place in the house of lords, and that house passed resolutions of a general character for reforming their constitution and for regulating the relations between the two houses.

The general election of December 1910 gave the government a majority practically identical with that with which they went to the country. The parliament bill was reintroduced at the beginning of the session of 1911, and is still under discussion.

The proposals of the bill are

1. If the lords withhold their assent to a money bill for more than one month after the bill has reached them, the bill may be presented for the king's assent, and, on that assent being given, will become law without the consent of the lords. It is for the Speaker of the house of commons to decide whether a bill is a money bill or not.

2. If a bill other than a money bill is passed by the commons in three successive sessions, whether of the same parliament or not, it may, on a third rejection by the lords, be presented for the king's assent, and on that assent being given, will become law. But two years must elapse between the first introduction of the bill and the date at which it passes the commons a third time.

3. Five years is substituted for seven years as the maximum duration of a parliament.

CHAPTER X

COMPARATIVE

THE phrase "mother of parliaments," as applied to the parliament at Westminster, has become so terribly hackneyed that one is almost ashamed to repeat it. But it expresses an important historical truth. It is a fact that the constitution and procedure of the legislature in every other country, with the possible exception of Hungary, are copied, directly or indirectly from, or, at least, based on ideas suggested by, the English model.

The first of these copyists were, as was proper and natural, men who were our own kith and kin, the framers of the constitution of the United States. And it is specially instructive to compare the ways of the British parliament with the ways of the American congress, because the comparison shows how a people starting with the same habits, traditions and modes of thought as our own, may, by making a cardinal point of a different constitutional principle, the severance of executive and legislative authority, arrive at curiously different results.

The delegates who met in convention at Philadelphia in 1787, under the presidency of George Washington, and with Alexander Hamilton as their master spirit, to devise a form of common government for the thirteen American States who had obtained their independence, naturally looked in the first instance, for guidance and suggestion, to the forms of government then existing in their own States.

The constitutions of these States had been developed out of charters granted to them by the king when they were English colonies, and differed in various particulars. But they all had two features in common.

In each of them there was a governor and a legislature; and the governor, who was at the head of the executive power, was independent of, and not responsible to, the legislature. In none of them was the executive government conducted by ministers who were members of and responsible to the legislature. In none of them was there a system of cabinet government, or parliamentary government, such as exists at the present day in the United Kingdom and in the British self-governing dominions beyond the seas. And, if we ask why parliamentary or cabinet government has not taken root in the United States, whilst it has taken root in all the British self-governing dominions, perhaps the chief reason is historical, namely, that the constitution of the old American

colonies, of the States which succeeded them, and of the federal government which held these States together, was suggested by and resembled the English constitution before the cabinet system had grown up or its principles were understood, whilst the constitutions of the modern British self-governing dominions are modelled on the existing constitution of the United Kingdom.

The separation of the executive from the legislature was thus one of the common features in the constitutions of the American States at the time of their union. Another was that in almost all of them the legislature then consisted (in all of them it now consists) of two houses. The need for two chambers has since then been exalted into an axiom of political science, and may at least claim to be a political dogma which has obtained very general acceptance. But, according to Mr. Bryce, the origin of the two-chamber system in America is to be sought rather in history than in theory, and is due, partly to the previous existence in some colonies of a small governor's council in addition to the popular representative body, partly to a natural disposition to imitate the mother country, with its lords and commons.

These, then, were the models which the framers of the United States constitution had before them, State constitutions with the executive independent of the legislature, and with the legislature divided into two houses

or chambers. And in adopting these two features they were influenced, not only by the natural tendency to imitation, but also by general considerations and practical needs. Among the political ideas which were "in the air" in the eighteenth century there was none that exercised greater influence on the American mind than the doctrine of the separation of powers. This doctrine owed its popularity to Montesquieu, who had based it on a generalization, a hasty and imperfect generalization, from certain features of the British constitution. According to this doctrine the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of the State ought to be separate from and independent of each other. There ought to be separate organs for each, working together, but none of them dependent on the other. The men who met at Philadelphia found some support for this doctrine in the existing constitutions of their own States; it was consonant with their views as to the expediency of guarding against the risk of concentrating powers on a single man or set of men; and they adopted it as a cardinal principle of their new constitution. They were naturally disposed also to divide their legislature into two houses as the legislatures in most of their States were divided. And they found in this division a solution of the greatest practical difficulty which they had to encounter, that of reconciling the demand for a common government with the