of a parliament within three years of the dissolution of the present one, and forced the king into a position where he was obliged to yield or to resort to war.

[Footnote 26: The text of the Pet.i.tion of Right is printed in Stubbs, Select Charters, 515-517; Adams and Stephens, Select Doc.u.ments, 339-342.]

*30. The Commonwealth and the Protectorate.*--Between the (p. 029) political theory maintained by the Stuart kings and that maintained by the parliamentary majority it was found impossible to arrive at a compromise. The Civil War was waged, in the last a.n.a.lysis, to determine which of the two theories should prevail. It should be emphasized that the parliamentarians entered upon the contest with no intent to establish a government by Parliament alone, in form or in fact. It is sufficiently clear from the Grand Remonstrance of 1641[27]

that what they contemplated was merely the imposing of const.i.tutional restrictions upon the crown, together with the introduction of certain specific changes in the political and ecclesiastical order, e.g., the abolition of episcopacy. The culmination of the struggle, however, in the defeat and execution of the king threw open the doors for every sort of const.i.tutional innovation, and between 1649 and 1660 the nation was called upon to pa.s.s through an era of political experimentation happily unparalleled in its history. May 19, 1649, kings.h.i.+p and the House of Lords having been abolished as equally "useless and dangerous,"[28] Parliament, to complete the work of transformation, proclaimed a commonwealth, or republic; and on the great seal was inscribed the legend, "In the first year of freedom by G.o.d's blessing restored." During the continuance of the Commonwealth (1649-1654) various plans were brought forward for the creation of a parliament elected by manhood suffrage, but with the essential principle involved neither the Rump nor the people at large possessed substantial sympathy. In 1654 there was put in operation a const.i.tution--the earliest among written const.i.tutions in modern Europe--known as the Instrument of Government.[29] The system therein provided, which was intended to be extended to the three countries of England, Scotland, and Ireland, comprised as the executive power a life Protector, to be a.s.sisted by a council of thirteen to twenty-one members, and as the legislative organ a unicameral parliament of 460 members elected triennially by all citizens possessing property to the value of 300.[30] Cromwell accepted the office of Protector, and the ensuing six years comprise the period known commonly as the (p. 030) Protectorate.

[Footnote 27: S. R. Gardiner, Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1899), 202-232.]

[Footnote 28: Gardiner, Doc.u.ments of the Puritan Revolution, 384-388; Adams and Stephens, Select Doc.u.ments, 397-400.]

[Footnote 29: Gardiner, Doc.u.ments of the Puritan Revolution, 405-417; Adams and Stephens, Select Doc.u.ments, 407-416.]

[Footnote 30: On the history of this unicameral parliament see J. A. R. Marriott, Second Chambers, an Inductive Study in Political Science (Oxford, 1910), Chap. 3; A. Esmein, Les const.i.tutions du protectorat de Cromwell, in _Revue du Droit Public_, Sept.-Oct. and Nov.-Dec., 1899.]

The government provided for by the Instrument was but indifferently successful. Between Cromwell and his parliaments relations were much of the time notoriously strained, and especially was there controversy as to whether the powers of Parliament should be construed to extend to the revision of the const.i.tution. In 1657 the Protector was asked to a.s.sume the t.i.tle of king. This he refused to do, but he did accept a new const.i.tution, the Humble Pet.i.tion and Advice, in which a step was taken toward a return to the governmental system swept away in 1649.[31] This step comprised, princ.i.p.ally, the re-establishment of a parliament of two chambers--a House of Commons and, for lack of agreement upon a better designation, "the Other House." Republicanism, however, failed to strike root. Shrewder men, including Cromwell, had recognized all the while that the English people were really royalist at heart, and it is not too much to say that from the outset the restoration of monarchy was inevitable. Even before the death of Cromwell, in 1658, the trend was distinctly in that direction, and after the hand of the great Protector had been removed from the helm such a consummation was a question but of time and means. May 25, 1660, Charles II., having engaged to grant a general amnesty and to accept such measures of settlement respecting religion as Parliament should determine upon, landed at Dover and was received with all but universal acclamation.[32]

[Footnote 31: Gardiner, Doc.u.ments of the Puritan Revolution, 447-459.]

[Footnote 32: The best of the general treatises covering the period 1603-1660 are F. C. Montague, The History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Restoration (London, 1907), and G. M.

Trevelyan, England Under the Stuarts (London, 1904). The monumental works within the field are those of S. R. Gardiner, i.e., History of England, 1603-1642, 10 vols. (new ed., London, 1893-1895); History of the Great Civil War, 4 vols. (London, 1894); and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 4 vols. (London, 1894-1901). Mr.

Gardiner's work is being continued by C. H. Firth, who has published The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656-1658, 2 vols. (London, 1909).

