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GOVERNMENTS OF EUROPE

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION

If the element of continuity is thus important in the political system of Germany, France, or Switzerland, in that of England it is fundamental. 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." It is the purpose of the present volume to describe European governments as they to-day exist and operate. It will be necessary in all cases, however, to accord some consideration to the origins and growth of the political organs and practices which may be described. In respect to Great Britain this can mean nothing less than a survey, brief as may be, of a thousand years of history.

The earliest form of the English constitution was that which existed during the centuries prior to the Norman Conquest. Political organization among the Germanic invaders of Britain was of the most rudimentary sort, but the circumstances of the conquest and settlement of the island were such as to stimulate a considerable elaboration of governmental machinery and powers. From the point of view of subsequent institutional history the most important features of the Anglo-Saxon governmental system were kingship, the witenagemot, and the units of local administration--shire, hundred, borough, and township.

At the coming of William the Conqueror, in 1066, two fundamental principles may be said to have been firmly fixed in the English political system. The first was that of thoroughgoing local self-government. The second was that of the obligation of the king, in all matters of first-rate importance, such as the laying of taxes and the making of laws, to seek the counsel and consent of some portion of his subjects. In the period which was inaugurated by the Conquest neither of these principles was entirely subverted, yet the Norman era stands out distinctly as one in which the powers of government were gathered in the hands of the king and of his immediate agents in a measure unknown at any earlier time. Building in so far as was possible upon foundations already laid, William was able so to manoeuver 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.

In effect the Charter was a treaty between the king and his dissatisfied subjects. It was essentially a feudal document, and the majority of its provisions relate primarily to the privileges and rights of the barons. None the less, it contains clauses that affected all classes of society, and it is especially noteworthy that the barons and clergy pledged themselves in it to extend to their dependents the same customs and liberties which they were themselves demanding of the crown. Taking the Charter as a whole, it guaranteed the freedom of the Church, defined afresh and in precise terms surviving feudal incidents and customs, placed safeguards about the liberties of the boroughs, pledged security of property and of trade, and stipulated important regulations respecting government and law, notably that whenever the king should propose the assessment of scutages or of unusual aids he should take the advice of the General Council, composed of the tenants-in-chief summoned individually in the case of the greater ones and through the sheriffs in the case of those of lesser importance. Certain general clauses, e.g., that pledging that justice should neither be bought nor sold, and that prescribing that a freeman might not be imprisoned, outlawed, or dispossessed of his property save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land, meant in effect considerably less than they sometimes have been interpreted to mean. Yet even they served to emphasize the fundamental principle upon which the political and legal structure was intended to be grounded, that, namely, of impartial and unvarying justice.

Throughout the later fourteenth and earlier fifteenth centuries the growth of Parliament in self-assertiveness was remarkable. Twice during the fourteenth century, in 1327 and in 1399, it exercised the fundamental prerogative of deposing the sovereign and of bestowing the crown upon a successor. And before the close of the Lancastrian era it had assumed advanced ground in demanding the right of appropriating subsidies, the accounting by the public authorities for moneys expended, the removal of objectionable ministers, and the annual assembling of the two houses. During the civil wars of the second half of the fifteenth century parliamentary aggressiveness and influence materially declined, and at the opening of the Tudor period, in 1485, the body was in by no means the favorable position it had occupied fifty years earlier. As will appear, its eclipse continued largely through the epoch of the Tudors. Yet its broader aspects had been permanently fixed and its perpetuation in the constitutional system positively assured.

Finally, the Elizabethan portion of the period was an epoch during which there took place a very real growth in independence of sentiment and an equally notable advance in consciousness of power on the part of the popular chamber. Even before the death of Elizabeth there were ill-repressed manifestations of the feeling that the Tudor monarchy had done its work and that the time for a larger amount of parliamentary control had arrived. Nothing was clearer in 1603 than the fact that the sovereign who should expect to get on agreeably with his Commons must be both liberal and tactful. That the Stuarts possessed the first of these qualities in only a very limited measure and the second one not at all is a fact upon which turns an entire chapter of English constitutional history.

