Сн. Х. The Privy

cilium privatum et assiduum-the Council regularly attendant on Council and the King, which in Norman times had a large share of the legis

Cabinet

Council.

lative, as well as the executive, business of the country. The right of the Privy Council to participate in making laws in Parliament appears to have continued until about the time of Edward III.

One of the most important parts of constitutional history is that which relates to the control exercised by Parliament over the advisers of the Crown. On many momentous occasions, even before the constitution of two Houses of Parliament, this control was exercised by the great Council of the nation; in some cases demanding the punishment and dismissal of evil counsellors, in other cases demanding that the Crown should be surrounded by approved advisers. At the end of the fourteenth century, the Commons began to take upon themselves the office of accusers of great ministers of State at the Bar of the House of Lords. This salutary method of Parliamentary impeachment continued in practice until the advent of the Tudor dynasty, when it was suspended. During that period the Privy Council obtained an enormous accession of power, principally by means of the Star Chamber. Instead of the regular and wholesome method of Parliamentary impeachments, Bills of Attainder wer substituted, and were often the means of condemning fallen Royal favourites by Acts of Parliament, without regular trial.

Under the Stuart dynasty the method of Parliamentary impeachment was revived. In the reign of Charles I. Parliament proceeded still further in its claims of control over the Privy Council, and demanded that the advisers of the Crown should be chosen subject to its approval, and that the authority of the King in Council should be exercised by the majority of the Council. This plan, if it had been executed, would have almost entirely nullified the separation of the Executive and Legislative Government.

To the same time is to be referred the origin of Cabinet Councils, consisting of those members of the Privy Council who are the more intimate advisers of the Crown. After the Restoration, an attempt was made to remodel the Privy Council by composing

it partly of great officers of State, and partly of members of the Houses of Parliament representing different political parties; but the scheme was soon found impracticable.

The present system of political union among the advisers of the Crown was not established until long after the Revolution. In the reigns of William III. and Anne, the ministries were frequently composed of persons of opposite politics, and changes were made among them gradually, and not simultaneously. George I., indeed, changed the whole ministry on his accession, but his motive was personal feeling, and not deference to Parliament. In the latter part of his reign he was compelled by the influence of a dominant party to accept Sir Robert Walpole as his prime minister. The career of Walpole illustrates two remarkable principles of modern government. In the first place, he inaugurated the modern system of political union among the ministers of the Crown; in the second place, the abandonment of his impeachment, which, after the majority of Parliament turned against him, had been projected by the House of Commons, marks the discontinuance of the old system of party impeachments, and the substitution of the modern system of Parliamentary control over ministers, exercised by compelling their resignation.

The first two Hanoverian Kings were compelled to accept ministers who were supported by the influence of a few powerful families. George III. opposed this system, and for the first twenty years of his reign contrived to be in a great measure independent of his ministers, whose Parliamentary measures he continually thwarted. Pitt was his first minister, who successfully insisted that the King's political conduct should be regulated by no advisers but his public ministers. In 1784 Pitt established a remarkable precedent in the relations of the ministers of the Crown to Parliament. His was the first instance, after the establishment of the modern system of party governments, of a minister of the Crown who, finding the majority of the House of Commons opposed to him, sought by means of a dissolution of Parliament to procure a majority in the House of Commons favourable to his measures.

Book I.
CH. XI.

of Petition,

The system of political union among the ministers of the Crown, which was discontinued after the fall of Walpole, was revived by Pitt. After his death the system was generally observed; but so late as 1812, Lord Wellesley, by the command of the Regent, made an offer to the Whig Lords so to compose the Cabinet as to give them a majority of one in it. In more modern times, however, the rule has been that the ministers remain together in office only so long as there is no public conflict between them as to their political sentiments.

Public opinion is so generally recognized as a power of the The Rights British Government, that an inquiry respecting its Legislature Public Meet- would be incomplete without a consideration of the Rights of Petition, Public Meetings, and the Press-the three means of expressing public opinion.

ings, and the Press.

