Frederic Austin Ogg

“ It is not too much to say that the most striking aspect of English constitutional history is the continual preservation, in the teeth of inevitable changes, of a preponderating proportion of institutions that reach far into the past. "The great difficulty which presses on the student of the English constitution, regarded as a set of legal rules," observes a learned commentator, "is that he can never dissociate himself from history. There is hardly a rule which has not a long past, or which can be understood without some consideration of the circumstances under which it first came into being." ”

“ There is in Great Britain no single official who fills even approximately the position occupied elsewhere by a minister of justice or an attorney-general, but the most important of several officers who supply the lack is the Lord Chancellor. "The greatest dignitary," says Lowell, "in the British government, the one endowed by law with the most exalted and most diverse functions, the only great officer of state who has retained his ancient rights, the man who defies the doctrine of the separation of powers more than any other personage on earth, is the Lord Chancellor." ”

“ Under the name Austria-Hungary there was established a novel type of state consisting of an empire and a kingdom, each of which, retaining its identity unimpaired, stands in law upon a plane of complete equality with the other. Each has its own constitution, its own parliament, its own ministry, its own administration, its own courts. Yet the two have but one sovereign and one flag, and within certain large and important fields the governmental machinery and public policy of the two are maintained in common. ”

“ In the words of a German jurist, "the anomaly continues to exist in Prussia of ministerial responsibility solemnly enunciated in the constitution, the character of the responsibility, the accuser and the court specified, and at the same time a complete lack of any legal means by which the representatives of the people can protect even the constitution itself against the most flagrant violations and the most dangerous attacks." ”

“ Each house enjoys the privilege—for all practical purposes now the right—of regulating its own proceedings, of committing persons for contempt, and of deciding contested elections. The last-mentioned function the House of Commons, however, has delegated to the courts. A privilege jealously retained by the Lords is that of trial in all cases of treason or felony by the upper chamber itself, under the presidency of a Lord High Steward appointed by the crown. ”

“ Within Parliament it is the Chamber of Deputies that preponderates. Aside from the king and ministry, it alone enjoys the power of initiating legislation; and the opposition with which the Chamber of Magnates may be disposed to meet its measures invariably melts away after a show of opinion has been made. By a simple majority vote in the lower chamber a minister may be impeached for bribery, negligence, or any act detrimental to the independence of the country, the constitution, individual liberty, or property rights. ”

“ If the sovereign were in these days actually to veto a bill, the political consequences might be serious, but there could be no question of the sheer legality of the deed. It is by virtue of a convention, not a law, of the constitution, that ministers resign office when they have ceased to command the confidence of the House of Commons; that a bill must be read three times before being finally voted upon in the House of Commons; that Parliament is convened annually and that it consists of two houses. The cabinet, and all that the cabinet, as such, stands for, rests entirely upon convention. ”

“ Parliament exists only by his will. Those who sit in it are summoned by his writ, and the privilege of voting for a member of the lower chamber is only a franchise, not a right independent of his grant. Technically, the sovereign never dies; there is only a demise of the crown, i.e., a transfer of regal authority from one person to another, and the state is never without a recognized head. ”

“ The preponderating principle in the governmental system of Great Britain to-day is the rule of law, which means, in effect, two things: first, that no man may be deprived of liberty or property save on account of a breach of the law proved in one of the ordinary courts and, second, that no man stands above the law and that for every violation of the law some reparation may be obtained, whatever the station or character of the offender. ”

“ Among the governments of contemporary Europe that of the federal republic of Switzerland is unique; and the constitutional experiments which have been, and are being, undertaken by the Swiss people give the nation an importance for the student of politics altogether out of proportion to its size and population. Nowhere in our day have been put to the test in more thoroughgoing fashion the principles of federalism, of a plural executive, of proportional representation, of the initiative and the referendum, and, it may be said, of radical democracy in general. ”

“ Why Monarchy Survives.—Monarchy in Great Britain is a solid and, so far as can be foreseen, a lasting reality. Throughout the tempestuous years 1909-1911, when the nation was aroused as it had not been in generations upon the issue of constitutional reform, and when every sort of project was being warmly advocated and as warmly opposed, without exception every suggested programme took for granted the perpetuation of the monarchy as an integral part of the governmental system. In the general bombardment to which the hereditary House of Lords was subjected hereditary kingship wholly escaped. ”

“ If the chancellorship is without a counterpart among modern governments, no less so is the Federal Council, or Bundesrath. No feature of the German political system is more extraordinary; none, as one writer has observed, is more thoroughly native. [316] It is not an "upper house," nor even, in the ordinary sense, a deliberative chamber at all. On the contrary, it is the central institution of the whole Imperial system, and as such it is possessed of a broad combination of functions which are not only legislative, but administrative, consultative, judicial, and diplomatic. ”

“ Nature of the Constitution.—The constitution of Prussia is modelled upon that of Belgium. Provisions relating to the powers of the crown, the competence of the chambers, and the functions of the ministers are reproduced almost literally from the older instrument. None the less, the two rest upon widely differing bases. The Belgian fundamental law begins with the assertion that "all powers emanate from the nation." That of Prussia voices no such sentiment, and the governmental system for which it provides has as its cornerstone the thoroughgoing supremacy of the crown. ”

“ The Rules of Succession.—Executive power in the kingdom is vested solely in the crown, although in practice it devolves to a large degree upon the council of ministers. Kingship is hereditary, and in regulation of the succession the constitution lays down the general principle that an elder line shall always be preferred to younger ones; in the same line, the nearer degree of kinship to the more remote; in the same degree of kinship, the male to the female; in the same sex, the older to the younger person. ”