THE CONSTITUTION SINCE THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

An Act of Union creating the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" was adopted by the Irish parliament in February, 1800, and by the British parliament five months later, and, January 1, 1801, it was put in operation. Under the terms of this measure the Irish parliament was abolished, and it was arranged that Ireland should be represented in the common parliament by four spiritual lords and twenty-eight temporal peers, chosen by the Irish peerage for life, and by one hundred members of the House of Commons. The Anglican Church of Ireland was amalgamated with the established Church of England, though, subsequently in 1869, it was disestablished and disendowed. The union with Ireland was in the nature of a contract, and while in a number of respects the conditions which were involved in it have been altered within the past hundred years, its fundamentals stand to-day unchanged. It is these fundamentals, especially the assimilation of Ireland with Great Britain for legislative purposes, which are the object of relentless attack on the part of the Home Rule and other nationalistic and reforming elements.

THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY

The assertions that have been made represent with substantial accuracy the ultimate theory of the status of the crown in the governmental system. In respect to the form and fact of that system as it actually operates, however, it would hardly be possible to make assertions that would convey a more erroneous impression. The breadth of the discrepancy that here subsists between theory and fact will be made apparent as examination proceeds of the organization and workings of the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the government of the realm. It is necessary first of all, however, to give attention to certain of the more external aspects of the position which the monarch occupies.

The sovereign enjoys unrestricted immunity from political responsibility and from personal distraint. The theory of the law has long been that the king can do no wrong, which means that for his public acts the sovereign's ministers must bear complete responsibility and for his private conduct he may not be called to account in any court of law or by any legal process. He cannot be arrested, his goods cannot be distrained, and as long as a palace remains a royal residence no sort of judicial proceeding can be executed in it. Strictly, the revenues are the king's, whence it arises that the king is himself exempt from taxation, though lands purchased by the privy purse are taxed. And there are numerous minor privileges, such as the use of special liveries and a right to the royal salute, to which the sovereign, as such, is regularly entitled.

The next fundamental thing to be observed is that the extended powers here referred to are exercised, not by the king in person, but by ministers with whose choosing the sovereign has but little to do and over whose acts he has only an incidental and extra-legal control. Underlying the entire constitutional order are two principles whose operation would seem to reduce the sovereign to a sheer nonentity. The first is that the crown shall perform no important governmental act whatsoever save through the agency of the ministers. The second is that these ministers shall be responsible absolutely to Parliament for every public act which they perform. From these principles arises the fiction that "the king can do no wrong," which means legally that the sovereign cannot be adjudged guilty of wrongdoing , and politically that the ministers are responsible, singly in small affairs and conjointly in more weighty ones, for everything that is done in the crown's name. "In a constitutional point of view," writes an English authority, "so universal is the operation of this rule that there is not a moment in the king's life, from his accession to his demise, during which there is not some one responsible to Parliament for his public conduct; and there can be no exercise of the crown's authority for which it must not find some minister willing to make himself responsible." In continental countries the responsibility of ministers is established very commonly by specific and written constitutional provision. In Great Britain it exists by virtue simply of a group of unwritten principles, or conventions, of the constitution; but it is there none the less real. In the conduct of public affairs the ministry must conform to the will of the majority in the House of Commons; otherwise the wheels of government would be blocked. And from this it follows that the crown is obliged to accept, with such grace as may be, the measures which the ministry, working with the parliamentary majority, formulates and for which it stands ready to shoulder responsibility. It is open to the king, of course, to dissuade the ministers from a given course of action. But if they cannot be turned back, and if they have the support of a parliamentary majority, there is nothing that the sovereign can do save acquiesce.

In respect to both origin and legal status the executive departments of the central government of Great Britain exhibit little of the conformity to type which characterizes their counterparts in the logical and self-consistent governmental systems of the majority of continental countries. Under the pressure, however, of custom and of parliamentary control, they have been reduced to essentially a common style of organization and a common mode of administrative procedure. In virtually every instance the department is presided over by a single responsible minister, assisted as a rule by one or more parliamentary under-secretaries and, more remotely, by a greater or lesser body of non-political officials who carry on the actual work of the department and whose tenure is not affected by the political fortunes of their chiefs.