The practice of petitioning Parliament for the redress of public grievances was not common before the time of Charles I., when multitudes of petitions were presented to the Long Parliament; but were commonly received with censure when the petitioners' sentiments were opposed to those of the majority in Parliament. In the reign of Charles II. the rights of petition were recognized by a statute, which, however, restrained tumultuous petitioning. In the latter part of the same reign the House of Commons attempted illegally to restrain the presentation of obnoxious petitions to the Crown. The next serious attempt against the rights of petition was the prosecution of seven bishops, in the reign of James II., for an alleged libel in a petition presented by them to the King. The Bill of Rights declared that this prosecution was subversive of liberty, and affirmed the general right of subjects to petition the Crown. The right of petition was, however, grossly violated by the House of Commons in 1701, by the imprisonment of various persons who had legitimately exercised the right. But all restrictions upon its free exercise are now practically obsolete.

The laws relating to political meetings, associations, and speeches, were formerly terrible engines of State oppression, but

are now rarely enforced. One of the most important parts of this subject is the history of the general law that bare words, however seditious, are not treason. This humane law has been at various times suspended by Acts of Parliament, which arbitrary governments have used as deadly weapons against their enemies. The Government of Henry VIII. is conspicuous for cruelties exercised under such statutes, which stain the early annals of the Reformation; and Mary, to her honour, renewed the old law that bare words are not treason. This law has been several times since temporarily suspended, and the last attempt to abrogate it was unsuccessfully made in the reign of James II.

Closely connected with this subject is the law of treason as it affects political meetings. By a legal construction of the Statute of Treasons, the assembly of persons for general political objects, accompanied by a display of force, was deemed to constitute a constructive levying of war against the King. It is, however, now well established that a peaceable political assembly, however numerous, cannot be brought within the operation of this branch of the law. Neither is the mere assembly of any number of persons for political purposes, of itself in any manner illegal; neither is the mere exhibition of the physical force of such meetings, where there is nothing to show that the force is threatened to be exercised in a specific manner. But an agreement to convoke a political meeting for a specific purpose of intimidation, as to intimidate the Houses of Parliament, is indictable as a conspiracy.

The history of restraints of the freedom of the Press in England commences with the laws against heretical books in the reign of Henry IV., and continues to the beginning of the present century. In the times of the Tudors and the Stuarts, until the fall of the Star Chamber, that Court had for a principal part of its jurisdiction the licensing of books and the control of the Press, and exercised its power in a fearfully despotic manner. During the Interregnum the censorship of the Press continued, and the Houses of Parliament incessantly exercised their summary jurisdiction to punish obnoxious authors and printers.

After the dissolution of the Star Chamber, the restraints of

the Press were of three kinds:-1, the laws prohibiting the publication of books without previous licence; 2, the practice of Parliament of treating obnoxious publications as breaches of privilege; 3, prosecutions at law for libel. The licensing system expired a few years after the Revolution, but the other two kinds of restraint were practised much later. There were repeated instances during the last and a part of the present century of Parliamentary proceedings against authors and publishers of writings deemed breaches of privilege. With respect to the third class of restraints-prosecutions for libel—these were not brought into the Common Law Courts until, by the abolition of the Star Chamber, the Government lost its means of conducting such prosecutions without the intervention of juries. The power of juries in libel cases was, however, comparatively ineffectual to protect the Press, until the passing of Mr. Fox's Libel Act in 1792. Previously to that enactment, it was held that a jury could inquire only into the fact of publication of an illegal seditious libel, and as to what persons and things it was intended to apply to; the seditious tendency of the libel was a question of law determinable by the judges only. By Fox's Act, however, the jury were empowered to give a verdict upon the whole matter at issue. That law was not followed by the disastrous consequences which its opponents anticipated. It has been found that licentiousness of the Press is far more effectually restrained by the control of juries, and therefore of public opinion, than by the ancient terrors of State pro

secutions.

BOOK II. JUDICATURE. CH. I.

The subject of English JUDICATURE is too extensive and complicated to admit of a complete exposition of it in this work, Divisions of which is concerned principally with the constitutional aspects of

the Judica

ture.

the subject. With this object in view, it has been thought desirable, before entering into a description of the several courts of justice, to inquire into their origin, the general nature of judicial offices, the general course of procedure in courts of justice, and the means by which the authority of the law is maintained.