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SUPPLEMENT.

THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION.

1. Objects of constitutions.-Peculiar character of the British Constitution.Constitutions of government are formed among nations to define and restrict the powers of the sovereign, and to specify and secure the rights of the people. The British Constitution, unlike most other constitutions, is not a written instrument; but consist of acts of Parliament, decisions of courts of law, and longestablished usages and customs. It is therefore superior to other constitutions; from the fact that it cannot be broken by any legislation. It is very elastic, and can be expanded without changing its form or character. Thus England has the same form of government to-day which it had from its foundation; but the English people have for the last eight hundred years gradually acquired new liberties, so that England to-day is practically as free as the freest republic in the world, the sovereign being divested of all power in the government.

2. The British Government a mixed one.-The people and the aristocracy.The British Government consists of four systems united, affording the best example of a mixed form of government that the world has ever seen. The four systems thus united are monarchy, theocracy, aristocracy and democracy; so that the sovereign, the church, the nobility and the people all have a share in directing the destinies of the mighty British Empire. While the people of England have more civil and political liberty than any other in Europe, there is no aristocracy in the world so wealthy and powerful as the English nobility.

3. Origin of the British Constitution.-The Feudal System.-The British Constitution was formed very gradually, and its details are the results of long experience and are precisely adapted to the peculiar circumstances of the British nation. The government established in England by William the Conqueror was a feudal despotism; the lands of the kingdom being assigned to his Norman favorites, and the Anglo-Saxon population became the vassals, or serfs, of their Norman lords.

4. First step in the direction of liberty.-Magna Charta.-There were at first no written restrictions upon the king's authority over the barons, or nobles; but King Henry I., in order to secure his usurpation of the crown, granted some special privileges to the nobility and people of England. These privileges were flagrantly violated by King John, who was, however, on June 15, 1215, compelled by the English barons to grant Magna Charta [kar'-ta], or Great Charter

of rights and liberties, which has ever since been regarded as the foundation of the free constitution of England. Thus the powers of the lords, and also the rights of the commons, received some recognition. The most important provisions of Magna Charta were the following: No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor commit him, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no man will we sell, to none will we delay, to none will we deny right or justice.

5. Liberation of the cities and towns.—Origin of the House of Commons. The Crusades having tended to break up the feudal system throughout England and every other part of Europe, by compelling the rich barons to sell their lands, a class of small landholders grew up, who looked to the crown for protection against the tyranny of the nobles, while the cities and towns received charters of incorporation and were released from feudal dependence on the great barons. When old Simon de Montfort took up arms to resist the capricious tyranny of King Henry III., he summoned a Parliament to sanction his action; and, in order to gain popular support, he called upon the counties to elect knights of the shire, and requested the cities and boroughs to send deputies. Thus not only the lords, but also the commons of England, were represented. This was the beginning of the House of Commons, in which the people of England are represented by deputies elected for that purpose, and which has always defended popular rights against arbitrary encroachments on the part of the king and the lords.

6. Growth of the royal power under the Tudor dynasty.-The commons were thenceforth courted by the king as a counterbalance to the power of the nobility, whose repeated encroachments on the royal prerogatives threatened the establishment of an unlimited baronial aristocracy; but the "Wars of the Roses " almost annihilated the ancient nobility of England; and the authority of the king became almost absolute, and so continued throughout the reigns of the sovereigns of the Tudor dynasty, during the whole period of the sixteenth century.

7. The struggle between the Stuarts and Parliament.-Petition of Right.— With the accession of the Stuart family to the English throne, the commons insisted upon the recognition of their rights, and thus began those fierce disputes between king and Parliament which distracted England during the whole period of the seventeenth century-the period that the Stuarts occupied the throne. In this contest the lords sided with the commons. King Charles I. was compelled, by the bold attitude of the commons, to grant the Petition of Right, which bestowed on the English people many constitutional privileges. The contest between Parliament and Charles I. resulted in the king's execution and the temporary overthrow of the monarchy.

8. The Habeas Corpus Act.-The Bill of Rights.—When monarchy was restored in 1660, the struggle between the king and the commons was renewed, with results beneficial to the cause of liberty. During the reign of Charles II.,

Parliament passed the celebrated Habeas Corpus Act, which protected freedom of person against arbitrary arrests; but the grandest result in the onward march of English freedom was achieved by the "Glorious Revolution of 1688," which hurled the tyrant James II. from the throne, when Parliament passed the celebrated Bill of Rights, by which the king was shorn of his arbitrary powers, and his authority was reduced to a mere shadow, while the rights and liberties of the English people were secured on a new and permanent basis. The following were the most important provisions of the Bill of Rights: 1. The king cannot suspend the laws or their execution. 2. He cannot levy money without the consent of Parliament. 3. The subjects have a right to petition the crown. 4. A standing army cannot be kept in time of peace without the consent of Parliament. 5. Elections and parliamentary debates must be free, and parliaments must be frequently assembled.

