HI
THE
IMPERIAL LIBRARY
Authoritative Manuals on subjects of the
greatest importance. The qualifications of the
authors are beyond question, and the Series is
in every respect worthy of their reputation.
OUR NATIONAL CHURCH. By LORD
ROBERT CECIL, K.C., M.P., and THE REV.
H. J. CLAYTON.
THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN. By
THE EARL OF SELBORNE, K.G.
The above volumes will be followed by
OUR NAVY. By ARCHIBALD S. HURD.
With a Preface by THE EARL OF SEL-
BORNE, K.G.
PUBLISHED BY
FREDERICK WARNE & CO.
CHANDOS HOUSE, BKDFORD ST., STRAND, LONDON
and 12 EAST SSRD ST., NEW YORK
THE STATE
AND THE CITIZEN
THE STATE
AND THE CITIZEN
BY
THE EARL OF SELBORNE, K.G.
LONDON
FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1913
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co
at the Ballantyne Tress, Edinburgh
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAOE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE HOUSE OF LORDS AT THE TIME OF OLIVER
CROMWELL 8
III. FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS— THEIR ORIGINS
AND COMPOSITION 25
IV. ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF COLONIAL SECOND
CHAMBERS 47
V. THE POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS AND THE
PROVISIONS FOR AVOIDING PARLIAMENTARY
DEADLOCKS 68
VI. GENERAL RECOGNITION OF THE VALUE OF THE
DOUBLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM .... 93
VII. THE NATURE OF THE PERIL OF THE SINGLE-
CHAMBER SYSTEM 107
VIII. THE PARLIAMENT ACT AND THE SINGLE-
CHAMBER SYSTEM 128
vi CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
IX. THE ABSENCE OP CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS 144
X. THE REFERENDUM 163
APPENDIX I — LEGISLATURES OF THE OVERSEA
STATES 180
APPENDIX II — LEGISLATURES OF FOREIGN
COUNTRIES 184
APPENDIX III — THE PARLIAMENT ACT, 1911 . 198
-
THE
STATE AND THE CITIZEN
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A CONSTITUTION is that part of the law and custom
of a country which regulates the making and ad-
ministration of its laws. All individuals in a
civilised country stand in contact with a power
that concerns itself, ever more fully, with a part
of their doings, now conferring boons, now impos-
ing restrictions, always charged with their defence
against the force of the .foreigner, and armed
always, against its own subjects, with irresistible
might. Such is the Government.
It is not less powerful in democratic England
than in Russia under the old autocracy. It is
even more powerful, for its organisation is more
complete. Not only in the vulgar form of collision
with a policeman, but in an infinite number of
instances in all the business of life — in the home,
the shop, the factory, and in the pocket — the
influence of the Jaws is fejt continuously by every
2 THE^SlJATE AND THE CITIZEN
person. He may not be aware of it at all times,
but it is only habit that dulls his consciousness,
Little as he thinks of it, the course of his actions
and the sum of his opportunities in life are affected
by the mighty power of the laws and of those by
whom the laws are administered. It behoves us,
therefore, since the subject so deeply concerns us,
to keep our observation open towards the machinery
by which laws are, and will be, brought into exist-
ence.
When Pope wrote :
" For forms of government let fools contest ;
That which is best administered is best,"
he begged the question. He would be a fool
indeed who troubled himself about forms of
government without caring how the chosen form
would work in practice, but whenever the question
of practical working is raised the question of the
form will always provide room for contest.
There is no absolutely right form of government.
There is no final answer to the question of the
best form of government, as there is to the question
of the result of multiplying six by three. In one
country, and in one stage of civilisation, one form
will work better than another.
The system of autocracy, the system of aristoc-
racy, the system of democracy, have each had
their successes and failures according to the con-
ditions under which they were tried. For the
INTRODUCTION 3
purposes of this book we shall need to consider
none but democratic forms, though even among
these there is wide scope for that " contest" which
Pope deprecated. The systems of America, France,
and Germany, for instance, have some of their
democratic features in the sharpest contrast with
one another ; and we shall have to consider some
of these different constitutional devices, so far, at
least, as regards their relative suitability to the
nation which is using them.
Among democratic Constitutions the differences
most often noted are those between written and
unwritten Constitutions, and those between rigid
and flexible Constitutions.
When the ingenuous American walked into the
shop of a London bookseller, threw down a shilling,
and asked for a copy of the British Constitution,
he was assuming that the British Constitution,
like the American, was written on a piece of paper.
The American Constitution, like a will or a deed
of partnership, is a document. It declares in
legal language that a body called Congress, elected
in a certain manner, can enact laws on certain
definite subjects in a certain prescribed manner.
It declares that a man elected in a certain way
shall be called President, and shall have certain
powers. And thus it proceeds to cover the whole
field of constitutional laws. Whoever wishes to
learn about the American Constitution has only
to buy this document and read it.
4 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
The American Constitution, we may say, is a
document. Our Constitution is not. If an
Englishman were asked what was the English
Constitution, he would reply that it was a way
of describing the fact that we are governed by
King, Lords, and Commons, and that we have
a number of institutions like free speech, freedom
of meeting, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and so
on. If you pressed him further he would add
that our Constitution implied also that the King
should not oppose the will of the people as ex-
pressed in Parliament, and that a Ministry de-
feated in the Commons ought to resign office, and
that it would not be proper for a Ministry re-
peatedly to dissolve Parliament without any good
reason.
What does this come to ? It is simply the
Englishman's knowledge that there are certain
laws and certain customs by which public affairs
are regulated. Some of them, certainly, are to
be found in the written statute law, as when we
find the rights of personal liberty protected by
the Habeas Corpus Act. Others are parts of
the common law, upon which courts and judges
habitually act. Of this sort is the law that King
and Parliament could grant, let us say, the vote
to women. It is nowhere written down that they
could do so. It is nowhere written down that
King and Parliament could lawfully, as they have
done, make it a crime to take a child into a
INTRODUCTION 5
public-house. But we know that King and Par-
liament have in fact this lawful power. It is part
of the common law. It has always been so.
Again, it is nowhere written down that a
Government defeated on a serious occasion should
resign or dissolve. There is no statute to this
effect. It is not even part of the common law.
No judge would listen for an instant to a claimant
who sought to expel a Minister for this reason.
But, apart from all law, the practice of the Con-
stitution has grown to be that Ministers who are
defeated should resign or dissolve, and on this
account we should call it unconstitutional for
them to refrain from doing so.
Our Constitution, therefore, is a mass of laws
and customs, partly written and partly unwritten,
but in no case written out, like the famous docu-
ment in America, as a Constitution. There is
nothing to prevent its being written to-morrow,
and passed into law by King and Parliament.
But even if this were to be done we should still
be far from possessing such a document as they
have in America.
The reason is that the American Constitution
is rigid. It is above all law. It cannot be altered
except by some very elaborate machinery which
it itself provides, which involves a process far
more complicated and solemn and difficult than
is needed for the alteration of any ordinary law.
It is, as has been said, above the law. It lays
6 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
down, for instance, that Congress has certain
powers. But it does not merely state and explain
these powers. It actually confers them, and if it
were to cease to exist there would be an end of
Congress too, and of all the powers conferred on
Congress. President, Congress, and all else within
the American Constitution, exist simply and solely
because the document has created them. From
it their powers are derived, and by its virtue they
exist. Take it away, and nothing remains.
Observe that if our own Constitution were to be
enacted, no such sanctity would attach to it.
There would be nothing to prevent Parliament
from repealing the document immediately, and
all would go on as before under the old laws. The
authority of Parliament would not have come to
depend on the document, but the document would
be a mere expression of the authority of Parlia-
ment. During the existence of the document one
might say that our Constitution was written.
But one could not call it rigid, for, under the
ordinary law, it could be swept away without
detriment to the authority of the power that
called it into being. The American Congress is
over the ordinary law but under the Constitution,
while our Parliament is over both ordinary law
and Constitution. It can alter both alike, in the
same way, and this is what is meant when the
British Constitution is called flexible.
One other definition requires to be noted. It is
INTRODUCTION 7
extremely simple, and at the present time it is
very familiar to the minds of English people. As
Constitutions are either written or unwritten, as
they are either flexible or rigid, so also, under
representative institutions, they are either uni-
cameral or bi-cameral. They maintain a legisla-
tive machine, that is to say, of either one or two
Houses. Under the first system a Bill becomes
law on passing one House of Parliament; under
the other system, it does not become law until it
has passed both Houses. Upon the importance of
this distinction the following pages will bear.
CHAPTER II
THE HOUSE OF LORDS AT THE TIME OF
OLIVER CROMWELL
IN considering the respective merits of double-
chamber and single-chamber systems of legislation ,
we are not without the aid of a lesson from English
history. At a time which has much resemblance
to our own time, when constitutional questions
were agitating all men's minds, when the organised
soldiery had appeared in English society as organ-
ised labour has appeared among ourselves, the
experiment of government by a single chamber
was tried for reasons that have again become
familiar to Englishmen, and with results that are
profoundly instructive to anyone studying the
problems of to-day.
The great Civil War had not originally any
connection with questions of class hatred, class
jealousy, or theories of class equality. It was due
to the fact that the incompetent family of Stuart
had inherited the powers entrusted by the English
people to the able family of Tudor, in whom was
a double portion of skill and tact which were left
out of the Stuart character.
8
THE HOUSE OF LORDS 9
The Tudors, with all the instincts and most of
the advantages of sheer despotism, were so tender
with English sensitiveness that the opposition to
their rule never spread beyond extremists. They
flattered the English spirit of legality as a poor
relative flatters a rich one ; and their administra-
tion, at home and abroad, was always supported
by the prestige which comes of success.
With the Stuarts the position was reversed.
The Government was weak, apt to fail in its under-
takings, and given to a perpetual parade and
display of arbitrariness. What the Tudors would
have asked and received from the nation, the
Stuarts commanded and were denied. Irritation
accumulated on both sides, till the attempt to
impose an Episcopalian Church on the Presby-
terians of Scotland provided a single instance of
irritation big enough to rally all others by natural
attraction. The Civil War broke out. It was the
j esult of forty years of discontent with the person-
alities of rulers and the manner of executive
government. It was not the result of class jealousy,
and it was not the result of any objection to the
existing Constitution.
The peerage was split, at the outbreak of the
war, just as the nation was split. It has been
noted that a majority of the peers of older crea-
tion sided with the Parliament, while a majority
of the newer creations were for the King. Simi-
larly it is said that in 1832 the older creations
10 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
favoured the Keform Bill, the newer ones oppos-
ing it. A very simple explanation can be offered
for these phenomena. Under Charles I the newer
creations were his own and his father's, and had
been chosen from among families temperamentally
inclined to Royalism. In 1832 the newer creations
were the outcome of close on fifty years of Tory
government, and were consequently Tories and
not Whigs. So the argument fails as an effort to
call on the prestige of old families for moral sup-
port to revolution.
At the outbreak of the war the House of Lords
consisted of about 150 members, in addition to the
bishops. The latter, before the war began, were
excluded from the House by an Act of Parliament.
In this measure, again, there was no desire to
attack the Constitution, and no attachment to
democratic theory. It was avowedly an act of
partisan retaliation upon a group of persons who
habitually supported the Crown against the Par-
liament. The Parliament excluded the bishops,
as it put Strafford and Laud to death, because
they were personally obnoxious to the majority.
No theory of government entered into their
considerations.
Of the 150 lay peers some were children, some
withdrew into private life, some went with the
King from London to his armies in the north and
west, and about thirty remained to sit in the
House of Lords and act in conjunction with the
THE HOUSE OF LORDS - 11
Commons during the progress of the war. It can
be said, with broad accuracy, that the two Houses
worked together in harmony. They had to fulfil
functions beyond what is usual with legislative
chambers, for they were the executive head of the
half of a nation at war. The times, also, were
times of revolution. Difference of opinion was
bound to occur between the Houses, as between
the individuals composing them; but while the
war progressed there was not the least suggestion
of either House calling the existence of the other
House in question. Their quarrels were inci-
dental, and were followed by flowery reconcilia-
tions. So matters continued for a time, while for
a variety of personal reasons the number of the
thirty peers remaining was steadily diminishing.
We have now to notice, however, the uprising
of a new spirit. The Revolution, beginning with-
out any animosity to the Constitution, the Peerage,
or even the Monarchy as an institution, began to
be affected by changes of opinion which can be
seen now as quite inevitable. Violent opinions
lead to violent acts, but violent acts lead also to
violent opinions. From the moment when the
Parliament took the command of a single soldier
it was outside the law ; it was launched upon
violence. Without requiring to pass any moral
judgment upon its conduct, we can easily see that
it set an example to all whose opinions a violent
course might assist. Having adopted, or been
12 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
driven to adopt, a complete breach with tradition,
the Parliament morally invited all others to recon-
sider first principles, and to challenge the existence
of any custom or institution which might strike
individual opinion as foolish, unjust, irksome, or
unattractive.
The greatest and most memorable effect of this
loosing of the bands of moral discipline was in
the sphere of religion. The most extreme forms
of nonconformity at once adopted all the irre-
concilability of the Popes who excommunicated
Henry VIII, and every man's opinion became
a sufficient basis for a complete system of in-
tolerance. The culmination of this spirit was
reached when the Puritan Government, after the
death of Charles I, accorded the country a
measure of what was described as toleration.
They granted freedom of worship to all sects of
Christians. Any satisfaction that this may have
given to Roman Catholics or members of the
Church of England was short-lived, for these
found that they were not within the scope of
toleration, not being accounted as Christians
at all.
Constitutional reformers used the same licence
as religious reformers. When the Civil War was
drawing to a close, and the victory of the Parlia-
ment had been assured, and men's tongues had
grown used to all the catchwords of liberty, in
their quarrel with the King, a petition was pre-
THE HOUSE OF LORDS 13
sented to the House of Commons at the critical
moment when a spirit of compromise had shown
itself in that assembly. A prospect suddenly
appeared of a general pacification, in which King,
Lords, and Commons would have resumed their
old functions.
"It is impossible for us to believe," said the
petitioners, "that it can consist with the safety
or freedom of the nation to be governed by three
supremes. Most of the oppressions of the common-
wealth have in all times been brought upon the
people by the King and the Lords, who would
nevertheless be so equal in the supreme authority
(if the reconciliation should take place) that there
could be no redress of grievances, no provision for
safety, but at their pleasure." The petitioners
then went on to state the things which the House
of Commons should have achieved, instead of
talking of compromise, if it was really to deserve
well of the country. " It ought to have abolished
all pretences of negative voices either in the King
or Lords, to have made kings, queens, princes,
dukes, earls, lords, and all persons alike " amenable
to the laws of the land, to have " freed all com-
moners from the jurisdiction of the Lords." If
the House of Commons would satisfy these re-
quirements it would once more be "strengthened
with the love of the people."
At the same time the regiments of the Army
of the Parliament, by now the supreme power in
14 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
the land, petitioned the House of Commons for
the abolition of the Lords. They demanded that
the " supreme power and trust " should be in the
representative assembly of the people, "without
further appeal to any created standing power."
It is quite clear that the offence of the Lords,
in the eyes of these extreme persons, was in their
patronage of the attempt at reconciliation between
the victorious Parliament and the defeated King.
Behind all constitutional changes there will be
found, at all times, a practical object. In this
case the object was to enthrone the military
despotism over the ruins of the throne, Parlia-
ment, and popular liberties alike. The object was
achieved, but it was advocated always by con-
stitutional arguments such as that quoted above.
The House of Commons, for the while, rejected
all petitions and advices of an extreme character.
A very simple expedient was adopted, therefore,
by those who wished to modify the Constitution
to suit their purposes. There are two ways of
reversing the decision of a deliberative body. One
is to add to the numbers of the minority; the
other is to diminish the numbers of the majority.
In 1911 the former method was threatened, and
the decision of the House of Lords was to be re-
versed by the wholesale creation of peers. In
1648 the latter method was used to reverse the
decision of the House of Commons. Colonel John
Pride went to the House of Commons with a few
THE HOUSE OF LORDS 15
soldiers, arrested forty-five members who were
voting the wrong way, and prevented ninety-six
others from entering. Seventy-eight members
were permitted to sit ; and such was the assembly
which was to abolish the House of Lords and
perpetrate the death of the King.
The extremists had triumphed, and were now
as strong in the House as in the Army. As on
another occasion, when dealing with the same
subject, this House dealt with the question of
the Lords by means of three "resolutions." The
resolutions were as follows :
1. That the people are, under God, the original
of all just power.
2. That the Commons of England, in Parlia-
ment assembled, being chosen by and
representing the people, have the supreme
power in this nation.
3. That whatsoever is enacted or declared
for law by the Commons in Parliament
assembled, hath the force of law ; and
all the people of this nation are con-
cluded thereby, although the consent or
concurrence of the King or House of
Peers be not had thereunto.
At the time at which we live it is hard to think
patiently of a body of men who called themselves
the supreme power in the nation chosen by and
representing the people, when it was eight years
since their election, when all opinions had changed,
16 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
when they had made their own dissolution illegal
without their consent, when many of their number
had been in arms against them, and when they
had ejected by main force two-thirds of those who
remained. Such considerations must deprive the
three foregoing resolutions of any moral force.
Yet they established, for the guidance of future
generations, an invaluable example of the nature
of government by a single chamber.
