At both these periods, the Parliament or the corresponding assembly which preceded it, has never actually been, and, indeed, could not be considered as a special power, distinct from the government properly so called,—an accessory limited in its action to a certain number of affairs or emergencies. The government itself has resided in it. All superior powers have there been concentrated and called into exercise.
The Great National Council.
At the origin of modern States, and especially of England, it was very far from being thought that the whole and sole right of the body of capable citizens, of the political nation, consisted in consenting to the imposition of taxes; that they were otherwise subjected to an independent authority, and were not authorized in any way to interfere, either directly or indirectly, in the general affairs of the State. Whatever these affairs might be, they were their affairs, and they always occupied themselves with them, when their importance naturally called for their intervention. This is testified by the history of the Saxon Wittenagemot, of the Anglo-Norman Magnum Consilium and of all the national assemblies of the German peoples, in the earliest period of their existence. These assemblies were truly the great national council, deliberating and deciding on the affairs of the nation in concert with the king.
When the representative system has achieved all its mighty conquests, and borne its essential fruits, it has invariably resorted to this; and returned in fact to the point from which it set out. In spite of all distinctions and apparent limitations, the power of Parliament has extended to everything, and has exercised a more or less immediate, but in reality a decisive influence on all the affairs of the State. Parliament has again become the great national council in which all the national interests are debated and regulated, sometimes by means of anterior deliberation, at other times by those of responsibility.
When this first and last condition of free governments has been recognized, it will be perceived that a very different intermediate condition is to be met with, in which Parliament, although sometimes styled the great national council, exercises none of its functions, does not in a permanent manner interfere in political affairs, and is not, in a word, the seat and habitual instrument of government. During the whole of this period, the government is separate from the Parliament, and resides altogether in the royal power, around which are grouped the principal members of the great aristocracy. The Parliament is necessary in certain cases, but it is not the centre, the focus, of political action. It exercises rights, defends its liberties, and labours for their extension; but influences the government in no decisive way: and principles which belong only to absolute monarchy co-exist with the more or less frequent convocation of the representatives of the nation.
Parliament In The Fourteenth Century.
Such was the state of the British Parliament, from its formation in the thirteenth century until nearly the end of the seventeenth. It was only at the end of the seventeenth century that it resumed all the characteristics of a great national council, and became once more the seat of the entire government.
The British Parliament was not, then, in the fourteenth century either what the public assemblies of the German peoples had originally been, nor what it is in the present day. In order properly to comprehend what, at that period, was the nature of its power and the scope of its influence, we must follow the progress of events.