the Lords to and 1832 The Constitutional position of the Lords with regard to legis- Determined lation of which they disapprove, but which is supported by the opposition of Ministers of the Crown, the House of Commons, and the people, the Reform may be said to have been definitely settled by the result of the Bills of 1831 memorable struggle with the Upper House in 1831 and 1832 on the passing of the Reform Bill. After sixteen peers had been created to assist the progress of the measure, the continued opposition of the House of Lords was at length overcome by the overcome by private persuasions of the king, and the knowledge that he had a threatened consented to his Ministers' request for power to create a sufficient peers; number of peers to ensure a majority.1 creation of unconstitu vindication The threatened creation of peers was denounced at the time which is deby the Duke of Wellington and the Tory party generally as nounced as "an unconstitutional exercise of the prerogative; " but it was tional. admirably answered by Earl Grey: "I ask what would be the Earl Grey's consequences if we were to suppose that such a prerogative of the did not exist, or could not be constitutionally exercised? The proposed Commons have a control over the power of the Crown, by the creation. privilege, in extreme cases, of refusing the supplies; and the Crown has, by means of its power to dissolve the House of Commons, a control upon any violent and rash proceedings on the part of the Commons; but if a majority of this House is to have the power, whenever they please, of opposing the declared and decided wishes both of the Crown and the people, without any means of modifying that power, then this country is placed entirely under the influence of an uncontrollable oligarchy. I say that, if a majority in this House should have the power of acting adversely to the Crown and the Commons, obstacle to rash and inconsiderate legislation; it is to protect the people from the consequences of their own imprudence. It never has been the course of this House to resist a continued and deliberately expressed public opinion. Your lordships always have bowed, and always will bow, to the expression of such an opinion; but it is yours to check hasty legislation leading to irreparable evils." (Hansard, Deb. lxxxvi., p. 1175.) Similarly, the late Lord Lyndhurst, speaking on the second reading of the Oaths Bill, in 1858, said in the House of Lords: "It is part of our duty to originate legislation; but it is also a most important part of our duty to check the inconsiderate, rash, hasty, and undigested legislation of the other House ;to give time for consideration; and for consulting or perhaps modifying the opinions of the constituencies; but I never understood, nor could such a principle be acted upon, that we were to make a firm, determined, persevering stand against the opinion of the other House of Parliament, when that opinion is backed by the opinion of the people; and, least of all, on questions affecting, in a certain degree, the constitution of that House, and popular rights. If we do make such a stand, we ought to take care that we stand on a rock." (Hansard, Deb., 3rd ser., ii. p. 1768.) 1 "The king grants permission to Earl Grey, and to his Chancellor, Lord Brougham, to create such a number of peers as will be sufficient to ensure the passing of the Reform Bill-first calling up peers' eldest sons. WILLIAM R. Windsor, May 17th, 1832." Roebuck, Hist. of the Whig Ministry, ii. 331, 333. An extraordinary creation of peers equi valent to a dissolution. Political weight of the peers affected by their small attendance and indifference to business. Proxies discontinued, 1868. Attempts to revive life peerages. and was determined to exercise that power, without being liable to check or control, the Constitution is completely altered, and the government of this country is not a limited monarchy: it is no longer, my lords, the Crown, the Lords, and the Commons, but a House of Lords-a separate oligarchy-governing absolutely the others." 1 In its practical aspect, an extraordinary creation of peers is to the House of Lords what a dissolution is to the House of Commons and although such a creation ought never to be made use of except in the greatest emergency, its use in such an emergency is not only Constitutional, but essential to the safety of the Constitution itself.2 The political weight of the Upper House has been to some extent injuriously affected by the indifference to public business displayed (though with many brilliant exceptions) by the great body of its members, and by their scanty attendance, favoured by the rule which requires only three peers to make a quorum, and by the practice of giving proxies. By a resolution of the House in 1868, this latter practice has been advantageously discontinued; but the attempts made, in 1855 by the Crown,3 and in the following year by Bill founded on the recommendation of a Committee of the Lords, to increase the critical power and representative character of the Upper House by calling up men of ability as life-peers, were unfortunately defeated.* 1 Hansard, Deb. 3rd, ser. xii. 1006 (May 17, 1832). 