The development of inst.i.tutions is described in Taswell-Langmead, English Const.i.tutional History, Chaps. 13-14; Smith, History of the English Parliament, I., Bks. 6-7; Pike, History of the House of Lords, _pa.s.sim_; J. N. Figgis, The Theory of the Divine Right of Kings (Cambridge, 1896); and G. P. Gooch, History of English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1898). An excellent a.n.a.lysis of the system of government which the Stuarts inherited from the Tudors is contained in the introduction of Prothero, Statutes and Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments. Of the numerous biographies of Cromwell the best is C. H. Firth, Oliver Cromwell (New York, 1904). A valuable survey of governmental affairs at the death of James I. is Maitland, Const.i.tutional History Of England, 237-280.]

IX. THE LATER STUARTS: THE REVOLUTION OF 1688-1689 (p. 031)

*31. Charles II. and James II.*--Throughout the period 1660-1689 there was enacted a final grand experiment to determine whether a Stuart could, or would, govern const.i.tutionally. The const.i.tution in accordance with which Charles II. and James II. were expected to govern was that which had been built up during preceding centuries, amended by the important reforms effected by the Long Parliament in 1641. The settlement of 1660 was a restoration no less of Parliament than of the monarchy, in respect both to structure and to functions.

The two chambers were re-established upon their earlier foundations, and in them was vested the power to enact all legislation and to sanction all taxation. The spirit, if not the letter, of the agreement in accordance with which the Stuart house was restored forbade the further imposition of taxes by the arbitrary decree of the crown and all exercise of the legislative power by the crown singly, whether positively through proclamation or negatively through dispensation. It required that henceforth the nature and amount of public expenditures should, upon inquiry, be made known to the two houses, and that ministers might regularly be held to account for their acts and those of the sovereign. The easy-going Charles II. (1660-1685) contrived most of the time to keep fairly within the bounds that were prescribed for him. He disliked the religious measures of his first parliament, but he recognized that a fresh election might be expected to result in the choice of a House of Commons still less to his taste, and, accordingly, the Cavalier Parliament was kept in existence throughout the entire period 1661-1679. The parliamentary history of the closing years of the reign centered about the question of the exclusion of the king's Catholic brother, James, from the throne, and was given special interest by the conflict of groups foreshadowing political parties; but Charles maintained unfailingly an att.i.tude which, at the least, did not endanger his own tenure of the throne.

James II. (1685-1688) was a man of essentially different temper. He was a Stuart of the Stuarts, irrevocably attached to the doctrine of divine right and sufficiently tactless to take no pains to disguise the fact. He was able, industrious, and honest, but obstinate and intolerant. He began by promising to preserve "the government as by law established." But the ease with which the Monmouth uprising of 1685 was suppressed deluded him into thinking that through the exemption of the Catholics from the operation of existing laws he might in time realize his ambition to re-establish Roman Catholicism in England. He proceeded, therefore, to issue decrees dispensing (p. 032) with statutes which Parliament had enacted, to establish an ecclesiastical commission in violation of parliamentary law of 1641, and, in 1687, to promulgate a declaration of indulgence extending to all Catholics and Non-Conformists a freedom in religious matters which was clearly denied by the laws of the country.[33] By this arbitrary resumption of ancient prerogative the theory underlying the Restoration was subverted utterly.

[Footnote 33: Gee and Hardy, Doc.u.ments Ill.u.s.trative of English Church History, 641-644; Adams and Stephens, Select Doc.u.ments, 451-454.]

*32. The Revolution: the Bill of Rights.*--Foreseeing no relief from absolutist practices, and impelled especially by the birth, in 1688, of a male heir to the king, a group of leading men representing the various political groups extended to the stadtholder of Holland, William, Prince of Orange, an invitation to repair to England to uphold and protect the const.i.tutional liberties of the realm. The result was the bloodless revolution of 1688. November 5, William landed at Torquay and advanced toward London. James, finding himself without a party, offered vain concessions and afterwards fled to the court of his ally, Louis XIV. of France. By a provisional body of lords, former commoners, and officials William was requested to act as temporary "governor" until the people should have chosen a national "convention."[34] This convention a.s.sembled January 22, 1689, resolved that James, by reason of his flight, should be construed to have abdicated, and established on the throne as joint sovereigns William and Mary, with the understanding that the actual government of the realm should devolve upon the king.

[Footnote 34: Not properly a parliament, because not summoned by a king.]

