40 THE BRITISH APPROACH TO POLITICS

2. Legislature. The King is part of the Legislature, i.e.,
Parliament. No Bill can become an Act without his Assent. But
the King will give his Assent if his Ministers so advise; and no
Bill of which Ministers disapprove would have struggled through
the Lords and Commons and so become ready for the Royal
Assent. The Assent has thus become a pure formality, and has
not been refused since the reign of Queen Anne. Even on that
last occasion the Queen was not opposing her Ministers* The
Ministers were using the Royal power to prevent Parliament
doing something of which they disapproved. The party system
of to-day links Ministers so closely with the majority in Parlia-
ment that no such situation can arise. This giving of Assent is
the only purely legislative action of the King; all the others are,
strictly speaking, Executive actions, but some of them are so
closely concerned with the Legislature and the Judicature that it
is convenient to deal with them under those headings.

The King can summon Parliament, prorogue it—i.e., bring
ooc Session's work to an end—and dissolve it. Since there can
be no legal governing for long without Parliament, the King is
obliged to summon it and re-assemble it after prorogations
with regularity. For the same reason he cannot dissolve it
without requiring the election of a new Parliament; Dissolution
thus becomes an appeal to the people. The King normally uses
this power as His Ministers advise him; consequently, a Ministry
which feels it is losing the confidence of Parliament can dissolve
it and discover at an election what the people think. This is
most likely to happen in "three-cornered** Parliaments, where
the Government has not a dear majority over all parties. The
Government is also able to choose its own moment for an election
—within the limit of the mflyjnniTft legal life of Parliament—
and this gives it a tactical advantage. Thus the Election of 1935
came shortly after a very successful speech at Geneva by the
Foreign Secretary. It may be claimed that this advantage is only
a fair compensation for the fact that the Government has, at
elections, the task of defence, which is always harder than attack