3 Supra, p. 185, n. I. 4 Cf. supra, p. 185, note, where the question of life peerages is more exactly examined. Lord Rosebery brought forward on March 19, 1888, shortly following on the Act of 1887 (Appellate Jurisdiction Act), a motion "that a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the Constitution of this House." The motion was lost on amendment; but in the same year both the Earl of Dunraven and the Marquis of Salisbury brought forward schemes for the reconstitution and reconstruction of the House of Lords; as to these, which were withdrawn, cf. L. O. Pike, Const. Hist. of House of Lords, pp. 384-387. Mr. Labouchere, member for Northampton, moved on March 13, 1894, an amendment to the address to the throne, which in its wording practically proposed the abolition of the House of Lords. This amendment was carried. On the same day the address, thus emended, was negatived on the proposal of the Government, and thus ended a Constitutional crisis unparalleled in our Constitutional History: "the address to Her Majesty being recalled on the motion of those who originally proposed it," to use the words of Mr. A. J. Balfour, the leader of the opposition. Vide "The Crusade against the Constitution," by Sir W. T. Charley, Lond., 1895. This work, which affords some interesting and reliable, though much debatable, matter with reference to the House of Lords, is mostly taken up with combating the views of the author of "50 Years of the House of Lords," a pamphlet written from the opposite (Radical) point of view. A novel point was raised in 1894. The question being the position of the eldest son of a peer upon the death of his father; viz., Hon. Bernard Coleridge, M.P. for the Attercliffe Division of Sheffield, upon the decease of his father, the first Lord Coleridge. Two points were actually raised or rather resulted. As the writ of summons to the House of Lords is only granted by the Crown on the application of the new peer, might it be in his power to continue to occupy his seat as a member of the Lower House III. The House of Commons. House of Like the House of Lords, the House of Commons has also (III.) The undergone very important changes in its numbers, its composi- Commons. tion, and its political influence. In the year 1295, the date of the perfect constitution of the national Parliament under Edward I.,1 the members of the Lower House numbered 274, comprising Number of 74 knights of the shire, and 200 citizens and burgesses. Under members. Edward III. and his three immediate successors the number of the burgesses was about 180, fluctuating in different Parliaments according to the negligence or partiality of the sheriffs in omitting places which had formerly returned members. New boroughs, however, either on account of their growing importance or to increase the authority of the Crown in the Lower House, were from time to time summoned to return representatives, and at the accession of Henry VIII. we find III cities and boroughs (all of which retained the privilege down to the Reform Act of 1832) represented in Parliament by 224 citizens and burgesses. In this reign the number of members was considerably increased by the addition of representatives for Wales, and the Tudor sovereigns systematically pursued the policy of creating insignificant boroughs-many of them mere villages-for the express purpose of corruptly supporting the influence of the Crown in the House of Commons.3 Between the reigns of Henry VIII. and Charles II., no less than 180 members were added to the House by Royal charter alone. The borough of Newark, which received the Parliamentary franchise by Royal Charter under by delaying to apply for the writ of summons to the House of Lords? A Select Committee was appointed to inquire into this, but nothing definite was determined. In this particular case, the House of Commons affirmed that Hon. B. Coleridge's seat was vacated by his acceptance of the office of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. By affirming this, the House of Commons ignored the fact that the recipient of the office was not the Hon. B. Coleridge, but Lord Coleridge, his father having died, and that therefore the Chiltern Hundreds had been granted to a peer. 4 The right of taking part in elections has been declared to have been assured to the peers by the rejection in 1894 of Lord R. Churchill's sessional order in the House of Commons, which declared that “ peers should not take part in elections." It will not appear, however, that the neutral position taken up by the House of Commons could even by implication give a right to do that which constitutional practice has never admitted. It would be difficult," writes L. O. Pike, Const. Hist. House of Lords, pp. 388 and 391, to find a better illustration than is afforded by the House of Lords of the transformations effected by time on the one hand, and of the persistence on the other hand, with which old names are used to designate changed institutions. Trial by Jury, Parliament, the House of Lords and the House of Commons have all lost the character which they had when the respective terms were first used to describe them but even in its defects, the House of Lords has, since it ceased to be a House of feudal peers, been not an unfaithful mirror of the country."-ED.] 1 Supra, pp. 198, 199, 210. 2 Supra, p. 305. 