The third of the executive offices which comprise survivals from early times is that of the Lord High Chancellor. 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." The Lord Chancellor is invariably a member of the Cabinet. He is the chief judge in the High Court of Justice and in the Court of Appeal. He appoints and removes the justices of the peace and the judges of the county courts and wields large influence in appointments to higher judicial posts. He affixes the Great Seal where it is required to give validity to the acts of the crown and he performs a wide variety of other more or less formal services. Finally, it is the Lord High Chancellor who presides in the House of Lords.

Not until 1906 was the premier's office recognized by law, but through more than a century no other public position in the nation has been comparable with it in volume of actual ruling power. Within the ministry, more particularly the cabinet, the premier is the guiding force. He presides, as a rule, at cabinet meetings; he advises with colleagues upon all matters of consequence to the administration's welfare; and, although he will shrink from doing it, he may require of his colleagues that they acquiesce in his views, with the alternative of his resignation. He occupies one of the high offices of state, usually that of First Lord of the Treasury; and, although ordinarily his own portfolio will not require much of his time or energy, he must maintain as close a watch as may be over the affairs of every one of the departments in which his appointees have been placed. The prime minister, is, furthermore, the link between the cabinet and, on the one hand, the crown, and, on the other, Parliament. On behalf of the cabinet he advises with the sovereign, communicating information respecting ministerial acts and synopses of the daily debates in Parliament. In the house of which he is a member he represents the cabinet as a whole, makes such statements as are necessary relative to general aspects of the government's policy, and speaks, as a rule, upon every general or important projected piece of legislation. As a matter of both theory and historical fact, the premier who belongs to the House of Commons is more advantageously situated than one who sits in the Lords.

PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

The range of jurisdiction which, step by step, these chambers, both separately and conjointly, have acquired has been broadened until, so far as the dominions of the British crown extend, it covers all but the whole of the domain of human government. And within this enormous expanse of political control the competence of the chambers knows, in neither theory nor fact, any restriction. "The British Parliament, ..." writes Mr. 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 be constituent or legislative, whether ecclesiastical or temporal, the right of Parliament--or, more accurately "the King in Parliament"--to discuss and to dispose is indisputable.

"The present condition of the franchise," asserts Lowell, "is, indeed, historical rather than rational. It is complicated, uncertain, expensive in the machinery required, and excludes a certain number of people whom there is no reason for excluding, while it admits many people who ought not to be admitted if any one is to be debarred." During the past generation there has been demand from a variety of quarters that the conditions of the franchise, and, indeed, the electoral system as a whole, be overhauled, co-ordinated, and liberalized; and at the date of writing there is pending in Parliament a measure of fundamental importance looking in this direction. The electoral changes which have been most widely advocated, at least in recent years, are four in number: a fresh apportionment of seats in the Commons in accordance with the distribution of population; the extension of the franchise to classes of men at present debarred; the abolition of the plural vote; and the enfranchisement of women.

The range of expenditure which is thus permitted by law is, of course, considerable, and the records of election cases brought into the courts demonstrate that not infrequently in practice its limits are exceeded. None the less, the effect of the law has been undeniably to restrain the outpouring of money by candidates, to purify politics, and at the same time to enable men of moderate means to stand for election who otherwise would be at grave disadvantage as against their wealthier and more lavish competitors. It is of interest to observe that by reason of the non-participation of the state in electoral costs there fall upon candidates certain charges which are unknown in the United States and other countries. The bills submitted by the returning officer must be paid by the candidates within the constituency, and these bills cover the publishing of notices of the election, the preparing and supplying of nomination papers, the cost of dies, ballot-paper, polling-stations, and printing, the fees of clerks, and, finally, the travelling expenses and fee of the returning officer himself. The candidate's share of this outlay may be as small as ?25, but it is likely to be from ?200 to ?300 and may rise to as much as ?600.

PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF LORDS

In the upper chamber a measure introduced by Lord Newton, providing for a reduction of the hereditary element by requiring that a peer by descent alone should have a right to sit only if he were elected as a representative peer or possessed other stipulated qualifications and the appointment by the crown of a maximum of one hundred life peers, was discussed at some length. The bill was withdrawn, but it was decided to create a Select Committee on the House of Lords, under the chairmanship of Lord Rosebery, and in December, 1908, this committee reported a scheme of reform in accordance with which a peerage alone should not entitle the holder to a seat in the chamber; the hereditary peers, including those of Scotland and Ireland, should elect two hundred representatives to sit in the upper house for each parliament; hereditary peers who had occupied certain posts of eminence in the government and the army and navy should be entitled to sit without election; the bishops should elect eight representatives, while the archbishops should sit as of right; and the crown should be empowered to summon four life peers annually, so long as the total did not exceed forty. This series of proposals failed utterly to meet the Liberal demand and no action was taken upon it. But it is to be noted that the Lords' Reconstruction Bill of 1911, to be described presently, was based in no small measure upon information and recommendations forthcoming from the Rosebery committee.

The rules in this connection upon which the Commons insisted have been summarized as follows: The Lords ought not to initiate any legislative proposal embodied in a public bill and imposing a charge on the people, whether by taxes, rates, or otherwise, or regulating the administration or application of money raised by such a charge, and the Lords ought not to amend any such legislative proposal by altering the amount of a charge, or its incidence, duration, mode of assessment, levy or collection, or the administration or application of money raised by such a charge. These rules, although not embodied in any law or standing order, were through centuries so generally observed in the usage of the two houses that they became for all practical purposes, a part of the constitutional system--conventional, it is true, but none the less binding. From their observance it resulted that the upper chamber was never consulted about the annual estimates, about the amounts of money to be raised, or about the purposes to which those amounts should be appropriated; that proposals of taxation came before it only in matured form and under circumstances which discouraged criticism; and that, since the policy of the executive is controlled largely through the medium of the power of the purse, the upper house lost entirely the means of exercising such control. In 1860 the Lords, as has been mentioned, made bold to reject a bill for the repeal of the duties on paper; but the occasion was seized by the Commons to pass a resolution reaffirming vigorously the subordination of the second chamber in finance, and the next year the repeal of the paper duties was incorporated in the annual budget and forced through. Thereafter it became the invariable practice to give place to all proposals of taxation in the one grand Finance Bill of the year, with the effect, of course, of depriving the Lords of the opportunity to defeat a proposal of the kind save by rejecting the whole of the measure of which it formed a part.

Meanwhile, March 14, there had been introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Rosebery an independent series of resolutions, as follows: that a strong and efficient second chamber is not merely a part of the British constitution but is necessary to the well-being of the state and the balance of Parliament; that such a chamber may best be obtained by the reform and reconstitution of the House of Lords; and that a necessary preliminary to such a reform and reconstitution is the acceptance of the principle that the possession of a peerage should no longer of itself involve the right to sit and vote in the House. The first two of these resolutions were agreed to without division; the third, although vigorously opposed, was carried eventually by a vote of 175 to 17.

Meanwhile, early in May, Lord Lansdowne introduced in the upper chamber a comprehensive bill which put in form for legislation the programme of reconstruction to which the more moderate elements in that chamber were ready, under the circumstances, to subscribe. The Lansdowne Reconstruction Bill proposed, at the outset, a reduction of the membership of the chamber to 350. Princes of the blood and the two archbishops should retain membership, but the number of bishops entitled to sit should be reduced to five, these to be chosen triennially by the whole body of higher prelates upon the principle of proportional representation. The remainder of the membership should comprise lords of parliament, as follows: 100 elected from the peers possessing carefully stipulated qualifications, for a term of twelve years, on the principle of proportional representation, by the whole body of hereditary peers , one-fourth of the number retiring triennially; 120 members chosen by electoral colleges composed of members of the House of Commons divided for the purpose into local groups, each returning from three to twelve, under conditions of tenure similar to those prevailing in the first class; and 100 appointed, from the peerage or outside, by the crown on nomination by the premier, with regard to the strength of parties in the House of Commons, and under the before-mentioned conditions of tenure. It was stipulated, further, that peers not sitting in the House of Lords should be eligible for election to the House of Commons, and that, except in event of the "indispensable" elevation of a cabinet minister or ex-minister to the peerage, it should be unlawful for the crown to confer the dignity of an hereditary peerage upon more than five persons during the course of any single year.