It need hardly be said that the assembly which
thus made itself a single chamber never volun-
tarily dissolved itself nor parted with a shred of its
powers. The idea of consulting the people, " the
original of all just power," was the last it was
likely to entertain. And, for the final verdict of
the people upon the experiment of the single
chamber we have to look to the passionate enthu-
siasm of the nation at the restoration of the King,
Lords, and Commons, " the Free Parliament " as
they called it, in the year 1660.
For the most part the objection of the nation
to the rule of the single chamber was based on the
partisan character of its actions. It perpetuated,
as a single chamber must needs do, the domina-
tion of a party. The party in question, far from
being that of a majority of the nation, was that of
an always dwindling minority. The more the
minority dwindled, the less disposed was the
single chamber to consult the electorate. Yet
that electorate was forced to live under a body of
THE HOUSE OF LORDS 17
rules, administered by military force, affecting the
most private and personal side of life, in business,
in religion, in the home, and originating in the
strong prejudices of a sect that had control of the
legislative machine. To popular complaints the
answer of the party in power was that it was right
and the people wrong, that its governance was for
the people's good — a theory which did not lead to
the popularity of the rulers nor their system of rule.
But it was not only in the ultimate judgment
of the nation that the single-chamber system was
condemned. It was assailed, and indeed for a
time it was upset, by the head of the existing
executive Government, no enemy of theoretic
liberty, Oliver Cromwell himself. He had ex-
cellent opportunities of observing the system at
work. He saw and had to put up with an
assembly of unlimited powers, always in session,
not content with the business of mere legislation
but taking on itself by its committees to supersede
the ordinary courts of law, uniting in itself the
legislative, judicial, and executive powers of the
State.
Cromwell pronounced this to be " the horridest
arbitrariness that ever was exercised in the world."
" This was the case with the people of England/*
he said, describing the system after he had made
some attempt to rectify it, " the Parliament
assuming to itself the authority of the three
Estates that were before. It was so ; and if any
18 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
man would have come and said, 'What are the
rules you judge by ? ' — why, we have none. But
we are supreme in legislature and in judicature."
At this time, about six years after the death of
Charles I and about five years before the Restora-
tion, Cromwell had dismissed by main force the
old Parliament that fought the war and abolished
the House of Lords. He had framed a new Con-
stitution, called the Instrument of Government,
under which there was provision for a House of
Commons, but not for an Upper Chamber of any
sort. Single chamber government was continued,
and Cromwell found his Parliaments as difficult
to manage as had the King before him. Quarrels
between executive and legislature were as frequent
as ever, and it appeared to Cromwell that the
solution lay in the creation of an Upper Chamber
as a moderating influence. In coming to this
conclusion he was much assisted by the case of
a certain James Nayler.
Nayler was the author of blasphemous pamph-
lets, for the punishment of which there was
ample provision at the common law. The House
of Commons, however — it was the second that
Cromwell had called in the few months since the
Instrument of Government — decided to look into
the affair itself. Many weeks were spent by the
House in discussing whether they should put
Nayler to death by an Act of Attainder — an Act,
that is, making it the law of the land that this
THE HOUSE OF LORDS 19
man should be hanged — or whether they should
proceed against him by their judicial power.
They had no judicial power. The Instrument of
Government had given them none, nor was there
any judicial power in the old Houses of Commons,
under the old Constitution, which they could have
inherited. But they were not deterred by such
considerations. They felt, it is clear, that being
the representatives of the people, "the original of
all just power," they were quite at liberty to do as
they pleased. Nor was there anybody to check
them. So, while the question of the method of
Nayler's final sentence was still under discussion,
they proceeded, by way of filling the interval, to
vote that he should be imprisoned, pilloried,
whipped, have his tongue bored, and be branded
on the forehead. After this Cromwell interfered.
" We, being interested in the present Government
on behalf of the people of these nations," he said,
"and not knowing how far such proceedings,
entered into wholly without us, may extend in
the consequence of it, do desire that the House
will let us know the grounds and reasons where-
upon they have proceeded."
But the House would not recede from the
position it had taken up. In order to avoid a
quarrel, Cromwell let the matter drop. But his
mind was now fixed in favour of the creation of a
second chamber. " Here," said one of his friends
in the House, " is your power asserted on the one
20 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
hand ; the supreme magistrate, on the other hand,
desiring an account of your judgment. Where
shall there be tertius arbiter? It is a hard case.
No judge upon earth."
Cromwell decided that such a judge there should
be, and that it should take the historic form of
an Upper Chamber. The House of Commons,
under some fear of physical compulsion, consented.
There was debate, naturally, as to the form to be
allotted to the new chamber, "the Other House,'1
as it was called, and as to the method of its
constitution. In the end it was settled that the
Other House should be composed of persons nomi-
nated by Cromwell, who, as Lord Protector, was
the head of the Executive. He was left free to
choose whomsoever he thought fit.
After long deliberation he chose sixty-three
persons, and summoned them to Westminster.
Forty-two of these accepted the summons and
became the Other House. In general parlance
they were called Lords. They belonged, of course,
exclusively to the party which supported the Pro-
tector against the King over the water, and were
therefore not representative of the body of national
feeling at that time. But, within this limitation,
they appear to have been the best selections that
Cromwell could have made. If they failed as a
constitutional experiment it was because an Upper
Chamber, like a Lower Chamber, must fail if it
represents no more than a partisan minority.
THE HOUSE OF LORDS 21
No sooner was the Other House constituted
than the House of Commons fell to wrangling
about its powers. Cromwell, to settle or postpone
disputes, dissolved the Parliament, in his speech
of dissolution he referred to the constitutional
question in these words : " I would not undertake
it (the government) without there might be some
other body that might interpose between you (the
Commons) and me, on behalf of the Common-
wealth, to prevent a tumultuary and a popular
spirit."
When the next Parliament met, all the vigilance
of the Government had been unable to prevent
the return of a good number of members who were
Royalist at heart. Cromwell was now dead, and
his son Richard sat in his seat. The Other House,
as constituted by his father, was summoned by
Richard as part of the Parliament. Once more
there was debate upon its merits in the Commons.
But the spirit was changed. Criticism was now
directed not at the Upper Chamber as contrary
to liberty, but at its component members as con-
temptible puppets, nominees of military despotism,
and very unworthy successors of the old peerage
of England. With the Commons in this mood a
fresh complication arose. The Army, still the
deciding power in the last resort, was well repre-
sented in the existing Upper Chamber by the
number of its officers who sat there. The Army,
therefore, became the defender of the Upper Cham-
B
22 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
ber for the time being. But, in a month or two,
internal intrigues in the Army led to the over-
turning of the whole of the new system ; Protector,
Other House, and Commons were dismissed at one
blow, and the Army recalled the old House of
Commons that fought the Civil War.
Once again there was, to outward seeming, a
single chamber. But in fact there was nothing,
for the revolutionary period was in its last throes,
and only a few troubled months were to intervene,
full of intrigue and negotiation and uncertainty,
before the taciturn gentleman from Devonshire,
General Monck, could sufficiently tame the Army
to permit of the King's return. No one could
have been blind, at this time, to the certainty that
the old Constitution would be restored. Not even
the standing Army could have long withstood the
wishes of the nation.
It remained only for the theoretical democrats
to make the best of their poor chance of imposing
conditions upon the King before he was restored.
They tried, in the first place, to strike the general
imagination by suggesting constitutional experi-
ments far more novel than any of Cromwell's.
There was to be a Parliament of two chambers,
each being elected by the same voters. Then there
was to be a Parliament with one chamber with
a body of twenty-one " Conservators of Liberty,"
who were to treat the single chamber as another
body of Conservators treat the river Thames — to
THE HOUSE OF LORDS 23
keep it within due bounds. Never, however, was
it suggested that a single-chamber system should
be tried again. On this point it would seem that
the minds of all classes were so firmly fixed that
the most daring innovator ventured nothing against
so general an opinion.
Failing to obtain the least degree of popular
support for any of their constitutional suggestions,
the party of revolution next sought to limit, in
the party interest, the composition of the old
House of Lords whose return they saw to be in-
evitable. First they asked that it should consist
only of those lords who had sided with the Par-
liament in the war. Then they asked for the ex-
clusion, at least, of the peers created by Charles I
while the war was in progress.
They were attempting to bargain with a man
who knew well that he could dictate terms.
Charles II was aware that the date of his re-
storation depended on Monck and the Army, and
by no means on the success of his negotiations
with the crestfallen republicans at Westminster.
Monck gave the signal ; the King returned ; and
no further word was heard upon the constitutional
question save the parliamentary recitation that
the government "is and ought to be" by King,
Lords, and Commons.
So ended the historic period of constitutional
experiment in England. The Lords and the Crown
had been abolished, and the Commons had been
24 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
dragooned by colonels and troopers. Yet, within
the very period of the Revolution itself, it had been
found necessary to replace the King by the Pro-
tector, the Commons by Cromwell's Parliament,
and the Lords by Cromwell's Other House.
Another turn of the wheel, and the rickety insti-
tutions of revolution fell to pieces. Protector,
Other House, and Commons disappeared. Sta-
bility was not restored, even for the people's
chamber, until the historic Constitution was
brought back to Westminster.
CHAPTER III
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS— THEIR ORIGINS
AND COMPOSITION
ENGLAND, at the time of the Puritan revolution
experimented with a single-chamber system. Very
few foreign countries have made the same experi-
ment. In copying from England the institution
of representative government, practically all other
countries have followed the rule which prevailed
in England for centuries, and not the exception
which so signally proved its value. They have
copied the double-chamber system.
But it need hardly be said that foreign countries
have not copied us in the composition of that
House which performs the functions of a second
chamber in England. The House of Lords could
not be copied. It was never invented by anyone,
and never could have been invented. It originated
in the fact that the King of England was once
little more than a great landowner who acquired
a certain precedence over others less powerful than
himself. He was surrounded, from the outset, by
a number of great persons who inevitably formed,
25
26 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
when assembled, a council or Parliament to limit
his authority not so much in virtue of any law as
because they were very powerful men. History
advanced; the Norman kings developed the idea
of monarchy ; but the great nobles still surrounded
the King as before. The House of Commons came
into existence, a novelty and an invention indeed,
traceable to the minds of Simon de Montfort and
Edward I. But the great men, the barons, the
House of Lords, continued to be there. It is easy
to see how they slipped into the position of a
chamber of the Legislature. They were much more
powerful than the Commons. But the change
of ideas came about, and the democratic spirit, not
unaided by manoeuvres of the kings, magnified the
authority of the people's House. Yet the House
of Lords still remained. And so it became the
second chamber which we knew before the Parlia-
ment Act of 1911 — the chamber of revision which
the nations of the world have tried to copy.
The countries of Western Europe had at one
time bodies of nobles that might have developed
like our own into an upper chamber. But the
encroachments of despotism in all cases, and in
some cases the multiplication of nobility through
the lack of a system of primogeniture, cut short
the process which is traceable in England. In
the Middle Ages the beginnings of representa-
tive government can be seen throughout Western
Europe, and can be seen to wither and perish.
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS 27
Then came the nineteenth century, when they
revived under the influence of the ideas of the
French Revolution. It was then easy enough,
copying England, to call upon the people to elect
a people's chamber. But to devise and create an
upper house was a matter of greater difficulty.
The House of Lords, the only upper house that
existed as a model in history, had been born and
not made. The American Senate was a novelty,
and was based on the exceptional circumstances
of the American federal system, of no use as a
model for European nations. ^Consequently it was
necessary to go out into the domain of pure theory
and find principles upon which a second chamber
could be built up. Of these principles there are
four. Two of them, Heredity and Federalism,
can only be used in special cases, The other two,
Nomination and Election, are available every-
where.
THE PRINCIPLE OF HEREDITY
Hungary is the only country in which this prin-
ciple has a substantial predominance. The reason,
as will be guessed, is historical, and lies in the
interesting fact that Hungary alone of continental
nations resembles England in having preserved
an element of representative institutions, more or
less, throughout her history. Her House of Lords,
called the Table of Magnates, at one time con-
28 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
sisted of some 800 members. The number now
stands at about 384, of whom over 300 are here-
ditary peers with a high property qualification.
The remainder, with the exception of three elected
Croatian deputies, are official, ecclesiastical, and
nominated life-members. Even here the heredi-
tary principle has not been preserved intact.
In other countries it has been yet further abated.
In Austria, in a second chamber of 266 members,
the hereditary element numbers about 89. In
Prussia, in a second chamber of 365 members, it
numbers 115. In Spain heredity accounts for about
a fourth of a second chamber, of which it is said
that " the nobility have but slight influence, and
the Senate in which they sit usually follows the
action of the Chamber of Deputies." In each of
the five lesser States of the German Empire there
is a hereditary element, mixed in varying propor-
tions with members nominated for life. In Japan,
where the traditions of the aristocracy are strong,
one half of the second chamber are either here-
ditary peers or peers elected by their own heredi-
tary order : the other half is either nominated by
the Crown, or elected by persons of wealth, with a
Crown veto limiting their choice.
In general, it cannot be said that heredity plays
a distinguished part in the upper chambers of
foreign countries. In Prussia it is practically at
the service of the Crown, and in Japan also ; in
Spain it is timid and self-effacing; in the lesser
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS 29
German States it occupies, together with the whole
system of representative institutions, a place of
little importance. Only in Austria and Hungary
can we find second chambers of noticeable in-
fluence composed partly of hereditary members ;
and only in Hungary do these members form a
large proportion of the whole chamber.
PRINCIPLE OF NOMINATION BY EXECUTIVE
GOVERNMENT
By far the most interesting example of this
principle is the Senate of Italy. To English people
it is interesting, because, of all the continental
institutions, that of Italy was modelled most
closely upon our own. The Italian Cabinet occu-
pies in the lower chamber a position exactly
similar to that of our Government in the House of
Commons. The Italian kings have studied the
constitutional example of our own Crown. And the
Italian Senate was, in intention, a conscious and
deliberate attempt to create a counterpart of our
House of Lords.
It consists entirely of Senators nominated for
life by the King. They must be over forty years
of age; they must either be persons who have
distinguished themselves in official positions, or
in literature, science, or some other intellectual
attainment, or they must be persons who for the
last three years before appointment have paid a
30 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
sum equal to £120 in direct taxes in respect of
their property or income. It is easy to see whence
the idea of these qualifications was derived. They
mark out precisely the kind of men on whom the
English Crown bestows hereditary peerages, men
of official distinction, or of eminence in some other
career, or of wealth. If England were to abolish
the hereditary right to a seat in the House of
Lords, and, at the same time, were to enlarge the
number of peerages bestowed each year, the House
of Lords would come to be practically identical in
composition with the Italian Senate.
Now for the weaknesses which the Senate has
shown. The nominations, coming in theory from
the Crown, come in practice from the Prime Minis-
ter who commands a party majority in the lower
chamber. English practice is followed in this
respect also, and it is followed further in that the
Prime Minister's appointments are always of a
party character. The weakness appears, of course,
on the arrival of a new Premier and a new lower
chamber with new proposals to carry into law.
Then, either the Senate opposes, in which case a
parliamentary deadlock ensues, or it submits and
thus sacrifices its moral authority. By this date
submission has become the rule. For the Italians
have copied England in yet another point ; they
have provided for the swamping of the upper
chamber by new creations. This has been done
in several cases. In 1890 the Premier advised,
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS 31
and the King granted, the creation of seventy-five
new Senators to turn a minority into a majority.
The creation was not only threatened but actually
carried out, the numbers of the existing Senate
being thus increased by about one-fourth. A
direct consequence is this- that the actual and
moral power of the Senate as a chamber of im-
partial revision has greatly waned since this
proceeding.
In another chapter we shall deal with another
Senate which is nominated for life without the
personal qualifications required for Senatorship in
Italy, but with the all-important difference that
there is no provision for swamping it. It is im-
possible not to wish that the Italian Senate had a
happier history. In theory, as a body of dis-
tinguished men, it is admirable. It is free from
all the defects charged against the hereditary and
the elective systems, and it has all the promise of
commanding the greatest moral authority. Yet it
is less powerful than was our own hereditary second
chamber and than the elected Senate of France.
No other foreign country has a purely nomi-
nated second chamber. But in all those second
chambers where we have seen that a hereditary
element is present there is a nominated element
present too. In Hungary it is very small; in
Austria it is large ; in Spain it accounts for about
a quarter of the chamber ; in Prussia for exactly
one-fifth ; in Japan for about a third. In Russia,
32 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
where there is no hereditary element, the second
chamber is nominated, as to one-half, by the Tsar,
and elected as to the other half by various inte-
rests and groups in the country.
THE PRINCIPLE OF ELECTION
Upon this principle rests the second chamber of
France, and France is one of those countries
which have upon occasions experimented with the
single-chamber system. To this extent, therefore,
it is worth glancing at French history before the
present and powerful elected Senate of France is
described. The old Constitution of France, before
the Revolution, provided for a Parliament ; but the
Parliament did not meet. When Louis XVI
summoned it in 1789 it was the first time that it
had come together for 175 years. It had three
chambers, representing the clergy, the nobles, and
the people. After some discussion, and in spite of
royal prohibition, the three chambers decided to
sit, not as three, but as one. Thus they became
the National Assembly, and they proceeded to
draft a new Constitution for France. They were
recommended by a committee of their own appoint-
ment to adopt the double-chamber system of
England; but deeply imbued with democratic
theories, they would have nothing but a single
chamber. The statesman Mirabeau, while hostile
to a Senate or House of Peers, warned the Assembly
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS 33
of the dangers incidental to single-chamber govern-
ment. His own expedient was to confer on the
King a right of absolute veto on the legislation of
the single chamber. He argued as follows :
" Since the nature of things does not necessarily
result in the choice of the most worthy represen-
tatives, but of those whose situation, fortune, and
circumstances mark them out as able to make
the most willing sacrifice of their time to public
affairs, the choice of representatives will always
result in the creation of a sort of aristocracy,
always tending to become more solid, who will
become equally hostile to the monarch whom they
wish to equal and to the people whom they will
always seek to hold in abasement."
