(Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 224.)
Beginning from the reign of Edward III. (1322), or, as Mr. Hallam thinks, from that of Edward II. (1310), we find both Houses, at the opening of the session, each appoint a committee for the purpose, not only of receiving, but of examining petitions, in order to enquire into the truth of the facts stated, before the petitions became the subject of deliberation in Parliament. (Parliamentary History, vol. i. p. 230.) It is doubtful whether the committees received directly the petitions addressed to the king in council, or whether those which fell under the cognizance of the Parliament were referred to them by the officers of the king. In 1410, we meet with an instance of a private petition, addressed to the Commons, and transmitted by them to the king, with their recommendation. (Report of the Lords Commissioners, p. 362.) For the mode of the presentation of petitions, both to the Privy Council, and to the House of Lords, see Hallam's dissertation on the Privy Council, in the second volume of his History of the Middle Ages.]
Right Of Initiative.
But when this practice was introduced, the Houses of Parliament themselves had undergone great change of form, and received considerable development, as regarded their internal constitution, their proceedings, and their privileges. Instead of those petitions which, at the outset, they had been accustomed to present to the king, the right of initiative had been substituted, and this right belonged to every member of either of the two Houses of Parliament who might exercise it by bringing forward, with such formalities and delays as were required by usage, any motion with which he thought it fitting to occupy the assembly.
Mode Of Presenting Petitions.
With the right of initiative was connected the right of enquiry into all such facts or acts as appeared to the House of sufficient importance to induce it to desire a thorough knowledge of them, and afterwards to adopt a resolution regarding them, either of prosecution or of censure, or simply to declare its opinion. On coming before Houses invested with such rights, petitions necessarily took another course than would have been the case had those rights been wanting. And in the first place, it passed into a custom that they must be presented by a member; this custom was not, originally, a precaution against the abuse of the right of petition, but the natural form of its exercise. As every member enjoyed the right to call the attention of the House, by motion, to any particular subject, it was natural that he should make use of this right whenever he became the exponent, to the House, of the demands of his constituents or his friends. By this means, they acquired an authority which they could not otherwise have obtained; the House was thus made to deliberate, not upon the petition, but upon the motion of the member who had presented it, and who had based upon it a proposition either for an enquiry, or for an address, or for a prosecution, or for a law, or for any other act which the House was entitled to accomplish. And whatever this motion might be, it was subjected to all the formalities and all the delays which, on every occasion, regulated the debates and deliberations of the assembly.
Thus invested with all the rights necessary for exercising over the government, by one mode or another, the influence which properly belonged to them, the English Houses of Parliament regarded the petitions which were presented to them merely as an opportunity for exercising this influence in virtue of these rights. They did not act as a sort of patron placed between the petitioners and the government from which the redress of the grievance was definitively demanded; nor did they refer the petition to the government, with a postscript of their own to request the passing of any act of which they were unable to superintend or compel the execution. After its presentation, they no longer had anything whatever to do with the petition; if the motion to which it had given rise were adopted, then began an act of the House itself, accomplished with all the usual formalities, and terminated by a resolution which specially belonged to it, and which placed the government in presence of the thoroughly-discussed and clearly-expressed opinion or will of the assembly which shared with it in the exercise of the supreme power in the nation.