Victoria as an original and a noble contribution towards national and Imperial statesmanship. This royal expression of sympathetic feeling, though not unknown to, was rarely practised by George III. or the sons who succeeded him on the throne.67 It belongs to, but has survived, the Victorian age. It has indeed received since the death of Victoria a wider extension than was possible during a great part of her long reign. On such a matter vagueness of statement is the best mode of enforcing a political fact of immense weight but incapable of precise definition. At the moment when the United Kingdom is conducting its first great Imperial war it is on many grounds of importance to remember that the King is the typical and the only recognised representative of the whole Empire.68
Another example of new political conventions is found in the rules of procedure adopted by the House of Commons since 1881 with a view to checking obstruction, and generally of lessening the means possessed by a minority for delaying debates in the House of Commons. These rules increase the possibility of carrying through the House in a comparatively short time Bills opposed by a considerable number of members. That the various devices popularly known as the Closure, the Guillotine, and the Kangaroo have enabled one Government after another, when supported by a disciplined majority, to accomplish an amount of legislation which, but for these devices
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could not have been passed through the House of Commons, is indisputable. Whether the price paid for this result, in the way of curtailment and discussion, has been too high, is a question which we are not called upon to consider. All that need here be said is that such rules of procedure are not in strictness laws but in reality are customs or agreements assented to by the House of Commons.69
ENACTED CONVENTIONS
By this term is meant a political understanding or convention which has by Act of Parliament received the force of law70 or may arise from a change of law. The best examples of such enacted conventions71 are to be found in some of the more or less indirect effects72 of the Parliament Act, 1911.
1. The Parliament Act in regard to the relation in legislative matters between the House of Lords and the House of Commons goes some way towards establishing in England a written or, more accurately speaking, an enacted constitution, instead of an unwritten or, more accurately speaking, an unenacted constitution.73
2. The Act greatly restrains, if it does not absolutely abolish, the use of the royal prerogative to create peers for the purpose of “swamping the House of Lords” in order to force through the House a Bill rejected by the majority of the peers. Such exercise of the prerogative has never but once, namely under Queen Anne in 1712, actually taken place. The certainty, however, that William IV. would use his prerogative to overcome the resistance of the House of Lords
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in 1832, carried the great Reform Act. The certainty that George V. would use the same prerogative carried the Parliament Act, 1911. In each case the argument which told with the King in favour of an unlimited creation of peers was that the constitution supplied no other means than this exceptional use or abuse of the royal prerogative for compelling the Lords to obey the will of the country. The Parliament Act deprives this argument of its force. Any king who should in future be urged by Ministers to swamp the House of Lords will be able to answer: “If the people really desire the passing of a Bill rejected by the House of Lords, you can certainly in about two years turn it into an Act of Parliament without the consent of the Lords.”74 The Parliament Act cuts away then the sole ground which in 1832 or in 1911 could justify or even suggest the swamping of the House of Lords.
3. Under the Parliament Act it may probably become the custom that each Parliament shall endure for its full legal duration, i.e. for nearly the whole of five years. For a student of the Act must bear in mind two or three known facts. A House of Commons the majority whereof perceive that their popularity is on the wane will for that very reason be opposed to a dissolution; for until it occurs such majority can carry any legislation it desires, and a dissolution may destroy this power. The payment to all unofficial M.P.s of a salary of £400 a year may induce many M.P.s who belong to a Parliamentary minority to acquiesce easily enough in the duration of a Parliament which secures to each of them a comfortable income. Between the Revolution of 1688 and the year 1784 few, if any, dissolutions took place from any other cause than either the death of a king, which does not now dissolve a Parliament, or the lapse of time under the Septennial Act, and during that period the Whigs, and notably Burke, denied the constitutional right of the King to dissolve Parliament at his pleasure; the dissolution of 1784 was denounced as a “penal dissolution.” The Parliament of the French Republic sits for four years, but it can be dissolved at any time by the President with
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the consent of the Senate. This power has been employed but once during the last thirty-seven years, and this single use of the presidential prerogative gives a precedent which no French statesman is tempted to follow. It is highly probable, therefore, that the direct appeal from the House of Commons to the electorate by a sudden dissolution may henceforward become in England almost obsolete. Yet this power of a Premier conscious of his own popularity, to destroy the House of Commons which put him in office, and to appeal from the House to the nation, has been treated by Bagehot as one of the features in which the constitution of England excels the constitution of the United States.
4. The Parliament Act enables a majority of the House of Commons to resist or overrule the will of the electors or, in other words, of the nation. That this may be the actual effect of the Act does not admit of dispute. That the Home Rule Bill was strenuously opposed by a large number of the electorate is certain. That this Bill was hated by a powerful minority of Irishmen is also certain. That the rejection of a Home Rule Bill has twice within thirty years met with the approval of the electors is an admitted historical fact. But that the widespread demand for an appeal to the people has received no attention from the majority of the House of Commons is also certain. No impartial observer can therefore deny the possibility that a fundamental change in our constitution may be carried out against the will of the nation.
5. The Act may deeply affect the position and the character of the Speaker of the House of Commons. It has hitherto been the special glory of the House of Commons that the Speaker who presides over the debates of the House, though elected by a party, has for at least a century and more tried, and generally tried with success, to be the representative and guide of the whole House and not to be either the leader or the servant of a party. The most eminent of Speakers have always been men who aimed at maintaining something like a judicial and therefore impartial character. In this effort they have obtained a success unattained, it is believed, in any other country except England. The recognition of this moral triumph is seen in the constitutional practice, almost, one may now say, the constitutional rule, that
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a member once placed in the Speaker’s chair shall continue to be re-elected at the commencement of each successive Parliament irrespective of the political character of each successive House of Commons. Thus Speakers elected by a Liberal majority have continued to occupy their office though the House of Commons be elected in which a Conservative majority predominates, whilst, on the other hand, a Speaker elected by a Conservative House of Commons has held the Speakership with public approval when the House of Commons exhibits a Liberal majority and is guided by a Cabinet of Liberals. The Parliament Act greatly increases the authority of the Speaker with respect to Bills to be passed under that Act. No Bill can be so passed unless he shall have time after time certified in writing under his hand, and signed by him that the provisions of the Parliament Act have been strictly followed. This is a matter referred to his own knowledge and conscience. There may clearly arise cases in which a fair difference of opinion may exist on the question whether the Speaker can honestly give the required certificate. Is it not certain that a party which has a majority in