This prophetic warning was disregarded. The
Crown was given only a "suspensive veto," and
the legislative power was vested in a single cham-
ber of 745 members. The Constitution lasted
but a few months, but it did not expire before the
single chamber had had time to perform the char-
acteristic action of all single chambers of which
we have record. It abolished the one check
established upon its own omnipotence. Instead
of allowing the Crown to use the "suspensive
veto," it suspended the Crown itself.
After this, in 1792, the Assembly was super-
seded by another single chamber, the Convention,
which continued to govern France for three years.
It was this body which has the credit of the
34 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
period known as the Reign of Terror. It formally
abolished the monarchy, established a republic,
and framed another single-chamber Constitution,
which, as a fact, never came into force. Before
the time arrived for its working to begin, the
Convention, still sitting, had had some internal
revolutions against its own extremists. A more
moderate spirit was prevailing, and the result was
the establishment of a double-chamber Constitu-
tion which commenced operations in 1795. This
was the Constitution of the Directory. It pro-
vided an upper house, the Council of Ancients,
whose sole function was to exercise a right of
veto. It could not initiate legislation.
The Directorial Constitution was the sanest and
most practicable of the systems of government
thrown up during the French Revolution, and, in
quiet times, it might have worked. The cause of
its failure is admirably expressed by Thiers, in
words that may serve as a warning not only to
Frenchmen. "Constitutional government," he
says, " is a chimera at the conclusion of a Revolu-
tion such as that of France. It is not under the
shelter of legal authority that parties whose
passions have been so violently excited can
arrange themselves and repose; a more vigorous
power is required to restrain them, to fuse their
still burning elements, and protect them against
foreign violence. That power is the Empire of
the sword."
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS 35
It was the Empire of Napoleon. This, first of
all, at the time when it upset the Directory, took
the form of the Consulate. As if to seek safety in
ever further divergence from the single -chamber
system, the Consulate Constitution set up three
chambers, none of them popularly elected, and
their odd feature was that one could deliberate
but not vote while another could vote but not
deliberate.
This system lasted two years. It lasted until
Napoleon was ready to unmask a practical despot-
ism, as First Consul. He declared himself Em-
peror in 1804, and, with modifications in favour
of the principle of nomination, and with the
elimination of one of the three chambers, he pre-
served the Constitution of the later Consulate
until his fall in 1814.
The restored monarchy in 1814 published a
Constitutional Charter. This gave legislative
power to the King and two chambers, but gave
to the King the sole right to initiate legislation.
The upper house was a House of Peers, unlimited
in numbers, composed of hereditary peers and life
peers nominated by the King. It is obvious that
no great importance can attach to either House
of Legislature which can but say Yes or No to
the proposals of a King whose Ministers are not
dependent upon it. In 1830 another revolution
placed Louis Philippe upon the throne, each
House was given a right of initiating legislation,
36 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
and the hereditary element in the House of Peers
was done away with. This arrangement lasted
for eighteen years.
In 1848, at a time when all Europe was seeth-
ing with democratic ideas, France availed herself
of a further revolution to experiment once more
with a single chamber. This was under the
Second Republic, of which Louis Napoleon was
President. The chamber consisted of 750 paid
members, elected upon a universal suffrage. The
President had a suspensive veto upon its legisla-
tion, and the right of initiation belonged equally
to the chamber and the President.
As the first of France's single-chamber Govern-
ments conducted the Reign of Terror, so the
second made the memorable experiment of the
Right to Work. State workshops were opened
for the benefit of all the workless and idle who
came in portentous numbers to be kept in comfort
at the public expense in return for scanty and
useless services. This and other excesses, terrible
to the economical ideas of French people, soon
brought the Second Republic to an end.
In the first days of 1852, after another revolu-
tion, a second chamber was established, based on
the nomination principle, and the right of initiat-
ing legislation was confined to the President.
Before the year expired the President became
hereditary Emperor, and he contrived to vest in
his nominated Senate all serious remnants of
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS 37
legislative authority that existed out of his own
hands.
The Second Empire fell in 1870, after the
Franco-Prussian War. The Third Republic fol-
lowed it. Though the constitution of this Republic,
which still endures, was not enacted until 1875,
and though the Senate contained a proportion of
life nominations until 1884, it will be convenient
to ignore these variations and consider the French
Senate as it now exists.
The Senate consists of 300 members, each of
whom is elected for a period of nine years. One-
third of the total membership is re-elected every
three years. The method of election is as follows.
The constituency is the Department, or county as
it would be here, and each Department is entitled
to return to the Senate a number of members
proportionate to its own population. But the
election is not a direct election by the people
themselves, such as we know in this country and
such as the French employ in choosing the
members of their lower chamber. It is election
by a special Electoral College constituted in the
Department for the express purpose of choosing
Senators. The Electoral College is constituted as
follows : (i.) Members of the lower house who
sit for the Department in question ; (ii.) the Pre-
fect of the Department, an official appointed by
the Government whom we might compare to the
Chairman of an English County Council ; (iii.) the
38 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Prefect's Council, which consists of six persons
elected within the Department ; (iv.) the Sub-
Prefects, who are officials appointed by the
Government to administer the various Arrondisse-
ments, or districts, within the Department ; (v.) the
Sub-Prefect's Councils, elected within each Ar-
rondissement ; (vi.) delegates elected by the
Municipal Councils of the communes, or villages
and towns, within the Department, which councils
are themselves elected by universal suffrage within
the commune. It is to be noted that the last of
these elements in the Electoral College, the dele-
gates of the elected Municipal Councils, greatly
outnumber all the others. It follows that the
Senators are elected, for the most part, by those
who are themselves elected by universal suffrage.
Yet the election takes place in the presence of
such persons as the Prefect, Sub-Prefects, and
members of the lower house, who are likely to
possess no small moral influence over the minds
of the bulk of the Electoral College. It is, in fact,
an extremely democratic election conducted under
circumstances likely to throw particular gravity
and solemnity about the proceedings.
The influence of the Senate, thus constituted, is
remarkable. It possesses far greater weight than
the nominated Senate of distinguished persons in
Italy. Without doubt this is partly due to the
fact that there is no way of swamping its
majorities. But it is felt in France that the
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS 39
influence of the Senate comes from the con-
sciousness that its origin is as democratic as that
of the lower house, though its members are
chosen with more care and by a process more
elaborate. Be it as it may, the authority of the
Senate is such as would surprise an English
Minister. M. Yves Guyot writes : " On March
15, 1890, the Tirard Cabinet resigned on account
of a vote passed by the Senate refusing to accept
a treaty with Greece. I was a member of that
Cabinet, and not one of us questioned the Senate's
right. It is impossible for a Cabinet to govern in
opposition to the Senate." On April 20, 1896,
the Senate passed a vote of no confidence in the
Ministry of that day. The Ministry ignored the
vote, whereupon the Senate refused to sanction
credits for sending troops to Madagascar, thus
forcing the Ministry to resign. On five occasions
has the Ministry of the day appealed to the Senate
for votes of confidence. The world has certainly
one other second chamber, the American, whose
actual powers in legislation exceed those of the
French Senate ; but there is nowhere another
second chamber that has acquired this power
over the Executive.
Quarrels between the two Houses are uncommon
in France, not on account of any timidity or ac-
commodation on either side, but because the broad
feeling of the two Houses on important questions
is apt to coincide. But it should be noted that
40 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
habitual agreement between two chambers is no
argument against the utility of the double-
chamber system. The value of the second
chamber in revising legislation is continuous.
Its value as a check to the excesses of the lower
chamber can only be seen when those excesses
are committed. Like a lightning-conductor, it
will not show its value until the time arrives.
Like the loaded revolver, its very presence lessens
the probability of its employment becoming neces-
sary.
The French Senate is the most interesting in-
stance of the principle of election among second
chambers. Other cases do not call for such full
description. Sweden and Holland have senates
elected, by indirect election, on universal suffrage.
Denmark has the same, with a small addition of
nominated members. In Spain one-half of the
second chamber is elected, indirectly, to sit with
the hereditary and nominated members. Belgium
has a senate of 110 members, of which 83 are
directly and 27 indirectly elected. In Norway
the senate is elected by the lower house from
among its own members. In Russia, where half
the upper house is nominated by the Tsar, the
other half is elected by the Church, the Chambers
of Commerce, the Assemblies of Nobility, the
Universities, the landed proprietors of Poland, and
the Provincial Councils. In some of these cases
there is a property qualification required of the
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS 41
voter in elections to the second chamber. There
is another second chamber which is elected, one
of the most remarkable of all, but it comes under
another heading.
THE PKINCIPLE OF FEDERATION
The Senate of the United States is of special
interest. The first attempt to federate the separate
States, after the.end of the War of Independence, was
unsuccessful. The Constitution under which the
attempt was made provided a Federal Legislature
of one chamber ; but it contained another defect
which, under the circumstances, was fatal. It did
not adequately allay the intense jealousy with
which each State cherished its independent exist-
ence. This, the characteristic difficulty of all fede-
rations, can never have been greater than in the
early history of the American Union. During
the war, when the States sent their contingents to
the army of Washington, it was at first stipulated
that not the smallest breach of discipline by a
soldier should be punished without a reference to
the legislature of the State from which he came.
Where such grotesque notions prevailed the State
feeling must have been strong indeed.
Those who framed the second Federal Constitu-
tion, which is the Constitution that has endured
ever since, were under the necessity of disarming
this jealous particularity. Two considerations
42 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
were clear before them. Since the Constitution
was in the nature of a bargain between the States,
each sacrificing some independence for the sake of
some protection, it was necessary to ensure that
the bargain should never lightly be broken or
varied. It was desirable, therefore, to have a
Constitution of a very conservative type, under
the operation of which there should be the least
possible likelihood of a temporary majority in the
legislature acting harshly towards the interests of
any of the States. The second consideration was
that the Constitution must itself, by its very pro-
visions and daily application, be a guarantee and
emblem of the perpetual independence of the
States within the limits of the original bargain.
Both these considerations raised problems of diffi-
culty, and both problems were settled by the
creation of the Senate.
Article III of the American Constitution runs
thus : " The Senate of the United States shall be
composed of two Senators from each State, chosen
by the Legislature thereof, for six years, and each
Senator shall have one vote." It is also provided
that one-third of the members of the Senate shall
retire every two years, and that each of its mem-
bers shall be (1) over thirty years of age; (2)
resident in the United States for nine years;
(3) resident in the State for which he is elected.
The particularist feeling of the States was grati-
fied by this plan because of the guarantee of equal
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS 43
voting power to all States, large and small, in one
branch of the legislature, and a branch, as will be
shown later, that had very special and formidable
powers. In the election of the President and of
the lower house the small State had a voice
proportionate to its smallness, and was thus far
merged in the whole as the county of Rutland is
merged in England. But in the Senate the big
and powerful State was to count for no more than
than the smallest. Further, the conservative
character of the Constitution was ensured by the
wide powers with which the Senate was invested,
and with the particular elaborateness of the
machinery by which alone, with the consent of
three-fourths of the individual States, the Consti-
tution could ever be altered.
" Chosen," as the Constitution says, " by the
Legislatures thereof," the Senate belongs to that
class of upper chamber/which is chosen by indirect
election. ' But so important has it become in the
world of American politics that the elections to
the State Legislatures themselves frequently turn
on the question of how the various parties and
candidates will act upon the next election of
Senators. The greatest tribute, however, to the
authority of this second chamber is that though
it has repeatedly and unblushingly opposed the
Lower House, and possibly also the " will of the
people," there has never been the slightest inclina-
tion among Americans to question its value and
44 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
necessity. Americans are given to particularly
emphatic speaking on all the themes of freedom
and liberty, but they have never murmured
against the most active — almost aggressive — of all
the second chambers in the world.
It is worth while to quote words written by
Alexander Hamilton, the statesman who contri-
buted more than any other to the framing of the
American Constitution : " There is reason to ex-
pect," he says, " that this branch of the Legislature
will usually be composed with peculiar care and
judgment ; that the senators . . . will be less
apt to be tainted by the spirit of faction, and more
out of the reach of those occasional ill-humours
or temporary prejudices and propensities which
in smaller societies frequently contaminate the
public deliberations, beget injustice and oppression
towards a part of the community, and engender
schemes which, though they gratify a momentary
inclination or desire, terminate in general distress,
dissatisfaction, and disgust."
The only other notable instance of a federal
second chamber is the Bundesrath of the German
Empire, called usually by English newspapers the
Federal Council. This, like the American Senate,
originated historically in the desire to embody
within a federal constitution a guarantee and ex-
pression of the idea of State independence. At
the outset there is a sharp distinction between the
American and the German methods. The Senate
FOREIGN SECOND CHAMBERS 45
in the United States is elected by elected legisla-
tures ; the Bundesrath is nominated by the execu-
tive governments of the German State. It is a
nominated second chamber. Again, it makes no
attempt to establish equality among the States.
They are represented in the Bundesrath by num-
bers of members proportionate to their size and
population, Prussia having seventeen out of fifty-
eight members, Bavaria six, Saxony and Wtirtem-
berg four each, Baden and Hesse three, Mecklen-
burg and Brunswick two, and fourteen other States
and Free Cities one apiece. The peculiarity of
the Bundesrath is in its system of voting, in
which no other chamber resembles it at all. The
American Constitution says, needlessly as one
would think, " each senator shall have one vote."
In the Bundesrath it is not so. A single member
can record all the votes to which his State is
entitled, if his State colleagues are not present.
One Prussian member can, in the absence of the
others, record all the seventeen votes of the seven-
teen Prussian members. It is also provided that
even though more than one member from any
State is present, all the votes of that State must
be cast on the same side. One senator from an
American State may vote contrary to the vote of
his colleague ; but in the Bundesrath all who re-
present any one State must vote together. In
fact they are mere delegates, ambassadors, of the
governments of the States of the Empire. They
46 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
sit in secret. They sit, not in sessions, but con-
tinuously. Two-thirds of its members may at any
time demand a sitting. Its members also have
the right to sit and speak, though not to vote,
in the lower house. So, in several ways, the
Bundesrath is more like a Council of State than
a second chamber, but, nevertheless, it has all the
functions of a second chamber in legislation.
Switzerland, a federal union, has a second cham-
ber which is hardly to be distinguished from that
of the United States. For this reason it is not
necessary to describe it. Nor has there been any
mention in this chapter of the Balkan and South
American States, though these, in the great
majority of cases, join in the general witness to
the necessity and utility of the double-chamber
system.
CHAPTER IV
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF COLONIAL
SECOND CHAMBERS
AMONG the second chambers of foreign countries,
it is not always the most remarkable that are
the most interesting to us. The American Senate
has more power than any second chamber in the
world, but American institutions differ so widely
from our own, that, in spite of all that is common
to the history of both countries in law and
custom, the interest of the Senate for ourselves
must be limited, like the interest of a man in a
woman's hat. It is not a Senate that we could
ever imagine ourselves " wearing."
But the French Senate, on the other hand,
might be adopted in England to-morrow without
any immediate breach with the traditional working
of our institutions. The Italian Senate we might
adopt also. It is likely, of course, that we should
soon come to realise the consequences of having
an upper chamber as strong as the elected Senate
of France, or as weak as the nominated Senate of
Italy, but these consequences would only become
48 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
visible in the light of experience. France and
Italy have constitutions largely modelled upon
our own. Each has a second chamber which,
under possible circumstances, we should be able
to imitate.
In this lies the interest which attaches to their
Senates, but when we turn to consider the second
chambers of the British Dominions overseas, the
interest is heightened. In the case of these, we
see communities who share not only our constitu-
tional practice, but our laws and political instincts,
who have systems of government modelled on our
own, but who, because our House of Lords is not
susceptible of direct imitation, have been driven
to invent second chambers upon such principles
as they or the British Government believed at
each time and place to be most suitable; and in
them we have a class of purely British experiments
in the making and working of double-chamber
government.
If one is to imagine that at the time of the
granting of Colonial constitutions any difference
of opinion arose on the question of second cham-
bers between the Colonial statesmen and the
Ministers in London, the natural supposition would
be that the home statesmen took the more con-
servative view. They had scrupulously studied
to reproduce all the features of the British Con-
stitution for Colonial use. They were setting up a
Governor to undertake the part of limited monarch
COLONIAL SECOND CHAMBERS 49
and a Cabinet to be, like our Cabinet, responsible
to an elected lower chamber, and responsible not
as individuals but as a body which stands and
falls together.
They were making counterparts to all the char-
acteristic organs of the home government, and
yet, as is most remarkable, it was in some cases
only at the urgent desire of the Colonies them-
selves that a second chamber was introduced into
the constitutions. "I now consider," said Lord
Grey, who more than any other man contributed
to shape and mould the Colonial constitutions of
the middle of the nineteenth century, " that it is
very doubtful, at least, whether the single Legis-
lature ought not under any circumstances to be
preferred." This was said in reference to the
Australian constitutions.
