Government Committee of the Ministry of Reconstruction was urging that for the proper performance of its functions the cabinet should consist of not more than twelve- indeed, preferably ten-members.1 Mr. Lloyd George's own idea was that only twelve of the most important department heads should be admitted, which would mean a cabinet of the same size as that over which Disraeli presided in 1874-80. He found it not feasible to adhere to this plan, however, and as the new cabinet gradually took form, in October, 1919, it steadily approached the proportions of pre-war days and finally attained a membership of twenty. The secretariat set up in 1915 was wisely preserved, and formal records of proceedings, although not published, continue to be kept. It is unlikely that the old methods of transacting business will ever be restored, and in that case the war cabinet experiment will have had lasting and wholesome results. To the date of writing (1920), however, the coalition principle has been maintained; so that the cabinet system does not yet function as it formerly did, although there are growing indications that cabinets formed with a view to party unity will presently reappear.2

1 See p. 89.

"

2 On the war cabinet see J. A. Fairlie, British War Administration (New York, 1919), 31-58 (also in Mich. Law Rev., May, 1918); R. Schuyler, "The British War Cabinet," in Polit. Sci. Quar., Sept., 1918, and “The British Cabinet, 1916-1919," ibid., Mar., 1920; A. V. Dicey, "The New English War Cabinet as a Constitutional Experiment," in Harvard Law Rev., June, 1917; H. W. Massingham, "Lloyd George and his Government," in Yale Rev., July, 1917; Anon., "The Recent Political Crisis," in Quar. Rev., Jan., 1917; S. Low, "The Cabinet Revolution,' in Fortn. Rev., Feb., 1917; F. Piggott, "The Passing of the Cabinet," in Nineteenth Cent., Feb., 1917; H. Spender, "The British Revolution," in Contemp. Rev., May, 1917; London Times Hist. and Cyclop. of the War, Parts Ix and cxxvii; J. Barthélemy, "La gouvernement par les spécialistes et la recénte experience anglaise" in Rev. Sci. Polit., Apr., 1918. The reports of the cabinet for 1917 and 1918 have been cited (p. 108, note 2).

CHAPTER VIII

PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

. .

THE Parliament which sits at Westminster is not only the chief organ of English democracy but the oldest, the largest, and the most powerful of modern legislative assemblages; it is, withal, in a very true sense, the mother of parliaments. Speaking broadly, it originated in the thirteenth century, became definitely organized in two houses in the fourteenth century, wrested the control of the nation's affairs from the king in the seventeenth century, and underwent a thoroughgoing democratization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The jurisdiction which, step by step, the two houses have acquired has been broadened until it includes practically the whole domain of government; and within this enormous expanse of political control the power of the chambers is, as we have seen, absolutely unrestricted, in law and in fact. "The British Parliament, " writes Bryce, can make and unmake any and every law, change the form of government or the succession to the crown, interfere with the course of justice, extinguish the most sacred private rights of the citizen. Between it and the people at large there is no legal distinction, because the whole plenitude of the people's rights and powers resides in it, just as if the whole nation were present within the chamber where it sits. In point of legal theory it is the nation, being the historical successor of the folk moot of our Teutonic forefathers. Both practically and legally, it is to-day the only and the sufficient depository of the authority of the nation; and it is therefore, within the sphere of law, irresponsible and omnipotent." Whether the business in hand is constituent or legislative, whether ecclesiastical or temporal, the right of Parliament to discuss and to dispose is incontestable. In order to understand how England is governed it is, therefore, necessary to give much attention to Parliament; and in order to appreciate the fullness of English political democracy one must know something of the long historic process by which this

1 American Commonwealth (3 ed.), I, 35–36.

all-powerful Parliament at all events the House of Commons. has been made completely representative of the people. Present Composition. "When," wrote Spencer Walpole a quarter of a century ago, "a minister consults Parliament he consults the House of Commons; when the Queen dissolves Parliament she dissolves the House of Commons. A new Parlia

ment is simply a new House of Commons." 1 The gathering of the "representatives of the commons" at Westminster is indeed, and has long been, without question the most important single agency of government in the kingdom. The chamber is at the same time the chief repository of power and the prime organ of the popular will. It is in consequence of its prolonged and arduous development that Great Britain has attained democracy in national government; and the influence of English democracy, as actualized in the House of Commons, upon the political ideas and the governmental forms of the outlying world, both English-speaking and non-English-speaking, is incalculable.

