a sworn statement covering all receipts and expenditures. And, finally, the act fixed, upon a sliding scale in proportion to the size of the constituencies, the maximum amounts which candidates may legitimately expend. In boroughs containing not more than 2,000 registered voters the amount is £350, with an additional £30 for every thousand voters above the number mentioned. In rural constituencies, where proper outlays will normally be larger, the sum of £650 is allowed when the number of registered electors falls under 2,000, with £60 for each additional thousand. Beyond these sums the candidate is allowed an outlay of £100 for expenses of a purely personal character.
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.[137]
CHAPTER V
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF LORDS
I. Composition
101. Origins.—With the possible exception of the Hungarian Table of Magnates, the British House of Lords is the most ancient second chamber among parliamentary bodies. It is, furthermore, among second chambers the largest and the most purely hereditary. Its descent can be traced directly from the Great Council of the Plantagenet period and, in the opinion of some scholars, from the witenagemot of Anglo-Saxon times.[138] To the Council belonged originally the nobility, and the clergy, greater and lesser. Practically, the body was composed of the more influential churchmen and the more powerful tenants-in-chief of the crown. In the course of time the lesser clergy found it convenient to confine their attention to the proceedings of the ecclesiastical assemblage known as Convocation; while the lesser nobles, i.e., the poorer and more uninfluential ones, found it to their interest to cast in their lot, not as formerly with the great barons and earls, but with the well-to-do though non-noble knights of the shire. From the elements that remained—the higher clergy and the greater nobles—developed directly the House of Lords. The lesser barons, the knights of the shire, and the burgesses, on the other hand, combined to form the House of Commons.
102. Princes of the Blood and Hereditary Peers.—In respect to its fundamental constitution the House of Lords has undergone but slight modification during the many centuries of its existence. In respect, however, to the composition and size of the body changes have been numerous and important. There are in the chamber to-day at least six distinct groups of members, sitting by various rights and possessing a status which is by no means identical. The first comprises princes of the royal blood who are of age. The number of these is variable, but of course never large. They take precedence of the other nobility, but in point of fact seldom participate in the proceedings of the Chamber. The second group is the most important of all. It comprises the peers with hereditary seats and is itself divided properly into three groups: the peers of England created before the union with Scotland in 1707, the peers of Great Britain created between the date mentioned and the union with Ireland in 1801, and the peers of the United Kingdom created since that date. Technically, peers are created by the crown; but in practice their creation is controlled largely by the premier; and the act may be performed for the purpose of honoring men of distinction in law, letters, science, or business, or for the more practical purpose of altering the political complexion of the upper chamber.[139] The power to create peerages is unlimited[140] and, this being the only means by which the membership of the body can be increased at discretion, the power is one which is not infrequently exercised. Originally the right to sit as a peer was conferred simply by an individual writ of summons, or by the fact that such a writ had been issued to one's ancestor, but this method has long since been replaced by a formal grant of letters patent, accompanied by bestowal of the requisite writ. With exceptions to be noted, peerages are hereditary, and the heir assumes his parliamentary seat at the age of twenty-one. Peers are of five ranks—dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and barons. The complicated rules governing the precedence of these classes are of large social, but of minor political, interest.
103. Representative Peers of Scotland and of Ireland.—A third group of members comprises the representative peers of Scotland. Under provision of the Act of Union of 1707, when a new parliament is summoned the whole body of Scottish peers elects sixteen of their number to sit as their representatives at Westminster. By custom the election takes place at Holyrood Palace in the city of Edinburgh.[141] The act of 1707 made no provision for the creation of Scottish peers, with the consequence that, through the extinction of noble families and the occasional conferring of a peerage of the United Kingdom upon a Scottish peer, the total number of Scottish peerages has been reduced from 165 to 33.[142] The tenure of a Scottish representative peer at Westminster expires with the termination of a parliament. A fourth group of members is the Irish. By the Act of Union of 1800 it was provided that not all of the peers of Ireland should be accorded seats in the House of Lords, but only twenty-eight of them, to be elected for life by the whole number of Irish peers. The number of Irish peerages was put in the course of gradual reduction and it is now under the prescribed maximum of one hundred.[143] Unlike the English and Scottish peers, Irish peers, if not elected to the House of Lords, may stand for election to the House of Commons, though they may not represent Irish constituencies.[144] While members of the Commons, however, they may not be elected to the Lords, nor may they participate in the choice of representative peers.
104. The Lords of Appeal.—A fifth group of members comprises the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, who differ from other peers created by the crown in that their seats are not hereditary. One of the functions of the House of Lords is to serve as the highest national court of appeal. It is but logical that there should be included within the membership of the body a certain number of the most eminent jurists of the realm, and, further, that the judicial business of the chamber should be transacted largely by this corps of experts. In 1876 an Appellate Jurisdiction Act was passed authorizing the appointment of two (subsequently increased to four) "law lords" with the title of baron, and by legislation of 1887 the tenure of these members, hitherto conditioned upon the continued exercise of judicial functions, was made perpetual for life. At the present day these four justices, presided over by the Lord Chancellor, comprise in reality the supreme tribunal of the kingdom. Three of them are sufficient to constitute a quorum for the transaction of judicial business, and although other legal-minded members of the chamber may participate, and technically every member has a right to do so, in most instances this inner circle discharges the judicial function quite alone.[145]
105. The Lords Spiritual.—Finally, there are the ecclesiastical members—not peers, but "lords spiritual." In the fifteenth century the lords spiritual outnumbered the lords temporal; but upon the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII., resulting in the dropping out of the abbots, the spiritual contingent fell permanently into the minority. At the present day the quota of ecclesiastical members is restricted, under statutory regulation, to 26. Scotland, whose established church is the Presbyterian, has none. Between 1801 and 1869 Ireland had
