Parliament of Great Britain

“ In monarchies, the only practical resistance, which the judiciary can present, is to the usurpations of a single department of the government, unaided, and acting for itself. But, if the executive and legislative departments are combined in any course of measures, obedience to their will becomes a duty, as well as a necessity. Thus, even in the free government of Great Britain, an act of parliament, combining, as it does, the will of the crown, and of the legislature, is absolute and omnipotent. ”

“ The Constituent Powers of Parliament.—The principal means by which changes are wrought in the English constitution to-day is that of parliamentary enactment. It is to be observed that in Great Britain there is not, nor has there ever been, any attempt to draw a line of distinction between powers that are constituent and powers that are legislative. ”

“ We should none of us like to have the internal affairs of Great Britain settled by a parliament of the world, if ever such a body came into existence. Nevertheless, there are matters which such a body could settle much better than any existing instrument of government. ”

“ The British Parliament can do every thing they please. Their bill of rights is only an act of Parliament, which may be, at any time, altered or modified, without a violation of the constitution. The people of Great Britain have no constitution to control their legislature. ”

“ And it is as much the law of public opinion as the law of the Constitution that restrains the action of Congress.
It is the habit both of English and American writers to speak of the constitution of Great Britain as if it were ‘writ in water,’ because nothing but the will of Parliament stands between it and revolutionary change. But is there nothing back of the will of Parliament? Parliament dare not go faster than the public thought. There are vast barriers of conservative public opinion to be overrun before a ruinous speed in revolutionary change can be attained. ”

“ He asked what would be thought in Great Britain, from whose constitution our political reasonings were so much drawn, of an attempt to prove that a power of making requisitions of money on the Parliament, and of borrowing money, for discharge of which the Parliament should be bound, might be annexed to the crown without changing its quality of an executive branch, and that the leaving to the Parliament the mode only of complying with the requisitions of the crown would be leaving to it its supreme and exclusive power of legislation. ”

“ The British Parliament received absolute control of all British, colonial, Imperial, and foreign affairs. Perfect unity was restored to the spirit of her government, and predominance in the British, or, to use ordinary language, in the English, Parliament was given to the conservative elements of English society. Great Britain became mistress in her own home; she became much more than this; she was enthroned as undisputed sovereign of the British Empire.53
Under the constitution, in short, of 1886, if Great Britain was weakened on one side she was strengthened on another. ”

“ So that, as the English constitution now stands, the parliament must expire, or die a natural death, at the end of the seventh year, and not sooner, unless dissolved by the royal prerogative. [57] Yet no man, tolerably well acquainted with the history of Great Britain for the last century, would venture to affirm, that the people had not enjoyed a higher degree of liberty and influence in all the proceedings of the government, than ever existed in any antecedent period. ”

“ To prevent dangers that may arise to the kingdom from foreign attachments, connexions, or dependencies, it is enacted by the 12 & 13 W. III. c. 2. that no alien, born out of the dominions of the crown of Great Britain, even though he be naturalized, shall be capable of being a member of either house of parliament. ”

“ I suppose that almost everybody who just now gives any heed to the policy of Great Britain, with regard even to the reform of the franchise and other like strictly legislative questions, thinks of Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues rather than of the House of Commons, whose servants they are. The question is not, What will Parliament do? ”

“ The responsibility of Crown Ministers to Parliament has been, since the Revolution of 1688, the essence of that English polity which has set the fashion for all progressive nations. The English people have never not even during the ferment of the Commonwealth attempted to rule directly; they have been content to rule through representatives in whose wisdom and integrity they believed. Parliamentary government, as hitherto practised in Great Britain, has differed widely from self-government in the strictest sense ”

“ King and Parliament admitted tradesmen, farmers, and working men to a full share in the workings of the state, and only recently the Commons have supplanted the Lords as the leading legislative body of the nation. The story of Great Britain is a tale of growing democracy and increasing efficiency. ”

“ Now, suppose that the system of Parliamentary representation in Great Britain is very bad, that it represents very few persons in that great island, and that those who appear to be represented are distributed in the small boroughs over different parts of the country, and in the counties under the thumb and finger of the landlords, it is clear that the whole Parliament, although your 105 Members may be very good men, must still be a very bad Parliament. ”

“ In the United States an elaborate system of checks and balances gives the executive a provisional veto on legislation, but gives large advisory powers to Congress. In Great Britain the executive is the chief of the dominant party in Parliament, and if he loses the confidence of the legislative body he loses his position as prime minister unless sustained in a national election. ”

“ In Great Britain, therefore, a measure which any Imperial Parliament passes becomes at once the supreme law of the land, though it may nullify a great number of laws which previous Parliaments had passed under different conditions of the sentiment of the nation. ”

“ They further declared that honours and rewards were due only for services rendered to the State; that all officials, without exception, were responsible to the people; that "actions only, not opinions, are the proper objects of civil jurisdictions"; that no law is fairly made except by a majority of the people; and that the people of Great Britain were not fully and fairly represented in Parliament. ”

