The Governments of Europe

by Frederic Austin Ogg

171. Party Composition.—Both of the great parties as constituted to-day possess substantial strength in all portions of the kingdom save Ireland, the Liberals being in the preponderance in Scotland, Wales, and northern England, and the Conservatives in the south and southwest. Within the Conservative ranks are found much the greater portion of the people of title, wealth, and social position; nearly all of the clergy of the Established Church, and some of the Dissenters; a majority of the graduates of the universities[236] and of members of the bar; most of the prosperous merchants, manufacturers, and financiers; a majority of clerks and approximately half of the tradesmen and shopkeepers; and a very considerable mass, though not in these days half, of the workingmen. During the second half of the nineteenth century the well-to-do and aristocratic Whig element in the Liberal party was drawn over, in the main, to the ranks of the Conservatives,[237] and to this day the Liberal party contains but a small proportion of the rank and wealth of the kingdom. It is pre-eminently an organization of the middle and popular classes.

172. The Independent Labor Party.—The Labor party of the present day is the product largely of the twin agencies of socialism and trade-unionism. As early as 1868 two persons sought seats in Parliament as representatives of labor, and at the elections of 1874 there were no fewer than thirteen labor candidates, two of whom were successful. Great industrial upheavals of succeeding years, notably the strike of the London dock laborers in 1889, together with the rise of new organizations composed of unskilled labor and pronouncedly infected with socialism, created demand for the interference of the state for the improvement of labor conditions and led eventually to the organization of the Independent Labor Party in 1893. The aim of this party as set forth in its constitution and rules is essentially socialistic, namely, "the establishment of collective ownership and control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange"; and the working programme as originally announced includes (1) a universal eight-hour day, (2) the abolition of over-time, piece-work, and the employment of children under fourteen, (3) state provision for the ill, the invalid, and the aged, (4) free, non-sectarian education of all grades, (5) the extinction by taxation of unearned incomes, and (6) universal disarmament. To this programme has been added woman's suffrage, a second ballot in parliamentary elections, municipal control of the liquor traffic and of hospitals, and a number of other proposed innovations. At the elections of 1895 the party named twenty-eight candidates, but no one of them was successful and Keir Hardie, founder and president, lost the seat which he had occupied since 1892. In 1900 it attained, in the re-election of Hardie, its first parliamentary victory, and in 1906 when the tide of radicalism was running high seven of its candidates and sixteen of its members were elected to the House of Commons.

173. The Labor Party To-day.—The Independent Labor Party has been throughout its history avowedly socialistic. It has sought and obtained the adherence of thousands of laboring men, some of whom are, and some of whom are not, socialists. But its character is too radical to attract the mass of trade-union members and alongside it there has grown up a larger and broader organization known simply as the Labor Party. A trade-union congress held at London in September, 1899, caused to be brought together an assemblage of representatives of all co-operative, trade-union, socialist, and working-class organizations which were willing to share in an effort to increase the representation of labor in Parliament. This body held its first meeting at London in February, 1900, and an organization was formed in which the ruling forces were the politically inclined but non-socialistic trade-unions. The object of the affiliation was asserted to be "to establish a distinct labor group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their own policy, which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interest of labor." The growth of the organization was rapid, and in 1906 the name which had been employed, i.e., Labor Representation Committee, gave place to that of Labor Party. At the elections of 1906 twenty-nine of the fifty-one candidates of this party were chosen to the House of Commons. Taking into account eleven members connected with miners' organizations and fourteen others who were Independent Laborites or Liberal Laborites ("Lib.-Labs."), the parliament chosen in 1906 contained a labor contingent aggregating fifty-four members. Since 1908 there has been in progress a consolidation of the labor forces represented at Westminster and, although at the elections of 1910 some seats were lost, there are in the House of Commons to-day forty-two labor representatives. The entire group is independent of, but friendly toward, the Liberal Government; and since the Liberals stand in constant need of Labor support, its power in legislation is altogether disproportioned to its numbers.[238]

CHAPTER VIII

JUSTICE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

I. English Law

The preponderating principle in the governmental system of Great Britain to-day is the rule of law, which means, in effect, two things: first, that no man may be deprived of liberty or property save on account of a breach of the law proved in one of the ordinary courts and, second, that no man stands above the law and that for every violation of the law some reparation may be obtained, whatever the station or character of the offender.[239] Upon these fundamental guarantees has been erected through the centuries a fabric of personal liberty which lends the British nation one of its principal distinctions. The influence of English concepts and forms of law has counted for much, furthermore, in the shaping of continental legal systems; and outside of Europe, and especially in the English-speaking countries of both hemispheres, the law of England has been, within modern times, much the most universal and decisive formative agency in legal development.

