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."[105] 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.
I. The House of Commons Prior to 1832
80. Present Ascendancy.—Legally, as has been explained, Parliament consists of the king, the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the commons. For practical purposes, however, it is the House of Commons alone. "When," as Spencer Walpole wrote 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 Parliament is simply a new House of Commons."[106] The gathering of the "representatives of the commons" at Westminster is, and has long been, without question the most important agency of government in the kingdom. The House of Commons consists at the present day of 670 members, of whom 465 sit for English constituencies, 30 for Welsh, 72 for Scottish, and 103 for Irish. Nine of the members are chosen, under somewhat special conditions, by the universities, but the remaining 661 are elected in county or borough constituencies under franchise arrangements, which, while based upon residence and property qualifications, fall not far short of manhood suffrage. The chamber is at the same time the preponderating repository of power in the national government 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 agencies of the outlying world, both English-speaking and non-English-speaking, is simply incalculable.
81. Undemocratic Character at the Opening of the Nineteenth Century.—"The virtue, the spirit, the essence of the House of Commons," once declared Edmund Burke, "consists in its being the express image of the nation." In the eighteenth century, however, when this assertion was made, the House of Commons was, in point of fact, far from constituting such an "image." Until, indeed, the nineteenth century was well advanced the nominally popular parliamentary branch was in reality representative, not of the mass of the nation, but of the aristocratic and governing elements, at best of the well-to-do middle classes; and a correct appreciation of the composition and character of the chamber as it to-day exists requires some allusion to the process by which its democratization was accomplished. In 1832—the year of the first great Reform Act—the House of Commons consisted of 658 members, of whom 186 represented the forty counties and 472 sat for two hundred three boroughs. The apportionment of both county and borough members was haphazard and grossly inequitable. In the Unites States, and in many European countries, it is required by constitutional provision that following a decennial census there shall be a reapportionment of seats in the popular legislative chamber, the purpose being, of course, to preserve substantial equality among the electoral constituencies and, ultimately, an essential parity of political power among the voters. At no time, however, has there been in Great Britain either legislation or the semblance of a tradition in respect to this matter. Reapportionment has taken place only partially and at irregular intervals, and at but a few times in the history of the nation have constituencies represented at Westminster been even approximately equal. Save that, in 1707, forty-five members were added to represent Scotland and, in 1801, one hundred to sit for Ireland, the identity of the constituencies represented in the Commons continued all but unchanged from the reign of Charles II. to the reform of 1832.
82. Need of a Redistribution of Seats.—The population changes, in respect to both growth and distribution, falling within this extended period were, however, enormous. In 1689 the population of England and Wales was not in excess of 5,500,000. The census of 1831 revealed in these countries a population of 14,000,000. In the seventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries the great mass of the English people lived in the south and east. Liverpool was but an insignificant town, Manchester a village, and Birmingham a sand-hill. But the industrial revolution had the effect of bringing coal, iron, and water-power into enormous demand, and after 1775 the industrial center, and likewise the population center, of the country was shifted rapidly toward the north. In the hitherto almost uninhabited valleys of Lancashire and Yorkshire sprang up a multitude of factory towns and cities. In Parliament these fast-growing populations were either glaringly under-represented or not represented at all. In 1831 the ten southernmost counties of England contained a population of 3,260,000 and returned to Parliament 235 members.[107] At the same time the six northernmost counties contained a population of 3,594,000, but returned only 68 members. Cornwall, with 300,000 inhabitants, had 42 representatives; Lancashire, with 1,330,000, had 14. Among towns, Birmingham and Manchester, each with upwards of 100,000 people, and Leeds and Sheffield, each with 50,000, had no representation whatever. On the other hand, boroughs were entitled to representation which contained ridiculously scant populations, or even no population at all. Gatto, in Surrey, was a park; Old Sarum, in Wiltshire, was a deserted hill; the remains of what once was Dunwich were under the waves of the North Sea. Bosseney, in Cornwall, was a hamlet of three cottages, eight of whose nine electors belonged to a single family. But Bosseney sent two members to the House of Commons.
83. County and Borough Franchise in 1831.—Not only was there, thus, the most glaring lack of adjustment of parliamentary representation to the distribution of population; where the right of representation existed, the franchise arrangements under which members were elected were hopelessly heterogeneous and illiberal. Originally, as has been pointed out,[108] 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 proceedings of that body. In 1429, during the reign of Henry VI., an act was passed ostensibly to prevent riotous and disorderly elections, wherein it was stipulated that county electors should thereafter comprise only such male residents of the county as possessed free land or tenement which would rent for as much as forty shillings a year above all charges.[109] Leaseholders, copyholders, small freeholders, and all non-landholders were denied the suffrage altogether. Even in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the number of forty-shilling freeholders was small. With the concentration of land in fewer hands, incident to the agrarian revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it bore an increasingly diminutive ratio to the aggregate county population, and by 1832 the county electors comprised, as a rule, only a handful of large landed proprietors. Within the boroughs the franchise arrangements existing at the date mentioned were complicated and diverse beyond the possibility of general characterization. Many of the boroughs had been accorded parliamentary representation by the most arbitrary and haphazard methods, and at no time prior to 1830 was there legislation which so much as attempted to regulate the conditions of voting within them. There were "scot and lot" boroughs, "potwalloper" boroughs, burgage boroughs, corporation or "close" boroughs, and "freemen" boroughs, to mention only the more important of the types that can be distinguished.[110] In some of these the franchise was, at least in theory, fairly democratic; but in most of them it was restricted by custom or local regulation to petty groups of property-holders or taxpayers, to members of the municipal corporations, or even to members of a favored guild. With few exceptions, the borough franchise was illogical, exclusive, and non-expansive.
84. Political Corruption.—A third fact respecting electoral conditions in the earlier nineteenth century is the astounding prevalence of illegitimate political influence and of sheer corruption. Borough members were very commonly not true representatives at all, but nominees of peers, of influential commoners, or of the government. It has been estimated that of the 472 borough members not more than 137 may be regarded as having been in any proper sense elected. The remainder