PARLIAMENT: ORGANIZATION, FUNCTIONS, PROCEDURE

The hall occupied by the Lords is smaller and more elaborately decorated than that occupied by the Commons. It contains cross benches, but in the main the arrangements that have been described are duplicated in it. For social and ceremonial purposes there exists among the members a fixed order of precedence. In the chamber, however, the seating is arranged without regard to this order, save that the bishops sit in a group. The Government peers occupy the benches on the right of the woolsack and the Opposition those on the left, while members who prefer to remain neutral take their places on the cross benches between the table and the bar.

When the king summons the two chambers he does so, "being desirous and resolved as soon as may be to meet his people, and to have their advice in Parliament." No mention is made of legislative or financial business, and, technically, Parliament is still essentially what originally it was exclusively, i.e., a purely deliberative assemblage. Practically, however, the mere discussion of public questions and the giving of advice to the crown has become but one of several distinctive parliamentary functions. The newer functions which, with the passing of time, have acquired ever increasing importance are, in effect, three. The first is that of criticism, involving the habitual scrutiny and control of the measures of the executive and administrative organs. The second is the exercise, under limitations to be described, of the power of judicature. The third, and much the most important, is the function of public and private legislation and of fiscal control.

Two great fiscal measures are introduced and carried through annually: the Appropriation Act, in which are brought together all the grants for the public services for the year, and the Finance Act in which are comprised all regulations relating to the revenue and the national debt. Before the close of the fiscal year the ministry submits to the Commons a body of estimates for the "supply services," drawn up originally by the government departments, scrutinized by the Treasury, and approved by the cabinet. Early in the session the House resolves itself into a Committee of the Whole on Supply, by which resolutions of supply are discussed, adopted, and reported. These resolutions are embodied in bills which, for purposes of convenience, are passed at intervals during the session. But at the close all of them are consolidated in one grand Appropriation Act. Upwards of half of the public expenditures, it is to be observed, e.g., the Civil List, the salaries of judges, pensions, and interest on the national debt, are provided for by permanent acts imposing charges upon the Consolidated Fund and do not come annually under parliamentary review.

After having been scrutinized and approved by parliamentary officials known as Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, a private bill is introduced in one of the two houses. Its introduction is equivalent to its first reading. At its second reading debate may take place upon the principle of the measure, after which the bill, if opposed, is referred to a Private Bill Committee consisting of four members and a disinterested referee. If the bill be not opposed, i.e., if no adverse petition has been filed by property owners, corporations, or other interests, the committee of reference, under a standing order of 1903, consists of the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means, two other members of the House, appointed by the Committee of Selection, and the Counsel to Mr. Speaker. The committee stage of a contested bill assumes an essentially judicial aspect. Promoters and opponents are represented by counsel, witnesses are examined, and expert testimony is taken. After being reported by committee, the measure goes its way under the same regulations as those controlling the progress of public bills.

A more generally effective device by which discussion is limited and the transaction of business is facilitated is that known as "closure by compartments," or "the guillotine." When this is employed the House in advance of the consideration of a bill agrees upon an allotment of time to the various parts or stages of the measure, and at the expiration of each period debate, whether concluded or not, is closed, a vote is taken, and a majority adopts that portion of the bill upon which the guillotine has fallen. In recent years this device has been employed almost invariably when an important Government bill is reserved for consideration in Committee of the Whole. Its advantage is the saving of time and the ensuring that by a given date final action upon a measure shall have been taken. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century liberty of discussion in the Commons was all but unrestrained, save by what an able authority on English parliamentary practice has termed "the self-imposed parliamentary discipline of the parties." The enormous change which has come about is attributable to two principal causes, congestion of business and the rise of obstructionism. The effect has been, among other things, to accentuate party differences and to involve occasional disregard of the rights of minorities.