174. Statute Law and Common Law.—From at least the seventeenth century law has been conceived of in England as exclusively the body of rules, of whatsoever origin or nature, which can be enforced in the regular courts. As it has taken form, it falls into two principal categories. The one is statute law, the other is the Common Law. Statute law consists of specific acts of Parliament, supplemented by by-laws, rules, and regulations made under parliamentary sanction by public officials and bodies. Chronologically, it begins in 1235, in the reign of Henry III.; and inasmuch as it is amended and amplified at substantially every parliamentary session, the bulk of it has come to be enormous. The more comprehensive and fundamental part of English law, however, is, and has always been, the Common Law. The Common Law is a product of growth rather than of legislation. No definite time can be assigned for its beginning, for at as early a period as there are reports of judicial decisions the existence of a body of law not emanating from law-makers was taken for granted. Long before the close of the Middle Ages the essentials of the Common Law had acquired not only unquestioned sanction but also thoroughgoing coherence and uniformity. Despite the greatly increased legislative activity of modern times, it still may be said that the rules of the Common Law are fundamental, the laws of Parliament but incidental. Statutes regularly assume the principles of the Common Law, and are largely, as one writer has put it, "the addenda and errata" of this law, incomplete and meaningless save in co-ordination with the legal order by which they are supported and enveloped.[240] Thus no act of Parliament enjoins in general terms that a man shall pay his debts, or fulfill his contracts, or pay damages for trespass or slander. Statutes define the modes in accordance with which these obligations shall be met, but the obligations themselves are derived entirely from the Common Law. It is, however, a fixed rule that where statutes fall in conflict with the Common Law it is the statutes that prevail. The limitless competence of Parliament involves the power to set aside or to modify at any time any Common Law principle or practice, while, on the other hand, no development of the Common Law can repeal an act of Parliament.

175. The Form of the Law.—Statute law takes invariably, of course, written form. The acts of Parliament are to be found in imposing printed collections, to which a substantial volume is added every year. Of the Common Law, however, there is no single or authoritative text. The Common Law grew up originally as unwritten law, and in a large measure it preserves still that character. The sources, however, from which knowledge of it must be drawn are mainly in writing or in print. The most important are (1) the decisions of the judges of the English courts (reported anonymously in Year Books from the reign of Edward I. to that of Henry VIII., and thereafter by lawyers reporting under their own names) which from at least the sixteenth century acquired weight as precedents and are nowadays all but absolutely decisive in analogous cases; (2) the decisions of courts of other countries in which there is administered a law derived from the English, such decisions being, of course, not binding, yet highly influential; and (3) certain "books of authority" written by learned lawyers of earlier times, such as Coke's seventeenth-century Commentary on Littleton's Tenures and Foster's eighteenth-century treatise on Crown Law. Some small branches of the Common Law have, indeed, been codified in the form of statutes, among them the law of partnership, that of sales, and that of bills of exchange.

176. The Rules of Equity.—There is one other body of English law which requires mention, namely, the rules of equity. These rules had their origin in the administration of an extraordinary sort of justice by the king's chancellor in mediæval times, a practice which arose from the sheer necessity of redressing grievances occasioned by the omissions or commissions of the regularly constituted tribunals. Interference on the part of the chancellor, which started as a matter of special favor in unusual cases, became gradually an established practice, and, contrary to the original intention, there was brought into existence a body of definite and separate rules of equity which by the seventeenth century acquired systematic character, and likewise a court of chancery in which these rules were at all times enforceable. Reports of equity cases became continuous, and lawyers of eminence began to specialize in equity procedure. The rules of equity thus developed partake largely of the nature of the Common Law, of which, indeed, they are to be considered, in effect, a supplement or appendix; and practically, though not theoretically, they prevail as against any provisions of the ordinary Common Law with which they may be inconsistent. Their general purpose is to afford means of safeguarding rights which exist in morals, but which the Common Law courts cannot or will not protect. Until 1875 they were administered by tribunals separate from the ordinary courts. Nowadays they are not separately administered, but they preserve, none the less, their highly distinctive character.[241]