There is no doubt that Lord Grey did not favour
single-chamber constitutions in general, but the
practical difficulties of erecting proper second
chambers in the Colonies affected his judgment
strongly. His opinion was that the division of
the Legislature into two branches withdrew some
of the most able and intelligent men from the
lower chamber, a result which was not to be desired
" in a community not numerous enough to furnish
more than a few persons qualified for such duties."
In the alternative, he thought that the upper
chamber might be composed of mere party men
without ability, in which case it would carry little
50 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
credit and exhibit little strength. But these views
were not to prevail. An Act of Parliament, passed
in 1850, handed over the construction of the
Australian constitutions to the Colonial statesmen
themselves ; and they, adopting in the first flush
of their liberty an opinion which their successors
have never changed, set up the double-chamber
system. It is curious that statesmen born and
bred among English traditions should thus have
lapsed from English beliefs, only to be corrected
by the inexperienced but practically-minded con-
stitution-makers of the antipodes.
Speaking generally, the statesmen of the British
Colonies have never taken enthusiastically to con-
stitutional theorising. The Colonies have no con-
stitutional hymnology, such as the Americans
have. They are not proud of their constitutions,
as the Americans are proud of theirs. Indepen-
dence, of course, is prized, equally highly, if with
less demonstration than is the case in America.
But no particular constitutional principle has ever
appealed to the Colonial imagination as the prin-
ciples of the American Constitution have fascinated
the patriots of the United States. Not theory
nor fervour, but practical requirement has been
the underlying motive of Colonial constitution-
making. Of this the most recent example is in
the unification of South Africa, and the con-
struction of a new constitution for its particular
purpose. There could have been nothing less
COLONIAL SECOND CHAMBERS 51
fervid in spirit or more practical in aim than the
manner and method of South African unification.
It is worth while to remember this characteristic
attitude of the Colonial mind as regards constitu-
tions, so different from the French and so different
from the American, while their various second
chambers are examined in detail.
Canada. — The original colony of Canada was
conquered from the French in 1760, and had an
exclusively French population. It was governed
by a British Governor assisted by a Legislative
Council. This Council was a nominated body,
established in 1774. It may be regarded as the
ancestor of the present Canadian Senate. The
following were the changes by which the one grew
into the other.
After the American War of Independence a
large number of loyalists flocked into British
territory, thus giving Canada a British as well as
a French population. The latter were settled in
what is now the province of Quebec ; the former
occupied Ontario. The British Government, in
1791, in order to prevent the clashing of nation-
alities and religions, divided the colony into two
provinces, Upper Canada, which was British, and
Lower Canada, which was French. Opportunity
was taken of this change to set up, in each pro-
vince, an elected lower chamber, in addition to
the Legislative Council which had existed in the
united colony before the division and was now
52 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
reproduced in each of the provinces. Each pro-
vince, therefore, had a double-chamber legislature.
But they had not responsible government. Con-
flicts between the executive and the legislature
began to rage after the fashion of the Stuart
times in England and eventually ended in re-
bellion in 1837. After this, under the auspices of
Lord Durham, responsible government was given,
and the two provinces were united.
The legislature consisted as before of a nominated
upper house and an elected lower house. And
then began troubles between the two bouses. To
remedy this, in 1856, it was decided that as the
nominated members of the second chamber died
or retired, their places should be taken by elected
members until there should be a fully-elected
second chamber containing twenty-four repre-
sentatives of each of the divisions of Canada —
Ontario, Quebec, And the Maritime Provinces.
'The electors were to be the same as those who
voted for the lower chamber. It does not appear
that this second chamber worked with the lower
chamber any more smoothly than its nominated
predecessor. But in 1867 the system was again
changed. Racial and religious difficulties had led
to the opinion that a federal system alone would
quiet the storms of Canadian politics. So, under
the British North America Act, the Dominion
of Canada was brought into existence, a federal
union, to be enlarged a little later by the inclusion
COLONIAL SECOND CHAMBERS 53
of the full number of provinces as we know them
to-day, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
There are two types of federation. The con-
stitution may say to the federal government:
"Here are your rights and powers, definitely
enumerated and described, and all other powers
and rights whatsoever are to remain with the
individual States as before." On the other hand,
the constitution may say to the federal govern-
ment : " Here is a list of rights and powers which
are specially reserved to the States ; these you
must not encroach upon ; all others, of every sort,
are left to you to exercise." The federation of
the United States is of the first of these types,
and the federation of Canada is of the second.
It is not hard to see why. Federation in the
United States was wrung from a body of jealous
and unwilling States, and the powers of the
central government were given in a grudging
spirit. In Canada, on the contrary / a single ^*
government was broken up into a federation.) If £&
anything was grudged it was the powers allotted ^ •*
to the provinces. The central government re-
mained, as before, invested with all authority that
was not specifically taken away and given to the '
provinces. The Senate bears the marks of this
spirit in which the constitution was framed. It
is not, like the American Senate, a chamber in •
which all provinces have an equal voice. It is
not intended for this purpose of preserving the
c
54 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
relics of State independence. Nor is it like the
German Bundesrath, the living voice of the State
Governments addressing the Government of the
federation. It is merely an upper chamber estab-
lished for the sake of having an upper chamber.
But it is clear that the framers of the Canadian
constitution did not take this view completely.
The original arrangement was that the Senate
should consist of seventy-two members, of whom
twenty-four were to be representatives of Ontario,
twenty-four of Quebec, and twenty-four of the
Maritime Provinces. As thus constituted, the
Senate lasted for a year or two. It looked like a
distinct attempt to embody the federal principle
in the Senate on the American model. Yet it
was not really so, because the senators were not
elected by their Provinces, nor even appointed
by their Provincial Governments. They were
appointed to sit for life by the Crown, which in
practice means nomination by the leader of the
political party in power in the federal government.
Their quality of provincial representatives ex-
isted only in the fact that they were electors of
the Province from which the head of the federal
government selected them. Supposing that there
was a party question in which French Quebec
leaned one way, and British Ontario the other, it
would not be hard for a Premier with French
sympathies to appoint senators from Ontario,
whenever vacancies occurred, who would express
COLONIAL SECOND CHAMBERS 55
his own views and the views of Quebec rather
than those of the Province from which they came.
The senators of Ontario would vote contrary to
the wishes of Ontario. With this possibility
within the working of the constitution, and with
the actual experience of its having occurred, it
cannot be said that the Canadian Senate is one of
those second chambers that serve the particular
purposes of a federation. Furthermore, the idea
of State equality was soon abandoned. Upon the
admission of new Provinces within the federation,
each of these was assigned a number of senators
in proportion to the population of the Province.
The Senate is (at this date) a body of eighty-
seven members, nominated for life by the Governor- q6 <*
General of Canada on the advice of his Ministers.
A senator must be thirty years of age, a British
subject, a resident in the Province for which he is
appointed, and he must possess property of the
value of £800 in the same Province. He may
resign his seat at any time, and must vacate it if
(1) he is absent for two consecutive sessions;
(2) becomes subject to foreign allegiance ; (3) is
adjudged bankrupt ; (4) is convicted of treason or
felony ; or (5) ceases to be qualified.
The Canadian Senate is not among the strongest
or most successful of second chambers. Stability
of government has many advantages, no doubt,
but the extraordinarily long tenure of office en-
joyed by successive political parties in Canada has
56 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
not worked well for the Senate. Under the rule
of either party it has been gradually filled with
that party's nominees, who have incurred the dis-
credit and contempt which must always attach
to a partisan politician in a position from which
public opinion cannot dislodge him. Life appoint-
ments should never be party appointments, if pure
theory could be followed, for the only alleviation
to the sting of an opponent's power is the know-
ledge that public opinion may some day remove
him. The ideal impartial senator would be the
best of all subjects for life appointments, since no
wave of popular passion would affect his position ;
but life appointments are not always suitable
for those whom popular passion has borne into
power.
Mr. Goldwin Smith, a severe critic of the Senate,
writes : " Of the seventy-six senators " (as there
were at the time he wrote) " all but nine have
now been nominated by a single party leader who
has exercised his power for a party purpose, if for
no narrower object. . . . Money spent for the
party in election contests and faithful adherence
to the person of its chief, especially when he most
needs support against the moral sentiments of the
public, are believed to be the surest titles to a seat
in the Canadian House of Lords."
Sir John Macdonald, for many years Conserva-
tive Prime Minister, only appointed one Liberal
to the Senate. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Liberal
COLONIAL SECOND CHAMBERS 57
Prime Minister who held office from 1897 till 1911,
did not appoint one Conservative.
Conflicts between the Houses in Canada are of very
rare occurrence ; they have never been serious, and
they have excited comparatively little interest in
Canada. It seems, indeed, as if the Senate at no time
bulks very large in 'the Canadian imagination. But
if this be so, if the Canadian Senate is to be regarded
as one of the weakest and least effective and least
respected of second chambers, there is a plain
lesson to be drawn. That Senate expresses no
clear principle in the national life. It does not,
like the House of Lords, stand for a distinct ele-
ment in the life of the people, intelligible alike to
its friends and its foes, and buttressed by the
traditions of a thousand years. It does not, like
the American Senate, express the still living idea
of State rights. It does not, like the French
Senate, express in a refined and dignified form the
more considerate choice of the democracy. Nor
is it, as its own principles would have it be, an
assembly of specially distinguished Canadians.
So it stands to show that a second chamber is not
to be constructed with a light heart ; but, to be
successful, must embody some principle which is
understood, respected, and permanent in the ideas
of the people it is to serve.
Australia. — The political history of Australia
begins in what is now the State of New South
Wales, which was settled as a penal Colony in
58 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
1787. After 1821 a free population was gradually
admitted to dwell side by side with the convicts,
until, with the growth of the numbers of the free
and with the natural growth of their prejudices,
the supply of convicts was stopped, and New South
Wales attained the dignity of a Colony such as
Upper or Lower Canada. This was in 1840. Two
years later the beginnings of representative insti-
tutions were set up. A Legislative Council was
established, of which twelve members were nomi-
nated by the Governor and twenty-four were
elected by the Colony. The result was the usual
conflict that arises in all British communities
where the executive and legislative powers are
separated ; disputes and mutual dissatisfaction
arose between the Governor's Ministry and the
partly-elective Council which had no control over
it. In 1850, therefore, an Act of the Imperial
Parliament gave power to New South Wales and
the other Colonies which had spread over Australia
as offshoots of New South Wales, to frame consti-
tutions for themselves. This implied, of course,
the gift of responsible government by Cabinets con-
trolled in the English way by legislative chambers.
As has been explained, the gift was accompanied
by advice. The Colonies were advised not to
attempt the difficult task of establishing second
chambers, and in every case they ignored the
advice and adhered to the traditions of the British
Constitution.
COLONIAL SECOND CHAMBERS 59
In New South Wales the second chamber or
Legislative Council consists of a number, not less
than twenty-one, of persons nominated by the
Governor on the advice of the Cabinet. Unlike
most other British Colonies, there is no limit to
the number of appointments that may be made.
The swamping of majorities, accordingly, is a weapon
in the hands of the Minister who controls the
nominations. At one time when this formidable
power was exercised it was followed by a rebuke
from the Home Government ; but in latter years
the practice came to be recognised as a proper
expedient in case of serious differences between
the two chambers.
Queensland possesses a second chamber on the
model of that of New South Wales, nominated
and unlimited in numbers. In South Australia
the second chamber consists of a limited number
of eighteen members elected for six years by voters
who have a fairly high property qualification.
Half the members retire every three years and
cannot be re-elected. In Tasmania the composi-
tion of the second chamber somewhat resembles
that of South Australia; so also does that of
Western Australia, though here the membership
numbers thirty. In Victoria the second chamber
consists of thirty-four elected members, of whom
half retire every three years, and whose election
depends upon voters with a property qualification
of £10 a year in freehold land or £15 in leasehold,
60 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
or with a university degree or one of some few
other personal qualifications.
In the period between 1890 and 1900 the states-
men of the Australian Colonies were engaged
upon the problem of federation. Their task was to
devise a federal Constitution which should satisfy
two requirements; it was to be a Constitution
workable and durable in itself; it was also to be a
Constitution which each of the six Colonies would
accept. The result of their labours appeared in
the Act of the Imperial Parliament, constituting
the federated Commonwealth of Australia. This
received the assent of Queen Victoria, in one of
the last working days of her life, accompanied by
the prayer that " the inauguration of the Common*
wealth may ensure the increased prosperity and
well-being of my loyal and beloved subjects in
Australia." For our present purposes the most
notable feature of the Commonwealth Constitution
is the Senate which it set up. Between the upper
and lower houses of the Colonial Legislatures of
Australia, the disputes and friction had been fre-
quent. In the minds of those who framed the
Constitution, themselves the champions of many
a conflict against Colonial second chambers, im-
bued also with more advanced democratic ideas
than the framers of any other Constitution save
those of the French Revolution, the value and
necessity of a second chamber in the federal Par-
liament appears nevertheless to have assumed the
COLONIAL SECOND CHAMBERS 61
first rank of importance. It has already been ob-
served that Colonial statesmen have been actuated
by very practical ideas in their constitution-making.
The theories of democracy have not led them out
of the path of business, and, even in the atmos-
phere of advanced democracy in Australia, the
Senate of the federal Constitution was devised
with peculiar care and invested with remarkable
authority.
One thing favoured the Australian Senate from
the outset ; it was plainly invested with the attri-
butes of a federal House. Like the States of the
American Union, and unlike the Provinces of
Canada, the States of Australia remained sove-
reign, except for the rights and powers which were
specially conferred on the Federal Government.
The greatest care was taken to preserve their
independent and separate existence. In Canada,
for instance, the Provinces are so far submerged
below the central government that their Governors
are appointed by it. But in Australia the State
Governors are appointed from England. The
dignity and authority of the States was guarded
by every available means, and, with this intention
before them, it was easy for the Australian states-
men to find an intelligible and permanent principle
upon which to found their Senate.
The Senate represents the States. It consists of
thirty-six members, six from each of the six States
of the Commonwealth. It is provided in the Con-
62 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
stitution that this number may be increased or
diminished, but always so that the equal repre-
sentation of the six original States shall be main-
tained, and so that no original State shall have
fewer than six senators. It is also provided, not
only for the Senate but for the lower house as
well, that no alteration diminishing the propor-
tionate representation of any State shall become
law unless approved by the majority of the electors
voting in that State. So the Senate stands as a
guarantee of the bargain between the federating
States, great and small, a perpetual safeguard of
the lesser States against the greater and more
populous. Here is a principle that cannot fail to
be understood and treated with reverence.
Senators are elected for six years, half their
number retiring every three years. They are, as
the Constitution says, " directly chosen by the
people of the State, voting, until the Parliament
otherwise provides, as one electorate." This
provision is peculiar and important. It means
that every voter has as many votes as there are
vacancies to be filled, and a bare majority of the
voters can return the whole batch of the senators
for their State.
Since they are the same persons as those
who vote for the lower house, and since anyone
eligible for membership of one house is eligible
also for the other, the result has been unusual.
The Senate has come to represent in overwhelm-
COLONIAL SECOND CHAMBERS 63
ing majorities what the people may feel only in
small majorities. One State, voting by con-
stituencies, may return to the lower house a
number of members of various parties. But the
same State, voting as a single constituency for the
Senate, usually returns none but members of the
party which has a majority in the State as a whole.
The consequence of this system has not infre-
quently been that the Senate is less conservative
than the lower house. In the United Kingdom
a similar arrangement might result in a Senate
composed of twenty-five English Unionists, twenty-
five Scottish Liberals, twenty-five Welsh Liberals,
and twenty-five Irish Nationalists.
The importance which Australians attach to
the composition of the Senate may be seen in
the elaborate arrangements made for the filling of
accidental vacancies. Should one of these occur
while the State Parliament is sitting, the Houses
of Parliament of the State " shall, sitting and
voting together, choose a person to hold the place
until the expiration of the term, or until the elec-
tion of a successor, whichever shall first happen."
If the State Parliament is not in session, " the
Governor of the State, with the advice of the
Executive Council thereof, may appoint a person
to hold a place until fourteen days after the be-
ginning of the next session of the Parliament of
the State, or until the election of a successor,
whichever first happens. At the next election of
64 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
members of the House of Representatives or at
the next election of senators for the State, which-
ever first happens, a successor shall, if the term
has not then expired, be chosen to hold the place
from the date of his election until the expiration
of the term."
These minute provisions for all conceivable con-
tingencies are most instructive. They bear witness
to the extreme importance of the second chamber
in the eyes of the framers of the Constitution, but
they do more. It cannot be imagined that such
care would be taken with regard to vacancies in
the Canadian Senate. Even if we suppose some
circumstance under which the new appointment in
Canada was seriously delayed, it cannot be thought
that anyone would be greatly perturbed. The
reason is in the unfortunate artificiality of the
Canadian Senate, which stands for no clear prin-
ciple. Take away a single member from the Senate
of Australia, and, at the very next division in the
lobbies of that House, you have infringed the
great principle of State equality. There is some
State with only five representatives against the
six who represent each of the other States. This
is a serious matter. It is as the expression of a
serious principle that the Australian Senate has
achieved that authority which the framers of the
Constitution desired to confer upon it.