3 Supra, p. 293. + Glanville's Reports, c. ii.; May, Const. Hist., i. 329. In the reign of Defects of the representative system. Charles II., was the last instance of its kind. The House of Commons took the issue of writs into its own hands; and no new borough was created in England or Wales until the Reform Act of 1832. At the date of the union with Scotland the number of members was 513. The Act of Union (6 Anne, c. 7) added 45 representatives of that Kingdom; and the Act of Union with Ireland in 1800 (39 & 40 George III. c. 67) made a further addition to the House of 100 Irish members. The proportional representation of the three kingdoms has since been a little varied, Scotland having [, 1890, 72 members, and Ireland 103]; but the total number of members has remained nearly the same. In 1879, owing to the disfranchisement of certain boroughs for corrupt practices, it stood at the slightly reduced figure of 650.1 For some time after its establishment, the representative system, though never aiming at theoretical perfection, had been practically efficient. The knights of the shire and the burgesses who sat in the Parliaments of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries really did represent the wishes of the great majority of the free inhabitants of the counties and boroughs by whom they were elected. But from the end of the fourteenth century to the passing of the Reform Act, early in the second quarter of the nineteenth, the House of Commons, as it gained in numbers, lost more and more in real representative character. The inequalities in the representation which in course of time naturally James I. the Commons, out of favour to popular rights, resolved that every town which had at any time returned members to Parliament was entitled to a writ as a matter of course; and by virtue of this resolution fifteen boroughs regained the Parliamentary franchise under James and Charles I. In 1673 the County Palatine and City of Durham were for the first time admitted to the franchise by Act 25 Car. II. c. 9; and about the same time a Royal charter was granted to Newark, enabling it to return two burgesses to Parliament. Hallam, Const. Hist., iii. 39. 1 [The Representation of the People Act, 1884, and the Redistribution of Seats Act, 1885, must be carefully distinguished one from the other; the first introduced service franchise, which extended to householders and lodgers in counties the suffrages which householders and lodgers in the boroughs had enjoyed. It placed the three Kingdoms upon equal terms with respect to electoral qualifications. The latter made a new division of the United Kingdom into county and borough constituencies, and raised the number of members of Parliament to 670, giving to England six and to Scotland twelve additional representatives. Ireland would seem to have an excessive county representation in proportion, and a new Redistribution Bill is now (1905) under the consideration of the Government, for the adjustment of this and other electoral anomalies now existing throughout the Kingdom. As in the case of the House of Lords, many have of late been the ineasures, proposals, and suggestions for dealing with the Constitutional question of reform of the House of Commons. On the Radical side, "One man, one vote," is the groundwork of all reform; and next, "Government by a Sovereign Committee." The Conservative reply is, "One vote, one value." It seems, however, almost certain that we are within measurable distance of new reforms in the lowest strata, that of universal suffrage, which may be arrived at on the basis of mutual concessions made by the adherents of the first and last watchwords above referred to.-ED.] grew up, through the simultaneous decay of ancient towns and rise into commercial importance of what had been once more agricultural villages, were allowed to go on unheeded. Many new boroughs were, indeed, as we have seen, enfranchised by Royal charter between the reigns of Henry VIII. and Charles II. ; but they were for the most part places of no special importance or size, and were, in nearly every instance, endowed with the privilege of returning members to Parliament for the express purpose of adding, as nomination boroughs, to the power of the Crown in the House of Commons. In 1653, Cromwell made a statesmanlike effort to remedy the evil by disfranchising many small boroughs, giving members to Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax, and increasing the number of county members; but his reforms, though characterised by Clarendon as a "warrantable alteration, and fit to be made in better times," were cancelled at the Restoration; and thenceforth, until the reign of George III., there was no further attempt to check the ever-growing abuses of the representative system. That system had become thoroughly venal and corrupt. Most of the English boroughs-with a suffrage generally restricted to close corporations or to those bodies and their nominees, the freemen1-might be roughly divided into those which were sold by their patrons," the great territorial proprietors, and those which sold themselves. Of the remainder, while many were under the influence of the Crown, and obediently returned the Crown's nominees, others were owned by patrons who exercised their powers of nomination honestly and conscientiously, and did a service to the country by introducing into the House of Commons young men of ability and promise, who, lacking money or connections, could not otherwise have found a seat. But the great majority of boroughs were venal. Both the Crown and the Ministers of the day, either acting in unison, or, as was frequently the case under George III., in opposition to one another, bought seats alike of patrons and constituencies-titles, pensions, or hard cash satisfying the varying wants of all. The market for seats was further enlarged and their price enhanced by the competition of rich traders, more especially of the "Nabobs," who had returned from the Indies with immense fortunes, and who anxiously sought entrance into the House of Commons as the avenue to social distinction or extended commercial advantage. The published correspondence and memoirs of men of the time attest the wholesale and unblushing bribery and barter of boroughs which prevailed. A few typical instances will serve as illustrations. In 1767, the borough of Ludgershall was sold by its proprietor, George Selwyn, for £9000. In 1807, £10,000 |