The Revolution of 1688-1689 was signalized by the putting into written form of no inconsiderable portion of the English const.i.tution as it then existed. February 19, 1698, the new sovereigns formally accepted a Declaration of Right, drawn up by the convention, and by act of Parliament, December 16 following, this instrument, under the name of the Bill of Rights, was made a part of the law of the land. In it were denied specifically a long list of prerogatives to which the last Stuart had laid claim--those, in particular, of dispensing with the laws, establis.h.i.+ng ecclesiastical commissions, levying imposts without parliamentary a.s.sent, and maintaining a standing army under the exclusive control of the crown. In it also were guaranteed certain fundamental rights which during the controversies of the seventeenth century had been brought repeatedly in question, including those of pet.i.tion, freedom of elections, and freedom of speech on the part (p. 033) of members of Parliament.[35] The necessity of frequent meetings of Parliament was affirmed, and a succession clause was inserted by which Roman Catholics and persons who should marry Roman Catholics, were excluded from the throne. In the Bill of Rights were thus summed up the essential results of the Revolution, and, more remotely, of the entire seventeenth-century parliamentary movement. With its enactment the doctrine of divine right disappeared forever from the domain of practical English politics. The entire circ.u.mstance of William III.'s accession determined the royal tenure to be, as it thereafter remained, not by inherent or vested right, but conditioned upon the national will.[36]

[Footnote 35: In this connection should be recalled the Habeas Corpus Act of May 26, 1679, by whose terms the right of an individual, upon arrest, to have his case investigated without delay was effectually guaranteed. Stubbs, Select Charters, 517-521; Adams and Stephens, Select Doc.u.ments, 440-448.]

[Footnote 36: In respect to ecclesiastical affairs the Bill of Rights was supplemented by the Toleration Act of May 24, 1689, in which was provided "some ease to scrupulous consciences in the exercise of religion," i.e., a larger measure of liberty for Protestant non-conformists. The text of the Bill of Rights is in Stubbs, Select Charters, 523-528; Gee and Hardy, Doc.u.ments Ill.u.s.trative of English Church History, 645-654; and Adams and Stephens, Select Doc.u.ments, 462-469; that of the Toleration Act, in Gee and Hardy, 654-664; and, in abridged form, in Adams and Stephens, 459-462. General accounts of the period 1660-1689 are contained in R. Lodge, History of England from the Restoration to the Death of William III. (London, 1910), Chaps. 1-15, and in Trevelyan, England Under the Stuarts, Chaps. 11-13.

O. Airy. Charles II., is an excellent book. The development of Parliament in the period is described in Smith, History of the English Parliament, I., Bk. 8, II., Bk. 9.]

CHAPTER II (p. 034)

THE CONSt.i.tUTION SINCE THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

I. CROWN AND PARLIAMENT AFTER 1789

*33. Elements of Stability and Change.*--Structurally, the English governmental system was by the close of the seventeenth century substantially complete. The limited monarchy, the ministry, the two houses of parliament, the courts of law, and the local administrative agencies were by that time const.i.tuted very much as they are to-day.

The fundamental principles, furthermore, upon which English government is operated were securely established. Laws could be enacted only by "the king in parliament"; taxes could be levied only in the same manner; the liberty of the individual was safeguarded by a score of specific and oft-renewed guarantees. In point of fact, however, the English const.i.tution of 1689 was very far from being the English const.i.tution of 1912. The overturn by which the last Stuart was driven from the throne not only marked the culmination of the revolution commenced in 1640; it comprised the beginning of a more extended revolution, peaceful but thoroughgoing, by which the governmental system of the realm was amplified, carried in new directions, and successively readapted to fresh and changing conditions. At no time from William III. to George V. was there a deliberate overhauling of the governmental system as a whole. Save in occasional parliamentary enactments and judicial decisions, the const.i.tutional changes which were wrought were rarely given doc.u.mentary expression. Yet it is hardly too much to say that of the principles and practices which to-day make up the working const.i.tution of the United Kingdom almost all were originated or reshaped during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In describing, in succeeding chapters, the princ.i.p.al aspects of this governmental system it will be necessary frequently to allude to these more recent const.i.tutional developments, and it would but involve repet.i.tion to undertake an account of them at this point.

An enumeration and a brief characterization of a few of the more important will serve for the moment to impress the importance const.i.tutionally of the period under consideration.

*34. The Decreased Authority of the Crown.*--First may be (p. 035) mentioned the gradual eclipse of the crown and the establishment of complete and unquestioned ascendancy on the part of Parliament. In consequence of the Revolution of 1688-1689 the sovereign was shorn definitely of a number of important prerogatives. William III., however, was no figure-head, and the crown was far from having been reduced to impotence. Understanding perfectly the conditions upon which he had been received in England, William none the less did not attempt to conceal his innate love of power. He claimed prerogatives which his Whig supporters were loath to acknowledge and he exercised habitually in person, and with telling effect, the functions of sovereign, premier, foreign minister, and military autocrat.[37] His successor, Anne, though apathetic, was hardly less attached to the interests of strong monarchy. It was only with the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty, in 1714, that the bulk of those powers of government which hitherto the crown had retained slipped inevitably into the grasp of the ministers and of Parliament. George I.