New Zealand has a second chamber — the Legis-
lative Council — of members nominated for seven
COLONIAL SECOND CHAMBERS 65
years (excepting those summoned before 1891,
who are life -members). The number is not
limited. A majority can be swamped by fresh
appointments at the will of the Executive Govern-
ment.
South Africa. — Before the unification of South
Africa in 1910, there were four Colonies with
separate governments, and in each there was a
second chamber. These have been swept away
by the Union. The old Colonies have been re-
duced to a position far lower than that of the
Australian States, lower also than that of the
Canadian Provinces, and retain little more of
their old authority than belongs, in England, to-
a county council. Nevertheless, it is well to
recall the fact that, in their days of independence,
they were no exceptions to the double-chamber
rule.
Cape Colony had a second chamber of twenty-
six members elected for seven years by the voters
who elected the lower house. The Chief Justice
of the Colony presided over it. Natal had a
nominated second chamber of thirteen members,
sitting for ten years. Both the Transvaal and
Orange River Colony had second chambers, the
former of fifteen and the latter of eleven members,
who were nominated for a period of five years.
It was provided that nomination should ulti-
mately be superseded by election, but the change
did not take place, for the Union entirely de-
66 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
stroyed all the constitutions of the four Colonies
and started South Africa on a new course.
Neither the Canadian nor the Australian Senate
was copied in South Africa, but, as it would at
first sight appear, the American. Eight senators
are elected by the Legislatures of each of the four
Provinces. To these are added eight nominees of
the Central Executive, of whom four are to be
selected " on the ground mainly of their thorough
acquaintance, by reason of their official experience
or otherwise, with the reasonable wants and wishes
of the coloured races in South Africa." This pro-
vision has, of course, a purely local significance.
The peculiarity of the South African Senate as
.a whole is that it is no more than a temporary
makeshift. The members elected from the Pro-
vinces were elected, not by the Provincial Councils
set up under the Constitution, but by the old
Legislatures of the old Colonies that were swept
away. They will sit for ten years, at the end of
which time there will be no person or persons
entitled to choose their successors. This curious
arrangement was no accident. The creation of
the new Senate to replace that which expires after
ten years was left, by the Constitution, to the
South African Parliament itself. It may devise
any kind of Senate that it likes. It may, if it
prefers, perpetuate the existing arrangement, in
which case the Provincial Councils are to elect
senators. Here is a plain indication that the
COLONIAL SECOND CHAMBERS 67
federal element in the South African Constitution,
such as it is, is not intended to be permanent.
It is embodied in the Senate for ten years only,
and may afterwards be abandoned. The Union
Parliament has the right to set up whatever
Senate it pleases, but it does not appear that it
was given or that it desired the right to dispense
with a Senate altogether.
One of the most interesting points in connection
with South African Senates is that in two cases,
in the cases of the now abolished constitutions of
the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, the
second chambers were the handiwork of that party
in British politics which does not show devotion
tot; the double-chamber principle in the United
Kingdom. In drafting a workable constitution
for two colonies, however, they set up second
chambers with no inconsiderable powers.
^
CHAPTER V
THE POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS AND THE
PROVISIONS FOR AVOIDING PARLIAMENTARY
DEADLOCKS
UP to the time of the passing of the Parliament
Act of 1911, the legal powers of the two chambers
of the British Parliament were, with one excep-
tion, the same. In strict accuracy it would be
necessary to admit that a number of minor dis-
tinctions existed between the two Houses, of
which some were in favour of the authority of
the Commons, some in favour of the upper
chamber. Thus, while the Commons may com-
mit a person to prison until the end of the session,
the Lords may commit for an indefinite period.
Bills affecting the peerage, to take another in-
stance, must originate in the House of Lords.
But these and other points were of minor im-
portance. They did not affect the broad legal
equality of the two chambers. The one excep-
tion of real consequence was in respect of the
power of the Houses over Money Bills, which
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 69
must originate in the Commons and might be
rejected, but not amended, in the Lords.
For the settlement of differences between the
two Houses the provision was meagre. It con-
sisted of certain customs, mostly ceremonial in
character, to regulate the conduct of Conferences
between delegates appointed by each House. Two
hundred years ago these Conferences were of fre-
quent occurrence and often fruitful of result, but
of late years they had been superseded by an
informal system of private negotiation between
the leaders of parties in the two Houses, and by a
complete change in the practical view taken by
each House as to its own powers.
The law of the Constitution had not changed,
but the custom had changed profoundly. The
two Houses, theoretically equal, had accommo-
dated themselves to the advance of democratic
ideas. The Commons had waxed and the Lords
had waned. The Commons had won complete
control over the Executive, so that their hostile
vote came to be regarded as the death-warrant
of ministries, and their decision, after a general
election, as the unquestioned and unquestionable
pronouncement of the will of the people upon
such matters as had been before the country in
the election. Here, in fact, we see the constitu-
tional method of settling differences between the
two Houses. To the decision of a newly-elected
House of Commons, the House of Lords offered
70 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
no resistance in respect of a Bill which they had
previously rejected, but which the country in the
election had approved.
There are cases of both sorts. In 1893 the
House of Lords rejected the second Home Kule
Bill. The Commons had passed it. A difference
therefore existed between the two Houses, and it
was settled by the general election of 1895, in
which the country returned a new House of
Commons opposed to the Bill. So the Houses
were again in agreement on the question, both
being hostile to the Bill, and the deadlock, if such
it can be called, was settled by the decision of the
electorate. Again, in 1909, the House of Lords
rejected the Budget which the Commons had
passed. In the general election that followed
the country again returned a House of Commons
that supported the Budget. The Lords therefore
yielded, and the deadlock was removed again. In
this case it should be noted that the terms in
which the Lords had refused to pass the Budget
expressly denned the method of settlement which
they foresaw, desired, and were ready to accept.
They refused to pass the Budget until it had been
" referred to the judgment of the country."
The Parliament Act of 1911 greatly altered
these parts of our Constitution. It removed from
the House of Lords the power to reject Money
Bills. It transferred from the electorate to the
House of Commons the right of deciding upon
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 71
the differences between the two Houses. Where
the Houses differ, the will of the Commons would
prevail after an interval of two years, and no
provision was left either in law or in practical
necessity for a reference to the electorate in any
shape or form. Thus the second chamber might
amend or reject any legislation except Money
Bills ; and for the settlement of the differences of
the Houses an automatic process was introduced
by which the voice of the Commons would pre-
vail after an interval of two years. It need
scarcely be added that the voice of the Commons
was not to prevail if its opinion should change
during the interval ; nor was the interval to be so
long as two years if the Lords should surrender in
the meantime.
The wisdom or unwisdom of this arrangement
will not be discussed in this chapter, which will
be merely descriptive of fact. But the reader will
bear in mind these provisions while he proceeds to
consider the arrangements which other countries
and colonies have adopted in respect of similar
eventualities.
It will be found that there are three general
methods of settling the differences between two
chambers. These are :
(1) The method known as " swamping " ;
(2) A joint sitting of the two chambers ;
(3) A reference to the electorate.
Of these three, the first sets up those already in
72 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
office as judges between the two chambers, the
second gives the victory to the preponderating
opinion within the Parliament itself, and the third
is an appeal from Parliament to people. With
regard to swamping, which signifies the con-
version of the minority in the second chamber
into a majority, by Government action, we should
observe that this has always been a physical
possibility in the case of the House of Lords.
On one occasion it was actually employed.
This was in the reign of Queen Anne, at a time
when the failure of the Queen's progeny had
made it obvious that her death would shortly
bring about a serious crisis. The Crown would
either pass to the House of Hanover or revert to
the heirs of the Stuart kings. It was not only a
dynastic crisis, but a parting of the ways for
British policy as a whole. Each dynasty repre-
sented a body of opinion and policy that affected
the whole area of national life. The success of
either would have been a kind of revolution. The
times should, therefore, be considered as distinctly
revolutionary and abnormal, and the methods
used by the party that favoured the House of
Stuart were extra-constitutional in more ways
than one. In the course of their endeavours they
were planning to act in disobedience to the Act of
Parliament which had already conferred the suc-
cession to the Crown on the House of Hanover.
Statesmen who were ready for so bold a step were
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 73
not likely to hesitate before another. They had
no majority in the House of Lords. The welfare
of their general projects and their dangerous
schemes made such a convenience very desirable
for them, and, to the scandalisation of their
opponents they furnished it for themselves. On
the 31st December 1711 they induced the Queen
to create twelve peers to "swamp" the existing
majority of the House of Lords. This, at the
time, was regarded as unconstitutional, and an
attempt was shortly made to ensure by legislation
that it should never occur again. By this time,
however, the condition of public affairs was quieter,
the fear of revolutionary methods was less acute,
and the Bill for preventing the sudden creation of
batches of peers did not pass through Parliament.
Swamping remained a legal possibility. It was
threatened at the time of the Reform Bill of
1832 by Lord Grey, though his colleague, Lord
Brougham, subsequently stated that the threat
would not have been carried into effect. It may
be observed that the unconstitutionality of swamp-
ing has come, at different epochs, from different
principles. In the time of Queen Anne the swamp-
ing was unconstitutional because the two Houses-
were really supposed to have an equal and supreme
authority. To overrule the majority of either
House was an act of violence by the Executive
against the Legislature. By the end of the reign
of Queen Victoria a different principle was estab-
74 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
lished. A serious difference between the two
Houses, by that time, was held to necessitate a
decision by a general election. So swamping
became an act of violence not so much against
Parliament as against the electorate, for it settled
the question without giving the electorate a voice.
With regard to the joint sittings which are used
in some cases to settle the differences of two
chambers, it should be noted that their signifi-
cance depends very much on the relative size of
the two chambers in question. Where a lower
chamber is much larger than an upper chamber,
a joint sitting gives it an advantage, for its majority
will usually tend to be a larger body than the
majority of the smaller chamber. It is, however,
a rough and ready, easy, and very speedy method
of settlement.
References to the electorate take various forms.
They may proceed by dissolution of one or other
of the chambers at variance, or, indeed, by the
simultaneous dissolution of both. A general elec-
tion is a reference by dissolution of the lower
chamber. A further and very notable method of
settlement is by the direct submission of the
question of difference to be decided on voting
papers by the electorate over the heads of both
chambers. This method, the Referendum, or
Poll of the People, as adopted in Switzerland,
Australia, and elsewhere, will be dealt with in
another chapter.
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 75
The following is a list of countries in which
the majority of the second chamber can be
swamped.
Italy. — The Italian Constitution gives to the
Senate equal legislative powers with the lower
chamber. Either chamber may initiate legisla-
tion. Money Bills must originate in the lower
chamber, but the Senate has the right to amend
or to reject them. All legislation requires the
consent of the Senate as well as of the lower
house. By decree of the King the Senate may
be constituted a High Court of Justice to try
crimes of high treason and attempts upon the
safety of the State, and to try Ministers impeached
by the lower chamber. The Senate is nominated
by the Executive, and, upon occasion, the Execu-
tive can and does create a majority for itself and
for the lower chamber by means of a batch of new
nominations.
Hungary. — All Bills, including Money Bills,
must pass the second chamber. The second
chamber has power to reject or amend all Bills,
including Money Bills. It may initiate legislation,
but in practice it does not make use of this power.
Practice also has modified its rights in respect of
Money Bills, the imitation of England having led
to a general belief that interference with a Money
Bill by the second chamber would be unparlia-
mentary. Though largely composed of hereditary
members it has a nominated element, and the
76 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Government, by fresh nominations, could, and has,
threatened to swamp the majority.
Prussia. — The consent of the second chamber is
necessary to all legislation. The second chamber
may initiate all legislation except Money Bills.
It can reject, but not amend, Money Bills. But
in practice these powers are useless, not against
the lower house, but against the King who domi-
nates both houses. Ministers are not responsible
to the lower house, but to the King, in practice as
well as in theory. The importance of the Parlia-
ment is, therefore, not very great. In certain
cases, the King has swamped the second chamber
by an increase in the nominated element.
New South Wales. — The second chamber, which
is nominated by the Government, cannot initiate
or amend Money Bills, but may reject them. In
the case of other legislation it may initiate any
Bill, and all Bills require its consent. It may be,
and has been, swamped by fresh nominations by
the Government of the day.
New Zealand. — All Bills must pass the second
chamber, but the Home Government has expressed
the legal opinion that its powers in respect of
Money Bills are not on an equality with those of
the lower chamber. In cases of difference with
the House of Representatives, the Executive can
and does swamp the majority of the Legislative
Council, which is a nominated body, by means of
fresh nominations. In this case, as in other cases
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 77
where the swamping of Colonial second chambers
is possible, regard should be had to an opinion
expressed by Lord Carnarvon as Secretary of State
for the Colonies in 1874. It is an opinion likely
to weigh with any Governor when approached by
his ministers with a request for a batch of swamp-
ing nominations. Lord Carnarvon wrote :
" In a colony such as ... the tendency to
introduce a large addition to the number of the
Legislative Council (the second chamber) will from
time to time make itself felt. But if the balance
of constitutional power is not to be more than a
mere theory, it is clear that such a tendency
cannot be encouraged to take its full course. It
is prudent to avoid such an increase in the number
of the Legislative Council as may give a temporary
advantage to one party, thereby altering the con-
stitutional character and functions of the legis-
lative body, weakening its general influence, and
possibly, if not provoking reprisals at some future
day, at least encouraging a practice which, the
more it is indulged, the less easy will it be to
restrain."
The following is a list of countries in which
differences between the two chambers are settled
by joint sittings.
South Africa. — The second chamber of the
South African Union has power to reject or amend
all Bills except Money Bills. It can reject Money
78 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Bills, but cannot initiate or amend them. All
Bills must be submitted to the second chamber.
In case of disagreement between the two chambers,
if the Bill is a Money Bill, a joint sitting of the
two chambers is held at once and a vote is taken.
This vote decides the question. In case of dis-
agreement, where the Bill is not a Money Bill, the
joint sitting is not held until the Bill has been
twice passed by the lower chamber.
Kingdom of Wurtemberg. — The second chamber
has equal powers with the lower chamber. In
respect of Money Bills, a disagreement is settled,
not actually by a joint sitting, but by an addition
of the votes cast for and against in the two cham-
bers. This provides a solution, but has not the
advantages of the joint sitting, for there is no
opportunity for debate and concessions between
the two chambers.
Grand Ducky of Baden. — The second chamber
has the same powers as in Wtirtemberg. Differ-
ences upon Money Bills are settled in the same
manner.
The following is a list of countries in which, in
one form or another, the settlement of differences
between the two chambers is entrusted to the
electorate; or, alternatively, in which the electo-
rate is given a chance of deciding before the deci-
sion is reached over their heads.
Australian Commonwealth. — The second cham-
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 79
her has equal powers with the lower chamber in all
cases except those of Money Bills. By a special
provision of the Constitution the second chamber
is disabled from amending any Bill (not only
Money Bills), so as to " increase any proposed
charge or burden on the people." Though the
second chamber cannot amend a Money Bill, it
can reject it. It can do more than is usual, how-
ever, in other countries where the same rule
prevails. For it may return a Money Bill to the
lower chamber with the request that an amend-
ment be made. So, in practice, it has the right to
propose, but not to insist upon, the amendment of
a Money Bill. It is to be noted that the Constitu-
tion gives the second chamber the right to insist
that Money Bills should be presented to it sepa-
rately and in order, so that it may pass those it
likes and reject those it dislikes. The Constitution
also expressly forbids the tacking of non-financial
matter on to a Money Bill, by which the attempt
might be made to secure the second chamber's
consent to, or abstention from amendments of,
proposals which otherwise it might have rejected
or seconded.
The provisions for settlement of disagreement
between the two chambers are elaborately defined
by the Constitution. If a Bill is passed by the
lower chamber and rejected or ignored by the
second chamber, an interval of three months
ensues. If the same Bill be again passed by the
80 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
lower house, and if the disagreement still con-
tinues, the Governor-General may dissolve both
chambers simultaneously. If, after the dissolu-
tion and election of new chambers, the same bill
be passed by the lower chamber and rejected by
the second chamber, a joint sitting is held. The
result of the voting at the joint sitting settles the
question. If the majority of the two chambers
sitting together is adverse to the Bill, it drops,
and on its reappearance the whole process would
have to begin over again. If the majority is
favourable to the Bill it is forthwith presented to
the Governor-General for the royal assent.
All of these provisions are characteristic of the
extreme care shown by the framers of the Austra-
lian Constitution in regard to the second chamber
and all that concerns it. Though the final possible
stage of disagreement is settled by the method of
joint sitting, it should be noted that this does
not occur until the electorate has had the oppor-
tunity of pronouncing upon the disputed Bill by
means of a general election to both the disagreeing
chambers. It is the same electorate which re-
turns them both, though voting in constituencies
of different size. This sharply distinguishes the
method of settlement from that provided by the
Constitution of South Africa, where a joint sitting
settles the dispute without any reference to the
electorate.
Victoria. — The second chamber has equal powers
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 81
with the lower chamber except in respect of Money
Bills. There was much controversy before the
powers of the second chamber in respect of Money
Bills was settled. In 1866 it rejected a Bill for
the introduction of high tariff duties, which, in
the lower chamber, had been incorporated in the
Appropriation Bill. The lower chamber then
induced the Governor to permit the levy of the
duties merely on the strength of a resolution of its
own. The Governor consented, and was rebuked
by the Home Government. Thereupon the lower
chamber voted £20,000 as a gratuity to the
Governor's wife. The Bill in which this vote was
incorporated was rejected by the second chamber.