The House of Commons consists to-day of 707 members, of whom 492 sit for English constituencies, 36 for Welsh, 74 for Scottish, and 105 for Irish. Fifteen of the members are chosen, under somewhat special arrangements, to represent the principal universities. The remaining 692 are elected in county or borough constituencies- 372 in the former and 320 in the latter

under a suffrage law which falls not far short of being the most democratic in the world. The regulations governing the qualifications for election are simple and liberal. There was once a residence qualification. But in the eighteenth century it was replaced by a property qualification, which, however, in 1858 was in its turn swept away.2 Oaths of allegiance and oaths imposing religious tests formerly debarred many persons from candidacy. But all that is now required of a member is a very simple oath or affirmation of allegiance, in a form compatible with any shade of religious belief or unbelief. Any British subject who is of age is qualified for election by any constituency to which he [or she] chooses to offer himself [or herself] as a candidate, unless he [or she] belongs to one of a few small groupschiefly peers (except Irish); clergy of the Roman Catholic

1 The Electorale and the Legislature (London, 1892), 48.

2 The rule requiring county members to be residents of the counties they represented was formally abolished in 1774. From 1710 to 1858 the property qualification required of county members was £600 a year, in possession or expectancy, derived from the ownership of land; the qualification of borough members was £300.

Church, the Church of England, and the Church of Scotland; holders of offices under the crown created since the adoption of the Act of Security in 1705 (except ministerial posts); bankrupts; lunatics; government contractors; persons convicted of treason, felony, or corrupt practices.

Women first became eligible to sit in the House of Commons as a result of legislation supplementary to the Representation of the People Act of February 6, 1918, described below.2 No sooner was this measure, which enfranchised six million women, on the statute book than the question arose whether its effect was to make women eligible for election. The law officers of the crown took a negative view. Prospective women candidates, however, appeared; the Labor party pronounced in favor of female eligibility; and the House of Commons, by a vote of 274 to 25, declared desirable the immediate passage of a bill on the subject. Opposition was half-hearted, and such serious discussion as took place centered around the question of amending the bill so as to admit women to various professions hitherto closed against them. In the House of Lords it was suggested that the measure should be amended to enable peeresses in their own right to sit and vote in the second chamber; but the view prevailed that this subject should be left for separate legislation, and in November, 1918, the Qualification of Women Act as it came from the House of Commons was carried through its final stages. At the elections of the following month, one woman candidate was successful, although, being a Sinn Feiner, she did not take her seat. The first woman who actually served as a member of Parliament was Lady Astor, the American-born wife of Viscount Astor. After a spirited campaign, she, as a Unionist candidate, defeated her Liberal and Labor rivals in a byelection on November 15, 1919. It is to be observed that whereas qualified women may vote at the age of thirty and upwards, the act of 1918 fixes no age limit for election to the chamber.

3

A relic of the days when the local gentry had to be compelled to serve in Parliament is the curious rule which forbids a member to resign his seat. A member may be expelled; but the only way in which he can retire from the House voluntarily before a general election is to accept some public office whose occupant,

This measure attempted the compromise which was carried out in the Succession to the Crown Act-commonly known as the Place Act—of 1707. See p. 97, note 3.

2 See pp. 129-134.

See p. 320.

under the Place Act of 1707,' is ipso facto disqualified. The office usually sought for this purpose is that of steward or bailiff of His Majesty's three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough, and Burnham, in the county of Bucks. Centuries ago, this officer was appointed by the crown to look after certain forests frequented by brigands. The brigands are long since dead, and the forests themselves have been converted into parks and pasture lands, but the stewardship remains. The member who wishes to give up his seat applies for this, or for some other old office with nominal duties and emoluments, receives it and thereby disqualifies himself, and then resigns it. On a number of occasions the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds has been granted twice, and resigned as often, on the same day.2

Problem of Electoral Reform in the Early Nineteenth Century. Despite her parliamentary institutions, her traditional principles of local self-government, and her historic guarantees of individual liberty, England at the opening of the nineteenth century was in no true sense a democratic country. Not only was society organized upon an essentially aristocratic basis, but government likewise was controlled by, and largely in the interest of, the few of higher station. One branch of Parliament was composed entirely of clerical and hereditary members; the other, of members elected under franchise arrangements which were illiberal, or appointed outright by closed corporations or by individual magnates. Not only the men who made the laws, but the officers who executed them, and the judges in whose tribunals they were interpreted and applied, were selected in accordance with procedure in which the mass of the people had no part. The agencies of local government, whether in county or in borough, were as a rule oligarchical, and privilege and class distinction pervaded the whole of the political system. The ordinary man was called upon to obey laws and to pay taxes voted without his assent, to submit to industrial, social, and ecclesiastical regulations whose making, repeal, and amendment he had no effective means of influencing-in short, to support a government which was beyond his power to control.

The problem of parliamentary reform was threefold. The first question was that of the suffrage. Originally the representatives of the counties were chosen in the county court by all persons who were entitled to attend and to take part in the

1 See p. 97.

2 Report from the Select Committee on House of Commons (Vacating of Seats), 1894.