“ In politics, a great rule ought to be to rule with the things which one knows already, and not to jump into something entirely new of which no one can do more than guess the consequences. The present Parliament has been elected at a moment most favourable to the present Administration after a most popular accession to the throne, everything new and fresh, and with the natural fondness of the great mass of people, a change is always popular; it was known that you were kindly disposed towards your Ministers, everything was therefore à souhait for the election of a new Parliament. ”

“ But there is no reason to think that the phrase111 “Imperial Parliament,” when it was first used, meant anything more than “Parliament of England, Scotland, and Ireland.” That that Parliament could legislate for any part of the dominions of the King of Great Britain and Ireland no man doubted; but it is not likely that anything beyond Great Britain and Ireland was consciously in the minds of those who devised the title. It is only in quite late times, in times within my own memory, that the word “empire” has come into common use as a set term for something beyond the kingdom. ”

“ Leinster, Orford, Westmorland, are familiar instances.
Lord John Russell has drawn up a paper respecting the Irish elections, on which the Prince wished to have his remarks. The subject is a dark and a dreary one....
Changes of Ministry may occur, but it is to be hoped that your Majesty may be enabled to keep the present Parliament for five or six years. For nothing tends so much to favour such reformations, to impede sober improvements, and to make members stand in servile awe of their constituents, as frequent General Elections. ”

“ They who advise it must needs proceed upon the supposition that a majority will be returned favourable to the continuance of the present Administration and favourable to their lately announced policy. On no other ground is it possible that any such advice should be tendered to your Majesty. For no one could ever think of such a proceeding as advising the Crown to dissolve the Parliament in order to increase the force of the Opposition to its own future Ministers, thus perverting to the mere purposes of party the exercise of by far the most eminent of the Royal prerogatives ”

“ If the Tory part of Parliament could have brought themselves to act without passion, much in the reform of Parliament might have been settled much more in conformity with their best interests. I was authorised, in 1831, to speak in this sense to the Duke of Wellington by Lord Grey;15 the effect would have been highly beneficial to both parties, but passion made it impossible to succeed. This is a dangerous part of the business, and we must see during the present session of Parliament if parties are grown wiser. I fear they are not. ”

“ Albert.
Queen Victoria to the King of the Belgians. Buckingham Palace, 23rd March 1852.
... Here matters have improved rather for the Government, and it seems now that they will be able to get through the Session, to dissolve Parliament at the end of June or beginning of July, and to meet again in November. And then Protection will be done away with. If only they had not done so much harm, and played with it for six long years! What you say of the advantage of having had Governments from all parties we have often felt and do feel; it renders changes much less disagreeable. ”

“ As to the second, a system of organisation will always be easier defended than mere numbers arbitrarily fixed, and Parliament ought to have the possibility of voting more or voting fewer men, according to their views of the exigencies of the country, or the pressure of finance at different times, and to be able to do so without deranging the organisation. ”

“ Such a body would change only slowly in its character from election to election, and it would sustain a Government more real, steadfast, representative, assured and consistent than any the world has ever seen before.
Throughout the world a great and gathering body of opinion is moving steadily towards such a conception of a modern Government. And because of its present needs it is Great Britain which is likely to be for a time the battleground between modern and eighteenth-century conceptions of a legislative assembly. ”

“ It is worthy of remark, and the remark may, perhaps, excite some surprise, that representation of the people is not, even at this day, the sole principle of any government in Europe. Great Britain boasts—and she may well boast—of the improvement she has made in politics by the admission of representation; for the improvement is important as far as it goes; but it by no means goes far enough. Is the executive power of Great Britain founded on representation? ”

“ The oratorical and legislative names of the first thirty years of the reign of George the Third have not been surpassed in any legislature of the world.
But a still more important period, a still more strenuous struggle, and a still more illustrious triumph, was to come. The British parliament was to be the scene of labours exerted not for Britain alone, but for the globe. The names of Pitt, Fox, Burke, and a crowd of men of genius, trained by their example, and following their career, are cosmopolite. They belong to all countries and to all generations. ”

“ What seems to be required ultimately at Westminster is a small Parliament devoted to Imperial affairs—Imperial finance, Imperial legislation, and Imperial administration—and leaving to subordinate Parliaments the administration of local matters. Many are firmly convinced that in that way the United Kingdom would become a more successful and efficient country, with legislation better adapted to the needs of its inhabitants, and with a mind more free for the consideration of great Imperial affairs. ”

“ The entire governmental order of Great Britain hinges upon the parliamentary system, and nowhere has that system been reduced to satisfactory operation without the presence of some central, but essentially detached, figure, whether a king or, as in France, a president with the attributes of kingship. It is fundamentally because the English people have discerned that kingship is not necessarily incompatible with popular government that the monarchy has persisted. ”