The dispute continued to rage round this point
until the Governor intimated that he would prefer
not to accept the money. Again in 1894 the
question became acute. The second chamber
rejected the annual Budget on the ground that it
contained clauses for the levying of a tax upon
unimproved land values which should have been
submitted to the electorate before becoming law.
Simultaneously there occurred a disagreement
about Bills which were not Money Bills, for the
second chamber rejected a measure for the aboli-
tion of plural voting and the enfranchisement of
women. Nine years later, in 1903, a method of
solution was adopted. The second chamber
obtained the right to suggest amendments to
Money Bills, and provision was made for its dis-
82 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
solution and re-election in the event of an insur-
mountable disagreement with the lower chamber.
Once more it should be noticed that this second
chamber is an elected one ; and, in fact, the serious
character of its quarrels with the lower chamber
has been due to its consciousness of its strength as
a body representing the people.
South Australia. — Here again the second
chamber is elected. Differences between the two
chambers have been mainly in respect of Money
Bills. But the Governors have taken the side of
the second chamber, in the most notable cases,
and have insisted on Money Bills receiving the
assent of both chambers. In 1881 a device for
settling differences was adopted. If a Bill is
twice passed by the lower chamber and twice
rejected by the second chamber, or amended in a
way which the lower chamber will not accept, the
Governor has a choice of two methods of obtain-
ing the decision of the electorate. He may either
dissolve both chambers at once, or he may call
up by election to the second chamber a number
of additional members not exceeding nine. Since
the second chamber normally consists of only
eighteen members, the addition is considerable,
and should suffice to turn the scale on ordinary
occasions if the electorate is anxious to support
the view of the lower chamber. Should the dis-
agreement continue after this operation, or after
the simultaneous dissolution of both chambers, it
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 83
would seem that there is no further way of arriv-
ing at a settlement. There is no provision, as
in the Commonwealth Constitution, for a joint
sitting.
The Transvaal and Orange River Colony. —
Though these Colonies are now merged in the
Union of South Africa, and have lost their old
constitutions, their history is interesting because
the constitutions were framed by a British Liberal
Government which was refusing to accept the
right of the House of Lords to reject Money Bills
or to cause an appeal to the country upon occasions.
To these two second chambers in South Africa
was accorded the right to reject, but not to amend,
Money Bills. In case of agreement on Money
Bills or other Bills, the Governor was to convene
a joint sitting. The members of both chambers
were to deliberate and vote together, and might
together amend the Bill at their joint sitting.
The way was therefore left open for possible com-
promise up to the last moment. The decision of
a majority of the members of the two chambers
sitting together, was to be final. But, alternatively
to this course, it was provided that the Governor
might dissolve either the lower chamber alone or
both chambers together. Thus there was pro-
vision both for a review of Money Bills by the
second chamber and for an appeal to the electors.
Sweden. — The second chamber has the usual
powers of an equal branch of the Legislature.
84 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Keen conflicts have occurred as to its rights in
respect of Money Bills. It is now provided that,
in case of disputes of this particular kind, there
should be a joint sitting, and the decision depends
upon the majority of the votes of the two chambers
sitting together. In the case of disputes of this
kind, however, and in the case of disputes of any
other kind, it is possible for the Government to
dissolve both chambers simultaneously, and thus,
since both are elected, to give the voters the
opportunity of settling the matter themselves.
Norway. — The second chamber, which is
nominated by the lower chamber (an unique
arrangement), is by no means powerful in practice.
In matters of finance the two chambers sit as one.
In all cases of disagreement there is provision for
a joint sitting in which a majority of two-thirds is
required to pass a Bill. Any dissolution of either
chamber involves the dissolution of the other.
But the fact that the lower chamber appoints the
second chamber, renders Norway a constitutional
curiosity. There was, when the constitution was
framed, a tendency towards the single-chamber
system. Yet the need for a checking and delay-
ing chamber was recognised, and this compromise
was adopted in order to secure some of the prac-
tical advantages of the double-chamber system,
while paying some reverence to the theory of the
other.
Denmark. — In ordinary legislation the second
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 85
chamber has a legal right to reject or amend, and
exercises it with considerable freedom. In Money
Bills its action has been weak. It might reject,
legally, but is not expected to do so. There is a
provision for the sitting of joint committees, in
case of disagreement, but these committees sit
only to confer, not to vote. A simultaneous dis-
solution of both chambers is possible.
Holland. — The second chamber cannot initiate
any legislation, nor amend a Money Bill, but it
can and does reject any Bill, Money or other.
A simultaneous dissolution of both chambers is
possible.
Belgium. — The second chamber can initiate any
Bill except Money Bills, and has the ordinary
powers of an equal branch of the Legislature. It
may reject or amend a Money Bill. A simul-
taneous dissolution is possible.
Spain. — The second chamber has equal powers,
but may not initiate a Money Bill. Its consent
is necessary to all legislation. It may amend or
reject a Money Bill In case of disagreement it is
usual to dissolve the lower chamber and, simul-
taneously, the elected half of the upper chamber.
Queensland. — The second chamber, which is
nominated for life by the Government, has the
ordinary powers, and has claimed, in addition,
the right to amend Money Bills. On this point a
legal opinion was obtained from the British Privy
Council in 1885. The opinion was that the second
D
86 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
chamber of Queensland was in a position like that
of the House of Lords, and that it must not amend
Money Bills. Like the House of Lords, however,
it was held to be entitled to reject them as a whole.
In 1907 a disagreement occurred between the two
houses. The Prime Minister asked the Governor
to allow him to appeal to the country. The
Governor refused, and the Prime Minister re-
signed, and the Opposition took office. Thereupon
the lower chamber refused to vote supplies, and
the Governor dissolved it. The country returned
the same majority to power, and negotiations were
commenced for a method of settling such constitu-
tional troubles in the future. It was provided
that where a Bill has passed the lower chamber
and been rejected by the second chamber, and
again passed and rejected in a subsequent session,
it may be submitted to the country in a Refer-
endum. A simple majority of the voters who
actually vote on the Referendum is enough to pass
the Bill into law.
The following is a list of countries whose con-
stitutions provide no method of settling differences
between the two chambers.
France. — The second chamber, or Senate, of
France is an elected body. It is elected by the
Departments and Colonies of France, by universal
suffrage, but by indirect election. It possesses
legislative equality with the lower chamber; it
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 87
can initiate, amend, or reject all Bills except
Money Bills. In regard to these the right of
initiative belongs to the lower chamber, but the
Senate may reject. In the amendment of Money
Bills, the rights of the Senate are not perfectly
clear. It has claimed and exercised the right to
amend, but it has not done so without protest
from the lower chamber. One French writer,
entitled to an opinion, says that the Senate may
" view, control, and examine" a Money Bill. M.
Loubet, who was President of the Budget Com-
mittee of the Senate in 1895, said :
"We have the right of examining the Budget
law, and we do so each year with scrupulous atten-
tion. We can introduce amendments in it, but it
is impossible for us to entertain a complete new
set of Budget proposals ; these must first be passed
by the Chamber of Deputies before they are sub-
mitted to the Senate."
Gambetta, much less inclined to take a wide
view of the Senate's authority, said :
"The Senate has the right of making remon-
strances to the Chamber, to point out that this
or that tax, this or that credit or suppression of
credit, is unjust or inopportune, or to suggest a
modification of the whole of the Budget."
On either of these statements of the case the
financial authority of the Senate must appear
to be far greater than that of our House of
Lords.
88 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
The Senate has other very remarkable powers.
Treaties of peace or commerce may not be ratified
by the Government until both chambers have
voted their approval. The chambers perform this
function separately, of course, so that the second
chamber obtains a right of veto in respect of these
treaties. Here, again, it is superior to the House
of Lords, and to the House of Commons also, for
the British Government can ratify treaties with-
out the consent of Parliament. Another provision
of the French Constitution gives the Senate a
power even more remarkable. Its consent is
necessary before the President may dissolve the
Chamber of Deputies. In England, France, the
British Colonies, and all other countries that
have parliamentary as distinct from presidential
government, the power of the Executive to dis-
solve or threaten the dissolution of the lower
chamber, on which the Executive itself depends,
is one of the most formidable and important of
all the engines of authority. It is the one check
possessed by the Executive for use against the
lower chamber. And in France this check can
only be used with the consent of the Senate. Had
such a provision existed with us, it is doubtful if
we should have had a dissolution or general elec-
tion in December 1910. That dissolution was an
appeal to the country before the real matter at
issue and its evident consequences had been
made plain. The French Constitution would have
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 89
given the House of Lords the right to prohibit
the dissolution.
The French Constitution provides no method
of settling the differences of the chambers, except
in so far as both chambers are automatically sent
to the country for re-election at intervals, the
lower chamber as a whole, the Senate hi divisions
of one-third of its numbers which retire every
three years. Thus, until and unless its composi-
tion is changed by re-election, the Senate can
raise an insurmountable obstacle to legislation,
even to Money Bills.
United States. — The second chamber, or Senate,
of the United States is remarkable not so much
because it has the usual powers of an equal branch
of the Legislature, as because of the frequency
and cool assurance with which it makes use of
them. Its rights of amendment and rejection are
exercised with a freedom unknown in any European
country. In respect of Money Bills it may do
everything but initiate. It may, and does, both
amend and reject them. Its consent is necessary
to all treaties, though, unlike the French practice,
the consent of the lower house is not required.
Its consent is also necessary for all appointments
under the United States Government. The enor-
mous power of checking the Executive which flows
from this last provision is self-evident, for we have
only to picture our own upper chamber invested
with such rights when its majority is not of the
90 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
same party as the ministers in power. With a
veto on all legislation, a veto on all appointments,
and a veto on all treaties, the Senate securely
controls the whole field of government.
It has also a judicial function. The public
officers of the United States Government, from
the President downwards, may be impeached for
misconduct. The sole power of impeachment is
vested in the lower chamber, and the sole power
to try impeachments is vested in the Senate.
Differences between the two chambers can only
be settled, as in France, by the automatic changes
brought about in either chamber by periodic re-
elections. There is a practice of holding confer-
ences of persons appointed by the two disagreeing
chambers, however, and the recommendation of
the conference is commonly accepted by both.
But this is only a custom having no legal force.
In the last resort the veto of either chamber on
the proposals of the other is absolute, and only
to be removed by the chamber itself before or after
its re-election.
Canada. — The second chamber has equal rights
with the lower chamber, except in the case of
Money Bills. These it may reject, but cannot
initiate or amend. In case of difference between
the chambers, the Government may nominate six
new members to the second chamber. As it con-
sists of eighty-seven members, this amount of
swamping is seldom likely to be effective. Since
POWERS OF SECOND CHAMBERS 91
the second chamber is nominated for life, and not
subject to re-election, there is no way of bringing
its will into conformity with that of the lower
chamber.
German Empire. — The second chamber, which
consists of members nominated by the Govern-
ments of the States composing the Empire, has
rather more than equal legislative powers with the
lower chamber. Most Bills, including Money Bills,
are initiated by it. It can initiate, amend, or
reject all Bills whatsoever. Its consent is necessary
to a dissolution of the lower chamber. It has
important administrative functions. Its assent is
required, together with that of the lower chamber,
to all treaties that relate to matters regulated by
Imperial legislation. It is a Court of Appeal from
the State Courts. There is no provision at all
for settling its differences with the lower chamber.
Austria. — The second chamber has equal powers
with the lower chamber in all ways except that
Money Bills must be initiated by the latter. It
may initiate any other Bill, and amend or reject
Bills of every kind. In cases of disagreement,
there is provision for joint committees of the two
chambers to deliberate and recommend a solution.
But there is no method by which either chamber
can be forced into agreement with the other. As
with us before the Parliament Act, the only course
open to the Government in cases of disagreement
is to dissolve the lower chamber.
92 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
The most noticeable conclusion to be drawn
from the foregoing facts, is that almost all the
countries that have adopted representative govern-
ment accord to their second chambers a measure
of power greater than any that has been claimed
by or for our House of Lords ; that the power
of an Executive to swamp the majority of a second
chamber is comparatively rarely found ; and that
there is a tendency among newer constitutions to
give great strength to the second chamber, but to
seek the final decision from the electorate.
CHAPTER VI
GENERAL RECOGNITION OF THE VALUE OF
THE DOUBLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM
IT is safer to seek men's opinions in their deeds
than in their words. The world's testimony to
the value and necessity of a double-chamber
system is to be found rather in what the world
has done, than in what it has said ; and there is
no language so eloquent as the fact that wherever
representative institutions have been set up, with
a few exceptions notable solely for their lack of
importance, the system adopted has been that of
double-chamber Parliaments.
In our own country we may be said to have
acquired a second chamber by inheritance. We
did not invent it, nor desire it, nor adopt it upon
any principle or theory. It was in existence at
the beginning of the history of our Parliaments,
and was ancient even then. But this has not
been the case with foreign lands or with the
British dominions. Their Parliaments did not
grow but were made. They were invented and
erected, and they date, in most instances, from
93
94 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
periods, when the democratic and revolutionary
spirit has been at the height of its influenced Yet
the double-chamber system has been adopted in
all cases of importance. In this respect the
tribute of foreign countries to the importance of
second chambers has been such as our country
has never had the chance of paying.
For this reason we shall find most interest in
what foreigners have done and what Britons have
said. The testimony of foreigners has been in
their actions, in the constitutions they have
framed with the best wisdom at their command,
and in the tribute these constitutions pay to the
lessons of history. In Britain we have never
made a constitution. We have worked one, how-
ever, for six hundred years, and our testimony
is to be found in the opinions of statesmen who
have worked it.
The constitutions of the world have been framed
under two distinct sets of conditions. They have
been framed either to provide for the government
of a new community, or, alternatively, under the
influence of a revolution. To take the briefest
survey we see, first, the revolutionary constitu-
tions of England at the time of Cromwell. Then
we see the constitution which the Americans
invented to meet the needs of their federal union.
Next come the constitutions of the French Re-
volution. Later comes the group of constitutions
granted by most of the sovereigns of Europe in
THE DOUBLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 95
the second third of the nineteenth century.
Lastly, we have the constitutions provided for
British Dominions as and when their development
made it possible for them to govern themselves.
There runs through the whole list a clearly trace-
able line of practical experience.
The deplorable failure of single-chamber govern-
ment in England at the time of Cromwell gave
the world its first lesson in the subject, and the
political writers of the next hundred years, who
were mostly French or English, never tired of
demonstrating that stable and moderate govern-
ment cannot be expected of a single popular
chamber. Under the influence of this opinion the
Americans acted when they drew up the Constitu-
tion of the United States. Meanwhile, however,
an opposing doctrine had grown into fashion in
France. This reached its climax in the French
Revolution, when, as was confidently hoped, the
pure theory of freedom was going to work much
better than it had worked in England under
Cromwell. The doctrine of the exclusive right
of the people's representatives to the exercise of
the whole power of the State seized the imagina-
tion of French theorists as it had gripped the
minds of the English Puritans, and the world was
given the benefit of another illustration of the
working of the single-chamber system. Once
again that system led direct to tyranny, confusion,
and the extinction of personal freedom. The
96 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
single-chamber constitutions of France, born in
revolution, broke down in a steady succession of
failures.
The lesson was learned, and by the time that
the next period of revolution overspread Europe
the erection of single-chamber government found
no more support than the abolition of monarchy.
Parliaments were everywhere set up ; everywhere
the right of representation was given to the
people; but the precaution of a second chamber
was not omitted. Seldom indeed has stability
attached to constitutions established in the throes
of revolution. But the double-chamber systems
set up in Europe in the tumultuous years of the
middle of the last century have justified the
prudence which the experience of France had
taught the world. Not one of the double-chamber
Parliaments of Europe, if France be excepted, has
ever been overthrown.
French history, since the Revolution, is a museum
of constitutional experiments. Having suffered
more sharply than any other country from the
single-chamber system in the earlier stages of the
Revolution, the French statesmen tried conscien-
tiously to erect a second chamber when it was too
late. By the time they had called their second
chamber into existence the country was half way
down the slope into despotism, and the Empire of
Napoleon supervened to deprive all constitutional
experiments of their importance. Upon the fall
THE DOUBLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 97
of the Empire, constitutionalism was tried again,
and a second chamber was provided. It endured,
through two revolutions, until the spirit of anarchy
overspread Europe in 1848. Then the French
people tried the single-chamber experiment once
again. After four years of disaster they relapsed
thankfully into the arms of a despot once more,
and the nature of the constitution ceased to
matter.
Again, in 1870, when the second Napoleonic
Empire was overthrown, the experiment of con-
stitutional government had to be tried. A par-
liamentary Republic was set up, and, after a few
years of uncertainty, a constitution was definitely
established. From the pen of an English barrister,
Sir William Charley, we have an interesting record
of the time when this latest of French constitu-
tions was in process of being made. " I was stay-
ing at Trouville," he writes, " and I left my card
on M. Thiers who was then President of the
French Republic. ... I accepted an invitation.
. . . and had a long conversation with M. Thiers
on the subject of the formation of a second
chamber. I was deeply interested in M. Thiers's
preference for the bi-cameral system. Shortly
after my return to England I found from the
papers that M. Thiers had adopted the bi-cameral
system which has held its own in France ever
since."