(1714-1727) and George II. (1727-1760) were not the nonent.i.ties they have been painted, but, being alien alike to English speech, customs, and political inst.i.tutions, they were in a position to defend but indifferently the prerogatives which they had inherited. Under George III. (1760-1820) there was a distinct recrudescence of the monarchical idea. The king, if obstinate and below the average intellectually, was honest, courageous, and ambitious. He gloried in the name of Englishman, and, above all, he was determined to recover for the crown some measure of the prestige and authority which his predecessors had lost. The increasingly oligarchical character of Parliament in the period and the disintegration of the ruling Whig party created a condition not unfavorable for the realization of the royal programme, and through at least a score of years the influence which the sovereign exerted personally upon government and politics exceeded anything that had been known since the days of William III. In 1780 the House of Commons gave expression to its apprehension by adopting a series of resolutions, the first of which a.s.serted unequivocally that "the influence of the crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished."

[Footnote 37: On the const.i.tution as it was at the death of William III., see Maitland, Const.i.tutional History of England, 281-329.]

After the retirement of Lord North, in 1782, however, the influence of the sovereign declined perceptibly, and during the later portion of the reign, clouded by the king's insanity, all that had been gained for royalty was again lost. Under the Regency (1810-1820) and during the reign of the reactionary and scandal-smirched George IV. (p. 036) (1820-1830) the popularity, if not the power, of the crown reached its nadir. In the days of the genial William IV. (1830-1837) popularity was regained, but not power. The long reign of the virtuous Victoria (1837-1901) served completely to rehabilitate the monarchy in the respect and affections of the British people, a consummation whose stability more recent sovereigns have done nothing to impair. As will be pointed out in another place, the influence which the sovereign may wield, and during the past three-quarters of a century has wielded, in the actual conduct of public affairs is far from inconsiderable. But, as will also be emphasized, that influence is but the shadow of the authority which the crown once--even as late as the opening of the eighteenth century--possessed. It is largely personal rather than legal; it is a.s.serted within the domain of foreign relations rather more than within that of domestic affairs; and as against the adverse will of the nation expressed through Parliament it is, in effect, powerless.[38]

[Footnote 38: On the monarchical revival under George III., see D. A. Winstanley, Personal and Party Government; a Chapter in the Political History of the Early Years of the Reign of George III., 1760-1766 (Cambridge, 1910). For an excellent appraisal of the status of the crown throughout the period 1760-1860 see T. E. May, The Const.i.tutional History of England since the Accession of George III., edited and continued by F. Holland, 3 vols.

(London, 1912), I., Chaps. 1-2.]

*35. Ascendancy of the House of Commons.*--A second transformation wrought in the working const.i.tution since 1689 is the s.h.i.+fting of the center of gravity in Parliament from the House of Lords to the House of Commons, together with a notable democratizing of the representative chamber. In the days of William and Anne the House of Lords was distinctly more dignified and influential than the House of Commons. During the period covered by the ministry of Walpole (1721-1742), however, the Commons rose rapidly to the position of the preponderating legislative branch. One contributing cause was the Septennial Act of 1716, whereby the life of a parliament was extended from three years to seven, thus increasing the continuity and desirability of members.h.i.+p in the Commons. Another was the growing importance of the power of the purse as wielded by the Commons. A third was the fact that Walpole, throughout his prolonged ministry, sat steadily as a member of the lower chamber and made it the scene of his remarkable activities. The establishment of the supremacy of the Commons as then constructed did not, however, mean the triumph of popular government. It was but a step toward that end. The House of Commons in the eighteenth century was composed of members elected (p. 037) in the counties and boroughs upon a severely restricted franchise or appointed outright by closed corporations or by individual magnates, and it remained for Parliament during the nineteenth century, by a series of memorable statutes, to extend the franchise successively to groups of people hitherto politically powerless, to reapportion parliamentary seats so that political influence might be distributed with some fairness among the voters, and to regulate the conditions under which campaigns should be carried on, elections conducted, and other operations of popular government undertaken. Of princ.i.p.al importance among the enactments by which these things were accomplished are the Reform Act of 1832, the Representation of the People Act of 1867, the Ballot Act of 1872, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of 1883, the Representation of the People Act of 1884, and the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885. The nature of these measures will be explained subsequently.[39]

[Footnote 39: See pp. 80-86.]

II. RISE OF THE CABINET AND OF POLITICAL PARTIES