ment should be by the king or by the king in parliament, afterwards whether the king should govern or whether parliament should govern. Strafford, the strong minister of a weak king, tried to govern without parliament, and failed. The long parliament tried to govern without a king, and failed. During the revolutionary period the house of commons set up executive committees, foreshadowing the famous executive committees of the French Revolution; but government by committees was not a success. The great rule of Cromwell was a series of failures to reconcile the authority of the "single person with the authority of parliament. The monarchical régime which was revived under Charles II broke down under James II. It was left for the "glorious revolution" of 1688, and for the Hanoverian dynasty, to develop the ingenious system of adjustments and compromises which is now known, sometimes as cabinet government, sometimes as parliamentary government. Of the growth and working of this system more will be said hereafter.

The two last of the parliamentary periods referred to above must be passed over very lightly. The eighteenth century was a great age of parliamentary oratory, but it was not an age of great legislation. The territorial magnates who, or whose nominees, as knights of the shires or members for pocket boroughs, constituted the house of

commons, contented themselves in the main with formulating as Acts of parliament rules for the guidance of landowners as justices of the peace. Parliamentary procedure tended to stiffen and become more formal. Important constitutional changes were silently going on, but they were not, as a rule, marked by legislation. One of the few exceptions was the Septennial Act of 1715, which extended from three years, the limit fixed by an Act of 1694, to seven years, the maximum duration of a parliament. Power rested first with the families of the great Whig magnates who had brought about the Revolution of 1688, then for a time with the king and his "friends," and finally with the parliamentary genius whom George III was fortunate enough to obtain as chief adviser, the younger Pitt.

The earthquake of the French Revolution, which shook all Europe, and changed its surface, did not extend across the English Channel. It produced effects here, but its immediate effects were those of resistance and reaction, and its results were to prolong the period of the old régime for more than thirty years after the close of the eighteenth century.

Leipsic and Waterloo stopped the course of the Revolution in Europe. But, after a trial of fifteen years, the revived French monarchy of the Restoration died in the Paris barricades of 1830. Two years later

the Act of 1832 reformed the constitution of the house of commons, and brought fresh powers into play. After the lapse of another two years the fire of October 16, 1834, destroyed the ancient home of parliament. Of the buildings which had sheltered parliaments for so many centuries nothing now remains above ground except the great hall which William Rufus built and Richard II rebuilt, and some parts of the cloisters which were added to St. Stephen's Chapel shortly before the dissolution of its chapter. The new parliament had to build a new home, the home which is the present Palace of Westminster.

CHAPTER II

CONSTITUTION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

It is from no disrespect for the house of lords that the description of that house is reserved for a later chapter, but because the principal share of parliamentary business is transacted in the house of commons; because the position of the older house is, under our constitution, subordinate; and because the position and functions of the house of lords cannot be understood until the functions of the house of commons have been explained. A double thread of meaning runs through the word "commons. Technically, the house of commons, at the time of its institution, was the community or body representing the communities of the counties and of the boroughs. "The commons," says Stubbs, "are the communities, the organized bodies of freemen of the shires and towns, and the estate of the commons is the general body into which, for the purposes of parliament, these communities are combined." But the word has another shade of meaning, reflected in the modern use of the word commoner.' The commons are those who are not included in either of the special classes of clergy and

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barons. "The persons who enjoy no special privilege," says Maitland, "who have no ▾ peculiar status of barons or clerks, are common men." In this sense they correspond to the third estate of France, which, on the eve of the French Revolution, according to Sieyes, was nothing, wished to be something, and ought to be everything.

The technical meaning of the word is, for historical purposes, of great importance. Before the time of parliaments both the counties and the boroughs had been recognized as communities for judicial, fiscal and administrative purposes, and the counties acted as such in their county courts. The boroughs were winning for themselves, through charters, communal rights resembling and often suggested by those of the French communes. It was but a step forward to utilize existing ideas and institutions for the purpose of national and parliamentary representation.

The history of the county franchise is comparatively simple. The sheriffs were directed by their writs to cause an election to be held of two knights for each shire; election was to be made in and by the county court; and the electors were those who were entitled to attend and take part in the proceedings of that court. No further definition of the machinery of election was attempted, or was, at first, necessary. The sheriff would conduct the proceedings in the customary