The truth was that M. Thiers had established
98 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
one of the strongest second chambers in the world,
which has endured for forty years in the land of
revolutions without a challenge to its authority.
France had learned the lesson of her own experi-
ence. In the eighty years before 1870 she had
seen eleven constitutions collapse, and she has
now lived for forty-two years under a constitution
that has hardly been threatened. There is no
doubt whatever that this unwonted stability has
been due to nothing so much as to the Senate
which M. Thiers established.
From America we may read the words of two
political thinkers of high standing, one of them
being a statesman whose name will never be for-
gotten, the other a political philosopher of consider-
able distinction. The first is Alexander Hamilton,
a man of genius, who not only did more than any
other towards framing the American Constitution,
but also did more than any other to make that Con-
stitution work. " Give all power to the many," said
Hamilton, " and they will oppress the few. Give
all power to the few, and they will oppress the
many. Both, therefore, ought to have' the power
that each may defend itself against the other. To
the want of this check we owe our paper money, in-
stalment laws, &c. To the proper adjustment of
it the British owe the excellence of their Constitu-
tion. Their House of Lords is a most noble
institution. Having nothing to hope for by a
change, and a sufficient interest, by means of their
THE DOUBLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 99
property, in being faithful to the national interest,
they form a permanent barrier against every per-
nicious innovation, whether attempted on the part
of the Crown or the Commons. No temporary
Senate will have firmness enough to answer that
purpose."
The second American authority is Professor
Lieber, who writes as follows in his book on Civil
Liberty and Self - Government : "Practical know-
ledge alone can show the whole advantage of this
Anglican principle, according to which we equally
disregard the idea of three or four Houses and of
one House only, Both are equally and essentially
non-Anglican. Although, however, practice alone
can show the whole advantage that may be de-
rived from the system of two Houses, it must be a
striking fact to every inquirer in distant countries
that not only has the system of two Houses histo-
rically developed itself in England, but it has been
absorbed by the United States in all the forty-
four States and by all the British colonies where
local legislatures exist. We may mention even the
African State of Liberia. The bi-cameral system
accompanies the English race like the Common
Law, while no one attempt at introducing the uni-
cameral system in larger countries has succeeded.
The idea of one House flows from that of the unity
of power, so popular in France. The bi-cameral
system is called by the advocates of democratic
unity an aristocratic institution. In reality it is a
100 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
truly popular principle to insist on the protection
of a legislature divided into two Houses."
Let us now see the views of an English philoso-
pher, John Stuart Mill, who had certainly no love
for " aristocratic institutions." He had one of the
coldest minds that ever thought, and we shall not
find his words to contain the enthusiasm of the
Americans. His praise is grudging, but it is not
less valuable for that reason. He condemns the
single chamber because it causes the members of
such chambers to incur " the evil effects of having
only themselves to consult."
" It is important," he adds, " that no set of
persons should in great affairs be able, even tem-
porarily, to make their ' I will ' prevail without
asking anyone for his consent. A majority in a
single assembly, when it has assumed a paramount
character, when composed of the same persons
habitually voting together and always assured of
victory in their own House, easily becomes despotic
and overweening if released from the necessity of
considering whether its acts will be concurred in
by another constituted authority. The same
reason which induced the Komans to have two
consuls makes it desirable that there should be
two chambers, that neither of them may be ex-
posed to the corrupting influence of undivided
power, even for the space of a single year. One of
the most indispensable requisites in the practical
conduct of politics, especially in the management
THE DOUBLE-CHAMBER S\SIEM 101
of free institutions, is conciliation, a readiness to
compromise, a willingness to concede something to
opponents, and to shape good measures so as to
be as little offensive as possible to persons of oppo-
site views, and of this salutary habit the mental
give and take between two Houses is a perpetual
school, useful as such even now, and its usefulness
would probably be even more felt in a more demo-
cratic constitution of legislature."
From the opinions of philosophers we will turn to
the words of some of those who have been responsible
for the working of the British Constitution. In
1870, in the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone said :
" It may be that my hon. friend, . . . aware that
the House of Commons is the chamber in which,
in the main, the great work of national legislation
must be conducted and the business of the country
done, thinks that by means of a single instead of
a double chamber we should simplify the work of
our constitution, and more speedily and satisfac-
torily settle great public questions. Sir, that
would be a very grave conclusion to adopt. I do
not think it is the belief of the majority of this
House, on the one side or the other, and I am
perfectly convinced it is not the belief of the
country."
Again, in 1893, Mr. Gladstone told the House of
Commons that " the first effect of a second chamber
is to present an undoubted and unquestionable
security against hasty legislation. It interposes a
102 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
certain period of time, it interposes reflection, apart
from the possible heat of popular discussion ; it
interposes an opportunity for allowing full con-
sideration of the modes by which an approxima-
tion may be effected between the opposing parties
by some accommodation of their differences. . . .
The mere fact of its causing an interposition of
time before a final decision is made is a very great
recommendation."
In the same year, a year of conflict between the
House of Lords and the House of Commons, the
following remarkable words were spoken by Lord
Herschell, the Lord Chancellor in Mr. Gladstone's
Government : " The misfortune of the House of
Lords," he said, " has been this — that the utmost
attention has been excited by its work whenever
its work has been of a particularly controversial
character, and one which excites angry political
feeling ; and the quiet work which the House of
Lord does, which is none the less effective and
real, is work of which hardly anybody ever hears
and for which the House of Lords never gets the
slightest praise. ... If the House of Lords is able
to supply some of the defects left in measures by
the House of Commons, I maintain it does useful
work, and that work it has certainly performed on
many occasions, although its achievements have
been little observed."
The personal note which sounds in these words
THE DOUBLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 103
may be due to the fact that the speaker himself
was a member of the second chamber which he
defended, and had good means of knowing the
nature and value of its work. Yet he was a pro-
minent member of the party whose chief measure
the House of Lords had just rejected.
Of conflicts between legislative chambers the
following remarks were made by Mr. Bryce, who
was in the Liberal Cabinet in 1892, 1894, and 1906 ;
was British Ambassador at Washington ; and is the
author of an important work on the constitution
and politics of America. He, too, was speaking at
a time of difference between the two chambers in
England. He said : " It is said that two chambers
work harmoniously together. My observation on
that is that the object of having two chambers
is to secure, not that things shall always work
smoothly between them, but that they shall fre-
quently differ, and provide a means of correcting
such errors as either may commit."
The stream of testimony from British statesmen
is continuous. If that which is quoted here is
from men who have belonged to the Liberal party,
it is only because the attack of the Liberals on the
second chamber gives additional value to the words
of some of the wisest of their members. The case
for a second chamber was never more tersely ex-
pressed than by Lord Rosebery, speaking in the
House of Lords in 1888, and quoting some words
104 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
which will be familiar to those who have read this
and other chapters of the present book, and which
cannot be too frequently reiterated. Lord Rosebery
said:
" There are three arguments which I have
always thought conclusive as showing the
necessity of a second chamber. When the
ablest men that America ever knew, a cen-
tury ago, framed their Constitution, though
fettered by no rules and traditions, and having
a clean slate before them, they thought it
necessary to construct the strongest second
chamber that the world has ever known.
^ '£" Then, let us call to mind the opinion of one
who was not an aristocrat by party or profes-
sion— Cromwell — who abolished the House of
Lords, and also found it necessary to restore
the House of Lords. The last words he ad-
dressed to Parliament were these : ' I did
tell you that I would not undertake such a
government as this unless there might be
some other persons that might interpose be-
tween me and the House of Commons, who
had the power to prevent tumultuary and
popular spirits.' Cromwell was not an aristo-
crat, and his Executive was not characterised
by weakness; and the fact that he found it
necessary to restore a second chamber speaks
volumes as to the necessity of a second cham-
THE DOUBLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 105
ber. The third reason in favour of a second
chamber was given by a great philosopher,
John Stuart Mill, who sums up the argument
in a single sentence. He says: 'The same
reasons that induced the Romans to have two
consuls make it desirable that there should
be two chambers, so that neither of them
may be exposed to the corrupting influence
of undisputed power, even for a single year.'
The recent changes in the procedure of the
House of Commons (changes in the direction
of hurried legislation) also, I think, immea-
surably strengthen the arguments for a second
chamber."
As has been observed, what Englishmen have
expressed in words, foreigners have expressed in
action. Foreigners have set up the system which
our statesmen have advocated and defended. The
extraordinary thing is that the argumentative
defence of the double-chamber system is, for the
most part, a monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon race.
The statesmen and thinkers of foreign countries
have accepted the system almost without ques-
tion. They have established second chambers
which have scarcely been attacked or defended at
all, for the very idea of the alternative system has
hardly ever been seriously entertained outside the
revolutionary periods of English and French his-
tory. To the recollection of those periods we owe
106 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
the striking words spoken by our statesmen in
praise of second chambers. From foreigners such
praises are seldom heard, because there is seldom
an attack to meet or a criticism to answer. So
completely has the double-chamber system been
accepted by the world at large.
CHAPTER VII
THE NATURE OF THE PERIL OF THE SINGLE-
CHAMBER SYSTEM
FOUR hundred and twenty-seven years before
Christ, the history of Athens gave an example
of the working of the single-chamber system,
which, partly by reason of the dramatic nature
of the circumstances and partly because of the
genius of the historian who relates them, will
not easily be rivalled by the democracies of the
modern world. The legislative body of Athens
was a single chamber consisting of the whole
number of its free citizens assembled within sound
of the voice of the orator. Thus gathered, they
controlled alike the legislative and executive
power of the State, no veto being possible, no
reference to any other authority being provided
or permitted.
Athens was at war with Sparta. Athens had
an empire of many colonies and islands, whose
loyalty during the war was a matter of life and
death to the Athenians. One day the news was
brought to Athens that their island of Mytilene
107
108 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
had revolted and invited a force of Spartans to
come to its assistance, but that the Spartan force
had failed to effect a landing, and had sailed
away.
The island was left at the mercy of the Athenian
garrison. In the heat of their sudden rage, the
Athenian people assembled, bitterly resentful at
the conduct of the Mytilenseans, resolved that an
example should be made to strike terror through
the rest of their empire, and, after a hasty dis-
cussion, they voted that the whole male population
of the island should be put to death, and the
women and children sold into slavery. Here was
the decree of a single chamber from which there
was no appeal.
A ship was dispatched to Mytilene to convey the
command to the garrison. Night fell at Athens,
the sun went down upon the wrath of the Athe-
nians, and on the next day they repented of their
rashness. The assembly met again. One speaker
passionately urged that the decree of yesterday
should be maintained. Then, says the historian,
Diodotus, the son of Eucrates, who in the former
assembly spoke most strongly against putting the
Mytilenseans to death, came forward and said as
follows : "I neither blame those who have a
second time proposed the discussion of the case
of the Mytilenaeans, nor commend those who object
to repeated deliberation on the most important
subjects; but I think that the two things most
THE SINGLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 109
opposed to good counsel are haste and passion,
one of which is generally the companion of folly,
and the other of coarseness and narrowness of
mind. And whoever contends that measures
should not be thoroughly discussed is either want-
ing in understanding or is acting for some selfish
interest of his own."
He then appealed for mercy and moderation.
He appealed so well that the Athenians reversed
their former decree. Only then does it appear to
have occurred to them that their system of hasty
legislation had an inconvenient side, for the ship
that carried their decree of yesterday was already
on its way to the island. " They immediately
dispatched another ship with all speed," says the
historian, "that they might not find the city
destroyed through the previous arrival of the first,
which had the start by a day and a night. The
Mytilenaean ambassadors having provided for the
vessel wine and barley cakes, and promising a
great reward if they should arrive first, there was
such haste in their course that at the same time
as they rowed, they ate cakes kneaded with oil
and wine, and some slept in turns while others
rowed, and as there happened to be no wind against
them, and as the former vessel did not sail in any
haste on so horrible a business, while this hurried
on in the manner described, though the other
arrived so much first that the commander had
read the decree and was on the point of executing
110 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
the sentence, the second came to land after it in
time to prevent the butchery. Into such imminent
peril did the Mytilenseans come."
Into such peril also, we may say, did the Athe-
nians come; for to die as the victims of such a
decree is not more terrible than to live as its
authors. Now it is clear that the exact circum-
stances of such a case as this could never be
repeated in a modern country. Nations have
grown so large that their powers as democracies
are no longer exercised by themselves in a national
market-place, but by elected representatives. Nor
is there much danger, as we may feel, of a repeti-
tion of the particular crime that the Athenians so
nearly committed. If there were no other kind
of case in which intemperate and hasty legislation
could do harm, the inquiry might drop; as also,
if it were to be felt that the rashness of an
assembly of common people was not likely to be
imitated by their representatives in a Parliament.
Unfortunately, it is only too easy to show that we
can take refuge in no such consoling notions.
The modern world gives plenty of scope for injudi-
cious legislation; the modern legislative body is
not relieved from the frailties of human nature.
Someone shrewdly observed that "the House
of Commons has more sense than anyone in it."
This saying truly expresses one of the virtues of a
representative body, its capacity for overruling the
suggestions of its most extreme and peculiar
THE SINGLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 111
members. But there is a counteracting truth
which can also be expressed in epigrammatic
form, namely, that few members of the House of
Commons have as much sense as those who sent
them there. Here, in fact, is one of the most
extraordinary features of modern politics, and one
of the most easy for any observer to prove for
himself.
He has only to read the newspapers and talk
with his neighbours. It must be supposed that
the theory of representative government is that
the members of a Parliament are elected by citizens
less instructed, less prudent, less far-sighted, less
moderate than themselves. The theory must be
that the bulk of a constituency fix upon a person
of superior wisdom to represent them in a chamber
composed of other persons of superior wisdom,
whose collective opinion will be the quintessence
of the sober judgment of the country. As a
matter of fact, in case after case and subject after
subject, the reverse process can be seen. Members
of Parliament are not less but more extreme than
their constituents, not more but less prudent, not
graver in reflection but quicker in impetuosity.
They are more deeply interested in politics than
any but a very few of those outside the walls of
their House ; they are more thoroughly convinced
of the excellence of their own notions; they are
more vehemently anxious to see those notions put
into practice ; and, what is most remarkable of all,
THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
they are apt to lump all their notions together
with the sure conviction that every single one of
them should be carried into law with the least
possible delay. In a word, they are a professional
class.
Our most recent history is rich in warnings of
the possible results of the unchecked enthusiasms
of professional partisans. There have been excep-
tional times when the vast bulk of the population
have passionately adopted one side in politics. At
the death of King Edward VI the reaction against
extreme Protestantism was so strong that the
very army of Protestants that marched to capture
Queen Mary threw up their caps and declared for
her. Five years later the opposite feeling was so
strong that all the bells in every town were set
pealing for joy at the news that she was dead.
But these periods of extreme feeling have been
rare, and of very brief duration. The normal
attitude of Englishmen towards party politics is
slow, cautious, and extremely moderate. The
excesses of his opponents he is inclined to take
with patient grumbling. The excesses of his own
party generally shock him. And so he remains,
even while he reads a press which never ceases to
goad him into a daily frenzy this way or that.
Never was his attitude more characteristic than at
the three General Elections held in 1906 and in
January and November 1910.
In 1906, the election turned on two questions.
THE SINGLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 113
A moderate preponderance among the voters
desired a change of Government because they
were tired of the personalities of one party, and
they desired to avert the risk of the rise in food
prices which was feared as a consequence of Tariff
Reform. And so it came about that more votes
were cast for Liberal candidates than for Unionist
candidates. The difference was not remarkable ;
but the result was electrifying. Cautious electors
discovered to their surprise that they were being
represented by an overwhelming majority of mem-
bers of Parliament who held the most extreme
views on all sorts of questions which had hardly
entered the electors' heads during the period of
the election. The House of Commons quickly
passed an Education Bill of the most extreme
character, intensely disliked by thousands who
had voted Liberal at the election. The upper
chamber amended that Bill. They altered it
from an extreme Bill to a moderate Bill. In this
form, in which it might perhaps have passed with
no great irritation of public opinion, the Liberal
majority in the Commons would have none of it.
What would have satisfied public opinion did not
satisfy the extremists.
In the next year another band of enthusiasts
took the field. It was now the turn of the ex-
treme teetotallers. The Government produced
their Licensing Bill. In one bye-election after
another they were warned by sweeping defeats
114 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
that this measure was intensely unpopular. But
the warning availed nothing. The little band of
enthusiasts who had now the ear of the Govern-
ment continued to labour for the passing of the
most unpopular Bill that ever came before Parlia-
ment. It passed the House of Commons, and
would have become law but for the veto of the
second chamber.
Then came the General Election of January 1910,
which turned on the Budget and the action of
the House of Lords in regard to it. It was of this
election that Mr. Balfour said, with strange satire :
"The country has pronounced. What it has
pronounced I do not know, but it has pronounced."
But Mr. Balfour was doubtless aware that he was
perhaps overstating the matter, for the truth was
that the country had not pronounced at all.
The country was in a peculiarly undecided frame
of mind. A hundred seats had turned from
Liberalism to Unionism, an exceptional number
of contests were very close, and the balance of
opinion was obviously as narrow as could well
be. The scale was only borne down by the acci-
dental circumstance that the Irish vote, though
hostile to the Budget, was cast for the Govern-
ment in the hope of securing Home Rule.
