was like the relation between lord and vassal (see FEUDALISM). The bond between them was the tenure of land. In England there had been, before the Norman Conquest, an approximation to a feudal system. In the earlier English constitution, the most striking features were the power of the witan, and the common property of the nation in a large portion of the soil. The steady development of the power of the king kept pace with the aggregation of the English tribes under one king. The conception that the land belonged primarily to the people gave way to the concep tion that everything belonged primarily to the king. 1 The Norman Conquest imposed on England the already highly developed feudalism of France, and out of this feudalism the free governments of modern Europe have grown. One or two of the leading steps in this process may ba indicated here. The first, and perhaps the most important, was the device of representation. For an account of its origin, and for instances of its use in England before its application to politics, we must be content to refer. to Canon Stubbs s Constitutional History, vol. ii. The problem of combin ing a large area of sovereignty with some degree of self- government, which had proved fatal to ancient common wealths, was henceforward solved. From that time some form of representation has been deemsi essential to every constitution professing, however remotely, to be free, The connexion between representation and the feudal system of estates must be shortly noticed. The feudal theory gave the king a limited right to military service and to certain aids, both of which were utterly inadequate to meet the expenses of the government, especially in time of war. The king therefore hid to get contributions from his people, and he consulted them in their respective orders, The three estates were simply the three natural divisions of the people, and Canon Stubbs has pointed out that, in the occasional treaties between a necessitous king and the order of merchants or lawyers, we have examples of inchoate estates or sub-estates of the realm. The right of representa tion was thus in its origin a right to consent to taxation. The pure theory of feudalism had from the beginning been broken by William the Conqueror causing all free-holders to take an oath of direct allegiance to himself. The institu tion of parliaments, and the association of the king s smaller tenants in capite with other commoners, still further re moved the government from the purely feudal type, in which the mesne lord stands between the inferior vassal and the king.
Parliamentary Government.—The English System.—The right of the commons to share the power of the king and lords in legislation, the exclusive right of the commons to impose taxes, the disappearance of the clergy as a separate order, were all important steps in the movement towards popular government. The extinction of ths old feudal nobility in the dynastic wars of the 15th century simplified the question by leaving the crown face to face with parliament. The immediate result was no doubt an increase in the power of the crown, which probably never stood higher than it did in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth ; but even these powerful monarchs were studious in their regard for parliamentary conventionalities. After a long period of speculative controversy and civil war, the settlement of 1688 established limited monarchy as the government of England. Since that time the external form of government has remained unchanged, and, so far as legal
1 Ultimately, in the theory of English law, the king may be said to have become the universal successor of the people. Some of the pecu liarities of the prerogative rights seem to be explainable only on this view, e.g., the curious distinction between wrecks come to land and wrecks still on water. The common right to wreckage was no doubt the origin of the prerogative right to the former. Every ancient com mon right has come to be a right of the crown or a right held of the crown by a vassal.
description goes, the constitution of William III. might be taken for the same system as that which still exists. The silent changes have, however, been enormous. The most striking of these, and that which has produced the most salient features of the English system, is tie growth of cabinet government. Intimately connected with this is the rise of the two great historical parties of English poli tics. The normal state of government in England is that the cabinet of the day shall represent that which is, for the time, the stronger of the two. Before the Revolution the king s ministers had begun to act as a united body ; but even after the Revolution the union was still feeble and fluctuating, and each individual minister was bound to the others only by the tie of common service to the king Under the Hanoverian sovereigns the ministry became con solidated, the position of the cabinet became definite, and its dependence on parliament, and more particularly on the House of Commons, was established. Ministers were chosen exclusively from one house or the other, and they assumed complete responsibility for every act done in the name of the crown. The simplicity of English politics has divided parliament into two nearly equal parties, and the party in opposition has been steadied by the consciousness that it, too, has constitutional functions of high importance. Criti cism is sobered by being made responsible. Along with this movement went the withdrawal of the personal action of the monarch in politics. No king lias attempted to veto a bill since the Scotch Militia Bill was vetoed by Queen Anne. No ministry has been dismissed by the sovereign since 1834. Whatever the power of the monarch may be, it is unquestionably limited to his personal influence over his ministers. And it must be remembered that ministers are responsible ultimately, not to parliament, but to the House of Commons. Apart, therefore, from the democratic changes of 1832 and 1867, we find that the House of Commons, as a body, had gradually made itself the centre of the government. Since the area of the constitution has been enlarged, it may be doubted whether the orthodox descriptions of the govern ment any longer apply. The earlier constitutional writers, such as Blackstone and Delolme, regard it as a wonderful compound of the three standard forms, monarchy, aris tocracy, and democracy. Each has its place, and each acts as a check upon the others. Hume, discussing the ques tion "Whether the British government inclines more to absolute monarchy or to a republic," decides in favour of the former alternative. "The tide has run long and with some rapidity to the side of popular government, and is just beginning to turn toward monarchy." And he gives it as his own opinion that absolute monarchy would be the easiest death, the true euthanasia of the English constitu tion. These views of the English Government in the 1 8th century may be contrasted with Mr Bagehot s sketch of the modern government as a working instrument. 2
Leading Features of Parliamentary Government.—The parliamentary government developed by England out of feudal materials has been deliberately accepted as the type of constitutional government all over the world. Nearly all the European states and nearly all the Euro pean colonies, dependent or independent, have adopted, more or less fully, the leading features of the English system that is to say, popular representation more or less extensive, a bicameral legislature, and a cabinet or consoli dated ministry. In connexion with all of these, numberless questions of the highest practical importance have arisen, the bare enumeration of which would surpass the limits of our space. We shall confine ourselves to a few very gene ral considerations.
2 See Bagehot s English Constitution.