9. The Reform Bills of 1832, 1867 and 1884.-After the Revolution of 1688 no change was made in the British Constitution until 1832, when Parliament passed the First Reform Bill, which extended the right of suffrage to half a million additional voters, and invested the middle classes of English society with the chief political power in the British Empire. The Reform Bill of 1832 was to England a great, although a bloodless, political revolution. No further advance in the direction of popular liberty was made in England until 1867, when Parliament passed the Second Reform Bill, which made the suffrage almost universal, by diminishing the property qualification of voters for members of the House of Commons, and by re-arranging the Parliamentary constituencies of the kingdom. By the Franchise Act, or the Third Reform Bill, passed by Parliament in 1884, the suffrage in Great Britain was made practically universal.

10. The legislative power in England.—The English crown.—The legislative power of England is vested in the king (or queen) and the two branches of Parliament-the lords and the commons. The crown of England is hereditary, but Parliament has the right to alter or regulate the succession. On the death of James II., in the year A. D. 1701, Parliament passed the famous Act of Settlement, which extended the right of succession to the Protestant heirs of James I., on the impending failure of Protestant heirs of James II. The crown therefore passed to the House of Brunswick, or Hanover, the Guelf family, the Princess Sophia of Hanover having been a granddaughter of James I.; and George I., Elector of Hanover, the son of Sophia, ascended the British throne in 1714, upon the extinction of the Protestant heirs of the House of Stuart. The present reigning family is the House of Brunswick, and holds the throne by right of the Parliamentary title of the Princess Sophia. Since the Norman Conquest of England, in 1066, the English throne has never been occupied by an Englishman, all the royal families since that date belonging to other nationalities-the dynasty founded by William the Conqueror being Norman-French; the Plantagenets being French; the Tudors being Welsh; the

Stuarts being Scotch, and the present reigning family of the Guelfs, known as the House of Brunswick, or Hanover, being German.

11. Duties and prerogatives of the sovereign.—His Ministers.—The duties of the English sovereign, as prescribed in the coronation oath, are: 1. To govern according to law; 2. To execute judgment in mercy; 3. To maintaïr. de established religion. Those privileges of the monarch which belong to him in consequence of his high station are called the kingly prerogatives, and are of two kinds, direct and incidental. The chief of the direct prerogatives of the sovereign are: 1. The power of making war and peace; 2. Of sending and receiving ambassadors; 3. Of pardoning offences; 4. Of conferring honors and titles of dignity; 5. Of appointing judges and subordinate magistrates; 6. Of giving or revoking commissions in the army or navy; 7. Of rejecting bills proffered to him by the two Houses of Parliament. The sovereign is the head of the national church, and appoints to vacant bishoprics and other ecclesiastical dignities. But the king, or queen, cannot exercise his, or her, prerogatives directly and personally; but only through Ministers, who are responsible to the British nation as represented in the two Houses of Parliament. Hence the maxim of English law, "The king can do no wrong; "his Ministers alone being responsible. When, therefore, the measures of a Ministry are disapproved by a majority of the House of Commons, the Ministers in power must either resign or dissolve the House of Commons and order the election of a new House of Commons to ascertain the sense of the nation; and if a majority is returned in favor of the Ministers' policy, the Ministry remains in power; but if a majority is returned disapproving their course, a change of Ministry takes place. The Ministers are taken from the members of the two Houses of Parliament. The head of the Ministry is the Prime Minister, the Premier, usually the First Lord of the Treasury. The other members of the Ministry are the Lord Chancellor, the Lord President of the Council, the Lord Privy Seal, the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, the Colonial Secretary, the Secretary for India, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, the Secretary of War, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Postmaster-General, the President of the Board of Trade, the President of the Poor Law Board, and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

12. Incidental prerogatives.-The principal incidental prerogatives of the monarch are as follows: 1. No costs can be recovered against him; 2. His debt shall be preferred before that of a subject; 3. No suit or action can be brought against him, but any person having a claim in point of property on the king must petition him in chancery. There are also certain privileges conceded to the royal family. The queen retains her title and dignity, even after her husband's death; and she has the right to buy and sell in her own name, and to remove any suit at law in which she is a party to any court she chooses, without any of the common legal formalities. The king's eldest son is by birth Prince of Wales, and by creation Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester. All the

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