POLITICAL PARTIES

The temper and tendencies of the parties as they gradually assumed shape during the third quarter of the nineteenth century have been characterized effectively by a recent writer as follows: "The parties of which Gladstone and Disraeli were the chiefs were linked by continuous historical succession with the two great sections or factions of the aristocracy, or hereditary oligarchy, which ruled Great Britain in the eighteenth century. But each had been transformed by national changes since the Reform Bill. The Whigs had become Liberals, the Tories had become Conservatives. The Liberal party had absorbed part of the principles of the French Revolution. They stood now for individual liberty, laying especial stress on freedom of trade, freedom of contract, and freedom of competition. They had set themselves to break down the rule of the landowner and the Church, to shake off the fetters of Protection, and to establish equality before the law. Their acceptance of egalitarian principles led them to adopt democratic ideals, to advocate extension of the suffrage, and the emancipation of the working classes. Such principles, though not revolutionary, are to some extent disruptive in their tendency; and their adoption by the Liberals had forced the Tory party to range themselves in defense of the existing order of things. They professed to stand for the Crown, the Church, and the Constitution. They were compelled by the irresistible trend of events to accept democratic principles and to carry out democratic reforms. They preferred, in fact, to carry out such reforms themselves, in order that the safeguards which they considered necessary might be respected. Democratic principles having been adopted, both parties made it their object to redress grievances; but the Conservatives showed a natural predisposition to redress those grievances which arose from excessive freedom of competition, the Liberals were the more anxious to redress those which were the result of hereditary or customary privilege. The harmony of the State consists in the equilibrium between the two opposing forces of liberty and order. The Liberals laid more stress upon liberty, the Conservatives attached more importance to order and established authority."

After the elections dissension within the Liberal ranks broke out afresh. The Rosebery wing maintained that, the South African war having been begun, it was the duty of all Englishmen to support it, and that the Unionist government should be attacked only on the ground of mismanagement. In July, 1901, Campbell-Bannerman, impelled by the weakness of his position, demanded of his fellow-partisans that they either ratify or repudiate his leadership of the party in the Commons. Approval was accorded, but no progress was realized toward an agreement upon policies. To careful observers it became clear that there could be no effective revival of Liberalism until the war in South Africa should have been terminated and the larger imperial problems involved in it solved. For a time the only clear-cut parliamentary opposition offered the Government was that of the frankly pro-Boer Nationalists.

In this situation the Liberals found their opportunity. All but unanimously opposed to the suggested departure, they assumed with avidity the r?le of defenders of England's "sacred principle of free trade" and utilized to the utmost the appeal which could now be made to the working classes in behalf of cheap bread. Mr. Chamberlain denied that his scheme meant a wholesale reversal of the economic policy of the nation, but in the judgment of most men the issue was joined squarely between the general principle of free trade and that of protection. Throughout 1904 and 1905 the Government found itself increasingly embarrassed by the fiscal question, as well as by difficulties attending the administration of the Education Act, the regulation of Chinese labor in South Africa, and a number of other urgent tasks, and the by-elections resulted so uniformly in Unionist defeats as to presage clearly the eventual return of the Liberals to power.

JUSTICE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

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. Upon these fundamental guarantees has been erected through the centuries a fabric of personal liberty which lends the British nation one of its principal distinctions. The influence of English concepts and forms of law has counted for much, furthermore, in the shaping of continental legal systems; and outside of Europe, and especially in the English-speaking countries of both hemispheres, the law of England has been, within modern times, much the most universal and decisive formative agency in legal development.

The principal division of the county was the civil parish, usually but not always identical with the ecclesiastical parish. The governing bodies of the parish were two--the vestry , which administered general affairs, and the overseers of the poor who under the Elizabethan statute of 1601 were empowered to find employment for the able-bodied poor, to provide other forms of relief as should be required, and to levy a local rate to meet the costs of their work. Since the passage of Gilbert's Act of 1782 the parishes had been arranged in groups for poor-law purposes, and boards of guardians appointed by the justices of the peace had come to be the real authorities in the administration of poor relief, as well as in most other matters. The abuses arising from poor-law administration were not infrequently appalling.

The effect of the acts of 1888 and 1894 was two-fold. In the first place, they put the administrative affairs of the rural portions of the country in the hands almost exclusively of popularly elected bodies. In the second place, their adoption afforded opportunity for the immediate or gradual abolition of all local governing authorities except the county, municipal, district, and parish councils, the boards of guardians, and the school boards, and thus they contributed vastly to that gradual simplification of the local governing system which is one of the most satisfactory developments of recent years. The act of 1894 alone abolished some 8,000 authorities. Since 1894 the consolidation of authorities and the elimination of areas have been carried yet further, the most notable step being the abolition of the school boards by the Education Act of 1902 and the transfer of the functions of these bodies to the councils of the counties, boroughs, and districts. Both the majority and minority reports of the recent Poor Law Commission, submitted in 1909, recommend the abolition of the parish union area; but no action has been taken as yet by Parliament upon this subject.