“ But the appointing power of the crown is so comprehensive that the body partakes largely of the character of a royal creation. Its membership is recruited almost exclusively from the rigidly conservative landowning aristocracy, so that in attitude and policy it is apt to be in no degree representative of the mass of the nation, at least of the industrial classes. As a rule, though not invariably, it is ready to support cordially the measures of the crown. In any event, through exercise of the unrestricted power of creating peers, the crown is in a position at all times to control its acts. ”

“ The limitless competence of Parliament involves the power to set aside or to modify at any time any Common Law principle or practice, while, on the other hand, no development of the Common Law can repeal an act of Parliament. ”

“ As has been pointed out, the uses of the crown are by no means wholly ornamental. None the less, the actual executive of the nation is the cabinet. It is within the cabinet circle that administrative policies are decided upon, and it is by the cabinet ministers and their subordinates in the several departments that these policies, and the laws of the land generally, are carried into effect. On the other side, the cabinet members not only occupy seats in one or the other of the houses of Parliament; collectively they direct the processes of legislation. ”

“ The notorious Northampton election of 1768, in the course of which a body of voters numbering under a thousand were the recipients of hospitalities from the backers of three candidates which aggregated upwards of a million pounds, was, of course, exceptional; but the history of countless other cases differed from it only in the amounts laid out. To-day an altogether different state of things obtains. From having been one of the most corrupt, Great Britain has become one of the most exemplary of nations in all that pertains to the proprieties of electoral procedure. ”

“ For Austria the net result of the wars was the loss of territory and also of influence, among the states of the Empire, if not among those of all Europe. On the side of internal affairs it may be observed simply that Maria Theresa became virtually the founder of the unified Austrian state, and that, in social conditions generally, the reign of this sovereign marks more largely than that of any other the transition in the Hapsburg dominions from mediæval to modern times. Unlike her doctrinaire son and successor, Joseph, Maria Theresa was of an eminently practical turn of mind. ”

“ The Conservatives have ceased, in large part, to be "reactionaries." Few of them are even royalists, and the old distinction of Legitimist, Orleanist, and Bonapartist has disappeared entirely. The Right is essentially "republican," as is evidenced by the further fact that the majority of its members in the Chamber are Progressives, whose forerunners composed the real Republican party of a generation ago. The Republican groups of to-day comprise simply those numerous and formidable political elements which are more republican—that is to say, more radical—than are the adherents of the Right. ”

“ They arise in part, though by no means so largely as is sometimes imagined, from the fact that monarchy in England is a venerable institution and the innate conservatism of the Englishman, while permitting him from time to time to regulate and modify it, restrains him from doing anything so revolutionary as to abolish it. That upon certain conspicuous occasions, as in the Cromwellian period, and again in 1688, kingship has owed its very life to the conservative instinct of the English people is well enough known to every student of history. ”

“ Freedom of speech, finally guaranteed effectually in the Bill of Rights, means simply that a member may not be held to account by legal process outside Parliament for anything he may have said in the course of the debates or proceedings of the chamber to which he belongs. The right of access to the sovereign belongs to the Commons collectively through the Speaker, but to the Lords individually. ”

“ In the king alone is vested, by the Statuto, the executive power, and to him alone this power, in theory, still belongs. The exercise of it, however, devolves almost wholly upon a group of ministers, who are responsible, not to the crown, but to the parliament. In no continental country has there been a more deliberate or a more unreserved acceptance of the essential principles which underlie the parliamentary (p. 369) system of Great Britain. No one of the three sovereigns of united Italy has ever sought for an instant to establish anything in the nature of personal government. ”

“ Stability of Local Institutions.—Students of political science are familiar with the fact that governmental systems are, as a rule, less stable at the top than at the bottom. Local institutions, embedded in the interests of the community and supported by the native conservatism of the ordinary man, strike root deeply; the central, national agencies of law-making and of administration are played upon by larger, more unsettling forces, with the consequence of greatly increased likelihood of change. Of this principle the history of modern France affords notable illustration. ”

“ The constitutional system of the Third Republic is a product, not of orderly evolution, but of disruption, experimentation, compromise. It represents a precarious balance which has been struck between those forces of radicalism and conservatism, of progress and reaction, for whose eternal conflict France pre-eminently has furnished a theatre since 1789. Its connection with the remoter past is very much less direct and fundamental than is that of the governmental system of England, Russia, Austria-Hungary, or the Scandinavian states. ”

“ It is the function of the ministers not only to serve as the heads of executive departments and to explain and defend in the legislative chambers the acts of the government, but, in their collective capacity, to formulate measures for presentation to the Cortes and, especially, to submit every year for examination and discussion a general budget, accompanied by a scheme of taxation or other proposed means of meeting prospective expenditures. In each chamber there is reserved for the ministers of the crown a front bench to the right of the presiding official. ”

“ The history of no other European nation, in the first place, exhibits a development of institutions so prolonged, so continuous, and so orderly. The governmental forms and agencies of no other state have been studied with larger interest or imitated with clearer effect. The public policy of no other organized body of men has been more influential in shaping the progress, social and economic as well as political, of the civilized world. ”

“ Building in so far as was possible upon foundations already laid, William was able so to manœuver the consequences of the Conquest as to throw the advantages all but wholly upon the side of the crown. Feudalism, land-tenure, military service, taxation, the church—to all was imparted, by force or by craft, such a bent that the will of the sovereign acquired the practical effect of law, and monarchy in England, traditionally weak, was brought to the verge of sheer absolutism. ”