The constitution of Parliament in its present form is the result of all the above causes. It was accomplished in the middle of the fourteenth century, although some instances of separation between the two elements of the House of Commons may subsequently be met with. These cases very soon disappeared and the union became complete. One fact alone remained, and that was the superiority in importance and influence of the county representatives over the representatives of boroughs, notwithstanding the habitual inferiority of their numbers. This fact, with the exception of only a few intervals, is met with throughout the whole course of the history of Parliament.
Thus was effected, on the one side, the separation of the Houses of Peers and Commons, and on the other, the union of the different elements of the House of Commons into a single assembly, composed of members exercising the same rights and voting on all occasions in common.
This is the great fact which has decided the political destiny of England. By themselves alone, the borough deputies would never have possessed sufficient power and importance to form a House of Commons capable of resisting sometimes the king, and sometimes the great barons, and of gaining an ever-increasing influence in public affairs. But the aristocracy, or rather, the feudal nation, being divided into two parts, and the new nation which was forming in the towns becoming combined with the county freeholders there, arose from the combination a competent and imposing House of Commons.
Early Importance Of The Commons.
There was a large body of the nation independent both of the king and of the great nobles. It happened also that the king could not, as in France, make use of the Commons to annihilate the political rights and privileges of the ancient feudal system, without substituting new liberties in their places. On the Continent, the enfranchisement of the Commons definitively led to absolute power. In England, a portion of the feudal class having united with the Commons, they combined to defend their liberties. On the other hand, the crown, supported by the great barons, who could not hope to set up as petty independent sovereigns in their own domains, possessed sufficient power to defend itself in its turn. The great barons consequently were obliged to rally round the throne. It is not true, though it is constantly reiterated, that the aristocracy and people have made common cause in England against the regal power, and that English liberty has arisen out of that circumstance. But it is true that the division of the feudal aristocracy having prodigiously augmented the power of the Commons, popular liberties at an early date possessed sufficient means of resistance, and the royal power received at the same time sufficient support.
Thus, considering the division of Parliament into two houses under the historic point of view, we see both how it was effected, and how favourable it has been to the establishment of popular liberty. Is this, then, all? Are this fact and its results mere accidents arising out of circumstances peculiar to England, and to the state in which society happened to be in the fourteenth century? Or is this division of legislative power into two houses a constitutional form intrinsically good, and everywhere as well founded in reason as it was, in England, in the necessities of the times? This question must be examined in order properly to appreciate the influence which this form has exercised on the development of the constitutional system in England, and rightly to understand its causes.
Lecture XVIII.
Examination of the division of the legislative power into two Houses.
Diversity of ideas on this subject.
Fundamental principle of the philosophic school.
Source of its errors.
Characteristics of the historic school.
Cause of the division of the British Parliament into two Houses.
Derivation of this division from the fundamental principle of representative government.
Its practical merit.