422 The Period 01 constitution Making
in statutory form, to make changes in its wording. Am
these changes might extend to unwarranted changes ii
sense. This work was entrusted, as was natural, to th<
judges of the common-law courts. As members of th<
Council these judges were, until the middle of the four-
teenth century at least, full-fledged members of Parlia-
ment, and thereafter its authoritative advisers in all
matters relating to the law. In view of this fact and the
fact that the embryonic statute came to them usually as
the barest outline of principles, the judges would naturally
interpret their task liberally. It
meant not merely the penning of the statutes; it extended
to the form, and probably, to some extent, to the subject
matter itself. The brevity of the statutes when completed
shows how much these judges who framed them were inten-
tionally leaving to be interpreted by themselves or their col-
leagues in the light of the individual circumstances through
which the statutes would be brought before them in the
courts.1
This whole situation inhered in the fact that legislation
had had its genesis in petition. Until a new method of
initiating statutes had arisen Parliament could never feel
sure that it had really made them.2
C.—In its endeavours to control taxation and in its
development of the statute-making power, Parliament felt
bound to assume or seekj^om^^
istrative ^idfi-^L-goyerningit. How inevitable this was
has already been incidentally shown. It remains now to
notice more directly the beginning of a line of develop-
ment which has, in modern times, resulted in complete
harmony between the executive and the legislature, with
the latter, representing the people in substantial control.
IMcIIwain, High Court of Parliament, pp. 324, 325. "Why should a
judge have any great awe of a statute, which perhaps he himself, or, at
most, Ms predecessors in office, had helped to make; of which possibly
the whole form and expression had been the work of himself, and his
colleagues of the Bench? " Ibid.
3 See below, p. 432.