The system of local government as it operates at the present time is by no means free from anomalies, but it exhibits, none the less, an orderliness and a simplicity which were altogether lacking a generation ago. The variety of areas of administration has been lessened, the number of officials has been reduced and their relations have been simplified, the guiding hand of the central authorities in local affairs has been strengthened. Stated briefly, the situation is as follows: the entire kingdom is divided into counties and county boroughs; the counties are subdivided into districts, rural and urban, and boroughs; these are subdivided further into parishes, which are regrouped in poor-law unions; while the city of London is organized after a fashion peculiar to itself. In order to make clear the essentials of the system it will be necessary to allude but briefly to the connection which obtains between the local and central administrative agencies, and to point out the principal features of each of the governmental units named.

For purposes of poor-law administration, as has been pointed out, there have existed since 1834 poor-law unions, consisting of numbers of parishes grouped together, usually without much effort to obtain equality of size or population. These unions not infrequently comprise both rural and urban parishes, and in cases of this kind the board of guardians is composed of the persons elected as district councillors in the rural parishes of the union, together with other persons who are elected immediately as guardians in the urban parishes and have no other function. The conditions under which poor relief is administered are prescribed rather minutely in general regulations laid down by the Local Government Board at London, so that, save in the matter of levying rates, the range of discretion left to the boards of guardians is closely restricted.

At the center of the metropolitan area stands still the historic City, with its lord mayor, its life aldermen, and its annually elected councillors, organized after a fashion which has hardly changed in four and a half centuries. Within the administrative county the county council acts as a central authority, the borough councils and the parish vestries serve as local authorities. While areas of common administration still very much larger than the county comprise, among others, the districts of the Metropolitan Water Board and of the Metropolitan Police. The jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police extends over all parishes within fifteen miles of Charing Cross, an area of almost 700 square miles.

THE EMPIRE AND ITS CONSTITUTION

Germany in 1814 was still disunited and comparatively backward, but it was by no means the Germany of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The transformations wrought to the east of the Rhine during the period of the Napoleonic ascendancy were three-fold. In the first place, after more than a thousand years of existence, the Holy Roman Empire was, in 1806, brought to an end, and Germany, never theretofore since the days of barbarism entirely devoid of political unity, was left without even the semblance or name of nationality. In the second place, there was within the period a far-reaching readjustment of the political structure of the German world, involving the reducing of the total number of German states--kingdoms, duchies, principalities, ecclesiastical dominions, and knights' holdings--from above three hundred to two score; the augmenting of the importance of Austria by the acquisition of a separate imperial title, and the raising of Saxony, Bavaria, and W?rttemberg from duchies to kingdoms; and the bringing into existence of certain new and more or less artificial political aggregates, namely, the kingdom of Westphalia, the grand-duchy of Warsaw, and the Confederation of the Rhine, for the purpose of facilitating the Napoleonic dominance of north-central Europe. Finally, in several of the states, notably Prussia, the overturn occasioned by the Napoleonic conquests prompted systematic attempts at reform, with the consequence of a revolutionizing modernization of social and economic conditions altogether comparable with that which within the generation had been achieved in France.

The original draft of the Federal Act of 1815 pledged every member of the Confederation to establish a constitution within a year. In the final form of the instrument, however, the time limit was omitted and what had been a specific injunction became but a general promise. The sovereigns of the two preponderating states, Austria and Prussia, delayed and eventually evaded the obligation altogether. But in a large number of the lesser states the promise that had been made was fulfilled with despatch. In the south the ground had been cleared by the Napoleonic domination, and the influence of French political experimentation was more generally felt, so that, very naturally, the progress of constitutionalism was most rapid in that quarter. The new era of constitution-making was inaugurated by the promulgation of the fundamental law of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, January 8, 1816. In rapid succession followed similar grants in Schaumburg-Lippe, January 15, 1816; Waldeck, April 19, 1816; the grand-duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, May 5, 1816; Saxe-Hildburghausen, March 19, 1818; Bavaria, May 26, 1818; Baden, August 22, 1818; Lichtenstein, November 9, 1818; W?rttemberg, September 25, 1819; Hanover, December 7, 1819; Brunswick, April 25, 1820, and the grand-duchy of Hesse, December 17, 1820. Instruments promulgated later during the period under review include those of Saxe-Meiningen, in 1829; Hesse-Cassel, Saxe-Altenburg, and Saxony, in 1831; Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, in 1833; Lippe, in 1836; and L?beck, in 1846. In a number of the states mentioned, including Bavaria, Baden, W?rttemberg, and Saxony, the constitutions at this time granted are still in operation. Many of them were, and some of them remain, highly illiberal. But, in the aggregate, the ground gained in behalf of constitutional and enlightened government through their promulgation was enormous.

The spread of constitutionalism was paralleled by the gradual creation, after 1818, of the Zollverein. This was a customs union, taking its origin in the establishment of free trade throughout the kingdom of Prussia, and extended from state to state until by 1842 the whole of Germany had been included save the Hanseatic towns, Mecklenburg, Hanover, and Austria. The union was maintained for purposes that were primarily commercial, but by accustoming the people to concerted effort and by emphasizing constantly their common interests it must be regarded as having contributed in a very important way to the growth of national consciousness and solidarity. Under its agency the lesser states were schooled deliberately in independence of Austria and in reliance upon Prussian leadership.

In Prussia the outcome was more fortunate. In January, 1850, Frederick William IV, granted a constitution which established a national legislative assembly and admitted a portion of the Prussian people to an active participation in the government. Although the instrument proved a disappointment to the Liberals, it has survived, with some modifications, to the present day as the fundamental law of the Prussian kingdom; and the fact that Prussia had become fixedly a constitutional state, together with the hopeless deadlock which arose between Prussia and Austria in the attempted readjustments of 1848-1849, emphasized the conclusion that the future of Germany lay with Prussia rather than with Austria, and that, indeed, there could be no adequate unification of the German people until one of the two great rival states should have been definitely ejected.

In passing, it may be observed that there is, in fact, a distinct tendency toward the reduction of the spheres of authority which formerly were left to the states. One of the means by which this has been brought about is the establishment of uniform codes of law throughout the Empire, containing regulations respecting a multitude of things which otherwise would have been regulated by the states alone. Most important among these is the great Civil Code, which went into effect January 1, 1900. Another means to the same end is the increase in recent years of Imperial legislation relating to workingmen's insurance, factory regulations, industrial conditions, and other matters of a social and economic nature. Not infrequently in recent times have the states, or some of them, raised protest against this centralizing tendency, and especially against the "Prussianization" of the Empire which it seems clearly to involve. In many states, especially those to the south of the Main, the separatist tradition is still very strong. In Bavaria, more than anywhere else, is this true, and in 1903 the new Bavarian premier, Baron Podevils, was able to arouse genuine enthusiasm for his government by a solemn declaration before the diet that he and his colleagues would combat with all their might "any attempt to shape the future of the Empire on lines other than the federative basis laid down in the Imperial constitution."

THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT: EMPEROR, CHANCELLOR, AND BUNDESRATH

The functions of the Emperor as such are not numerous, but, so far as they go, they are of fundamental importance. In the first place, the Emperor is commander-in-chief of the army and navy. He may control the organization of the Landwehr, or national defense; determine the strength and composition of the armed contingents; supervise the equipment and drilling of the troops; and mobilize the whole, or any part, of the forces. A second group of Imperial functions are those relating to foreign affairs. "It shall be the duty of the Emperor," says the constitution, "to represent the Empire among nations, to declare war and to conclude peace in the name of the Empire, to enter into alliances and other treaties with foreign countries, to accredit ambassadors and to receive them." The Emperor's power, however, is not in all of these directions absolute. One important limitation arises from the requirement that, under all circumstances save in the event of an attack upon the federal territory or its coasts, war may be declared only with the consent of the Bundesrath. Another is that in so far as treaties with foreign countries relate to matters which are to be regulated by Imperial legislation, "the consent of the Bundesrath shall be required for their conclusion, and the approval of the Reichstag shall be necessary to render them valid."

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