Now let us particularly note, what no honest
critic could possibly deny, that the House elected
in January 1910 was the product of an undecided
mood among the electorate. There had been no
THE SINGLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 115
strong leaning either way. There had been many
victories for Tariff Reform, yet it cannot be claimed
that the electors, even in England, had really pro-
nounced for it. There had been many seats re-
tained by advocates of the Budget, yet the most
that Liberals could fairly assert was a slight pre-
ponderance of opinion in its favour. Really, this
slight preponderance could be explained away.
But we will assume that it existed.
What was the result ? Within six months the
House of Commons had passed a Bill to repeal
the Constitution of England. A most important
and violent measure of revolution had passed that
chamber which was supposed to represent the very
electorate which nobody can deny was in a highly
moderate and dubious mood. There has hardly
ever been an election so little indicative of extreme
views in the country as that of January 1910.
Yet there has hardly ever been a party in Parlia-
ment so extreme as that which claimed to express
the mandate of that particular election.
The proposals of this House of Commons would
have proceeded at once into law if they had not
been checked by the fear of rejection in the second
chamber. As will be remembered, they never
reached the second chamber. The Parliament was
dissolved in November 1910, and a fresh cycle of
events began.
It is difficult to estimate the actual results of
the General Election of December 1910, because
116 THE STATE AND THE "CITIZEN
the issue on the constitutional question was not
rightly stated by the Government. The country
was asked whether it desired a change in the re-
lations of the two Houses, together with a reform
of the upper house; and its answer to this was
treated as a mandate for the abolition of the veto
of the House of Lords. This point, however, does
not concern us at the moment. What is import-
ant is that the result of the election showed the
feelings of the electorate to be quite as undecided
as in the election of January. England returned
a majority against the Government. Great Britain
returned a slight preponderance of members in
the Government's favour. Again, the majorities
were unusually narrow. The votes of Irish Home
Rulers completed the totals of an election which
had shown the country to be anything but in an
extremist frame of mind.
We know the result of the interpretation of
their so-called mandate by enthusiastic party poli-
ticians. The constitution was torn up. A Home
Rule Bill was introduced, though Home Rule had
gone practically unmentioned by the Liberal party
during the election — a Bill to do that which the
electorate had twice explicitly and emphatically
condemned, once in 1886 and once in 1895 — a
Bill to do what the electorate had no thought of
encouraging or permitting.
Enough has been said by now to show that there
is no safety in the hope that representatives will
THE SINGLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 117
be more cautious and moderate than those they
represent. In every public-house there are ten
moderate men for one who even approaches the
extreme views embodied in partisan legislation.
It is the same in every club and every home, for
the ordinary man does not and cannot, fortunately,
contract the political fevers that afflict those whose
lives consist wholly of politics. Yet it is this
ordinary man who is, in fact, the People with a
capital P. More, he is the victim on whom the
politician experiments and the sufferer from all
rashness and error.
Broadly speaking; the single-chamber system
exposes a country to two kinds of danger. The
first is short and sharp, like a blow on the head ;
the second is gradual and chronic, like residence
in unhealthy climates. The first is in the pre-
cipitate and enthusiastic action of a majority pos-
sibly quite small and possibly quite temporary,
which passes laws upon the gravest subjects, not
because they have any popular authority to do so,
but because the professional extremists of their
party find it convenient or congenial to make this
use of an opportunity which may not recur.
The best and neatest instance is that of the
second Home Rule Bill. It will be remembered
that this Bill was passed by a House of Commons
in which Mr. Gladstone had one of the smallest
working majorities on record. It was thrown out
by the House of Lords. It was passed by the
E
118 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Commons in 1893, and, under the provisions of
the Parliament Act of 1911, it would have become
law in 1895. The House of Commons, which
passed that Bill, continued to exist and support
the Home Rule Government until 1895, and, if
the Parliament Act had then been in force, it
would have continued to support the Government
a little longer than it did. Home Rule would
have become law. Without spending one sentence
upon the dangers and calamities which Home
Rule would bring, it is enough to say that that
momentous change would actually have taken
place, under the system established by the Parlia-
ment Act, at the very moment when the country
was voting its condemnation by immense majori-
ties in the General Election of July 1895. In
those days we had a double-chamber system, and
it worked so as to give the country the opportunity
of saving itself.
Such is the short and sharp danger of the
single - chamber system. But there is another
danger, the continuous and corrosive, of which we
have an instance not less striking. What subject
has ever seemed so dull as that of parliamentary
procedure ? At a time when the House of
Commons does not enjoy the degree of reverence
once accorded to it, the wrangles of its members
over the closure and the time-table, the guillotine
and the kangaroo, have wearied the minds even
of people generally interested in politics. It would,
THE SINGLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 119
therefore, have been with some surprise that any-
one who had been absent from England for a few
months would hare returned in the autumn of
1911 to find a group of bye-elections in which
these dull subjects had suddenly acquired the
greatest possible interest. Such was the trans-
formation wrought by the National Insurance
Bill.
The subject is really worthy of some attention.
Very large numbers of people have been under
the impression that, however fierce might be the
strife of parties, however noisy and unruly an
opposition in the House of Commons might
become, such things could have no possible
effect upon the private lives of ordinary people.
Questions affecting the Constitution, in particular,
have seemed to be very remote from daily life.
The constitutional convulsion of July 1911 was
taken by many people quite as calmly as an earth-
quake occurring in Martinique, though they could
see how greatly it perturbed the politicians.
To take one minute instance for the sake of
illustration only, there was a group of people in
one English county whose livelihood depended
largely on work in the glove trade, which, in small
but welcome quantities, was handed out weekly
to numbers of women and girls in the families of
agricultural workfolk. Among these there was
certainly very little thought that the dealings of
the Government with the Constitution could pos-
120 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
sibly affect the even tenour of their days. But
they suddenly awoke to the fact that a Bill was
being hurried through Parliament, with hardly
the semblance of discussion, which was going to
deprive them forever of the work on which they
had depended for as long as they could remember
for everything except the barest subsistence. This
Bill was the Insurance Bill, which was passing
almost entirely undiscussed through the House
of Commons.
It was passing, in effect, under a single-chamber
system, for the upper chamber was given no time
in which to discuss it ; politicians were aware that
the smallest attempt at revision by the Lords
would immediately have been taken by one party
as an attempt to wreck the Bill, and used as
ammunition for an unscrupulous campaign of
calumny ; and thirdly, it was well understood that
the Government were not going to allow the
revising chamber to have any hand in this im-
portant measure.
The result was that a Bill of unexampled com-
plexity, affecting the personal fortunes of the
greater part of the population, was passed into
law by a single chamber which had not time to
consider more than a fraction of its clauses. This
it was that roused the electors to an interest in
parliamentary procedure. They had discovered
that upon these dim and remote questions in
London depended the livelihood of many of
THE SINGLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 121
themselves. They were taught how sharply their
homes might feel the difference between a good
and a bad Constitution.
We should see, therefore, that the second of
the dangers of the single-chamber system is the
danger of unrevised and hurried legislation. As
it has been shown that this evil may have a direct
personal bearing on the fortunes of anyone, so it
is clear that it is an evil that must become more
general with every year that passes. For good
or ill the age in which we live is committed to
a course of social legislation which increases in
bulk each year, and touches ever more intimately
our lives and doings. And so, at once, the work
of legislation is becoming more copious, more
important, and more difficult. The need for a
chamber of revision becomes greater, and not less.
There is no hope of good legislation unless the
function of a second chamber is performed, and
thoroughly performed, not only to check the
excesses of excited politicians at times of crisis
and fever, but also from year to year, from day
to day, to revise and correct the work of the
lower chamber, and to interpose delay in cases
where revision will not suffice. It is hardly neces-
sary to add that a mass of unwise legislation, in
the long run, may prove not less fatal than a
single swift calamity. In short, and passing over
a multitude of little grievances and evils, it kills
the confidence of the people in its rulers, it makes
122 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
little leaks in tlie ship of national prosperity,
and works slowly the harm that a catastrophe
completes quickly.
So far, our argument has dealt with that which
might occur in any country that deprived itself
of the advantages of a sane system of legislation.
We have now to consider what may not have
been expected, that the Constitution of the United
Kingdom is such as to require a checking and
revising chamber more urgently than would be
the case in other lands. For this purpose, it will
be necessary to make some comparisons which
will probably be found to possess a good deal of
interest. We shall take the United States of
America as representing the presidential system
of government, and France as representing a
parliamentary system like our own.
The President of the United States is elected
once in four years, and in power he remains till
the four years are ended, no matter how thoroughly
ent and people may wish to get rid of
him. He appoints his Ministers, he directs the
executive government in peace and war, and there
is no power that can control him. Similarly,
once in two years the electors elect the lower
chamber of the Parliament. This chamber also
sits secure for its allotted period. No power can
dissolve it ; no power can direct its deliberations.
The President and his Ministers do not and may
not sit in it. There is no sort of interdependence
THE SINGLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 123
between the activities and existence of the Ministry
and the Parliament.
With us, on the other hand, the first action of
a newly-elected House of Commons is to see that
the Ministry pleases it. If the House has a majo-
rity of one party and the Ministry is of the other
party, that Ministry is dismissed at once. Before
the House has come to work it is quite certain
that the Ministry, sitting in its midst, will be a
part of its majority, and in the closest relations
with that majority, and dependent from day to day
on that majority, and dependent also on any
section of that majority which, by a timely revolt,
might turn the majority into a minority. Such
is parliamentary as distinct from presidential
government.
Clearly this system must give to the sections of
the majority a powerful hold over the Ministry.
With this, however, we are not concerned. What
matters to our inquiry is the hold which is won
by sections of the majority, through the Ministry,
over the chamber itself. In America the only
influence that President and Ministry can bring to
bear on the Parliament is to send it a message
requesting it to do this or that. There is no com-
pelling it ; there is no dissolving it. But in this
country the Ministry directs almost everything
that the Parliament does. It prepares the Bills, it
allots the time, it guides and controls at every stage,
and it can dissolve if its authority is questioned.
THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Notice the difference of the two systems. In
Washington the Ministry and the parliament
pursue independent careers, and neither can destroy
the other. In London the Ministry can destroy
the Parliament, yet cannot endure for a day while
the Parliament continues unless the majority sup-
ports it. The result is that the activities of the
House of Commons are wholly controlled by the
Ministry, which is itself controlled by any section
on whose votes it may depend. Such a situation
could never arise in the lower chamber of the
United States. ( Nor yet does it arise in the lower
chamber of France?)
In the House of Representatives there is no
Government through which a section may enforce
its will. In the French Chamber there is a
Government, and a Government depending, like
our own, on the continuance of the chamber's
support. But a very important difference may be
observed. The fact is that while the defeat and
fall of an Administration here is an event of the
first magnitude, the defeat and fall of an Adminis-
tration in France is a matter of little or no conse-
quence to anyone except the Ministers and their
wives and families. In France the event does not
mean so much as a change of parties. The Cabinet,
which is much smaller than in England, is replaced
by another batch of statesmen holding roughly
the same views as their predecessors, supported
by an informal coalition of some of the many
THE SINGLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 125
party groups into which the chamber is divided ;
and thus, every thing goes on as before for a period
of some months, until another little upheaval of
the groups throws out the Ministers again and
chooses a fresh set with identical opinions. It is
not easy to say why the French groups and sec-
tions should not be as formidable as ours. There
is no reason why they should not become so in
time. But, in fact, they have shown no such ten-
dency. They confine themselves to the luxury of
changing Ministries at frequent intervals, and do
not seek to impose their legislative hobbies on the
chamber as a whole.
Now it is of the essence of the idea of sections
in this country that each has a pet policy on which
its heart is set. From the nature of the case the
policy is not likely to be one which commands
much support in the country as a whole, or its
advocacy would not be confined to a section. But
the Constitution gives it, as we have seen, an arti-
ficial advantage. The section can impose it on
the Government by the threat of withdrawing
support. The Government can impose it on the
chamber by the threat of dissolution.
This was the means by which the Irish Nation-
alists forced forward in 1912 the policy of Home
Rule, which the Liberals never touched while they
had an independent majority to make them their
own masters. It was the means by which a small
group of Welsh members, in the same year, forced
126 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
forward their attack on the Church of England.
It is a ready weapon in the hands of any section
numerically strong enough to give the Govern-
ment a fright, and it makes not the slightest differ-
ence whether the section's policy is one that the
Government, the House, and the country all
dislike. Thus it is that the working of the British
Constitution makes the need for a second chamber
more urgent than it is in foreign countries. There
is no other means by which the activities of groups
and sections can be checked.
It remains to add a word about one incidental
consequence of the Parliament Act of 1911. That
Act not only exposed the country to the domina-
tion of any body of men with a handful of votes
in the House of Commons, but it imposed upon
the lower chamber the necessity of making great
haste with any legislation of doubtful or definitely
injurious character. The Act gave the House of
Lords the power of interposing two years' delay
between the date of a Bill's second reading in the
Commons and the date of its automatically pass-
ing into law. If the Parliament should expire
during the two years, the Bill would fail to pass.
Hence the necessity for a Bill to be introduced
early in the career of the Parliament, a necessity
affecting not only this or that Bill, but every Bill
of every sort which had to be passed in the teeth
of opposition from the second chamber of the
country.
THE SINGLE-CHAMBER SYSTEM 127
By such an ingenious contrivance it was ensured
that bad Bills should not only become law, but
should be got through in a violent hurry. And
any good Bill undertaken at the same time only
increases the need for hasty treatment of itself as
well as the others. It was for this reason that
the Insurance Act was rushed through the House
of Commons without an approach to adequate
discussion, for it had to be cleared out of the way
to leave time for the Irish and Welsh Bills.
All human institutions are liable to err, and
each has its characteristic danger. A second
chamber may sometimes reject a good Bill or pass
a bad one. It may sometimes delay a Bill which
should not have been delayed, and sometimes it
may change it for the worse. But the rule of
prudence is to weigh the evil against the good.
The possible harm to be done by a second chamber
is out of all proportion to the certain and grievous
danger that attends the single-chamber system.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PARLIAMENT ACT AND THE SINGLE-
CHAMBER SYSTEM.
THE further we penetrate into the region of stormy
feeling the more necessary does it become that we
should take care not to be carried away. A per-
fectly frank and avowed hostility does not often
arouse resentment. A politician who should
openly say that he desires to wreck the Constitu-
tion in order to bring the majority of Englishmen
under the yoke of a small group of doctrinaires,
and a league of little racial cliques, would be
likely to shock our moral feeling but not to stir
the bitterest sort of passion. It is when base
actions are disguised under the hypocritical trap-
pings of superhuman virtue that anger begins to
stir in the minds of ordinary people. In all the
transactions connected with the passing of the
Parliament Act of 1911 there was unfortunately
much of this virtuous draping of base motives
and mean tricks, with the result that they left
more bitterness than was necessary. But it is
well to put such feelings aside, so far as possible,
128
THE PARLIAMENT ACT 129
in the attempt to reach a just appreciation of the
state of our Constitution as that Act left it.
It will be remembered that from the accession
of William IV until just before the first jubilee of
Queen Victoria the Liberal party enjoyed a pre-
ponderating share of power. Only on two occasions
were they decisively beaten, and on each of these
their defeat was turned to victory within six
years. The last and greatest of their triumphs
was in 1880, and, after this, the character of the
party system began to undergo a change. The
Irish Nationalists emerged as an independent
group, with the avowed intention of selling them-
selves to the highest bidder in English politics.
Only one satisfactory bid was made. It was made
by Mr. Gladstone in 1886, after he had been re-
turned to power with a very small majority.
With the support of Irish votes he saw the possi-
bility of a prolonged tenure of office, which was
otherwise impossible, and he offered a Home Rule
Bill as the price of Irish support. The bargain
was struck ; the Liberal party was rent in two ;
and the country in a General Election dismissed
the Gladstonian Liberals to impotence.
No party likes the prospect of being excluded
from power for ever. This was what faced Mr.
Gladstone and his faithful remnant in the years
that followed 1886. They had tied themselves
fast to a stone too heavy to roll up the electoral
hill, the heavy stone of Home Rule. So the years
130 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
passed in gloom for the Liberal party, while the
efflux of time was bringing another General Elec-
tion nearer and nearer.
Shortly before the General Election of 1892 the
Liberal leaders, from the midst of their embarrass-
ments as the champions of the unpopular policy
of Home Rule, hit on the idea which has occupied
so considerable a place in the history of England
from that time to this. Like other remarkable
inventions, it was so simple, once stated, that the
wonder is that it had not been thought of before.
It was, briefly, to adopt the whims and fads of
every little group of voters in the country and
roll them up together and call them the policy
of the Liberal party.
So doing, they could find a place for Home
Rule, securing the Irish votes, though there would
be so many other topics that it would hardly be
necessary to mention Home Rule in any English
constituency where it might not be popular. The
convenience of the arrangement was obvious.
Welsh Disestablishment was adopted to please
the Welsh and the Nonconformists, and the
licensing policy known as Local Veto was adopted
to please the teetotallers. The payment of mem-
bers of Parliament was adopted, together, with the
cry of " One Man One Vote," to please the advanced
Radicals. There was something for everybody,
and, if everybody would hold together, there was
the prospect of a majority for the Liberals in the
THE PARLIAMENT ACT 131
new Parliament. It was this device, this welding
of policies to please everybody, that is known in
history as the Newcastle Programme.
At the General Election in 1892 the Liberals
were returned to power with one of the smallest
majorities that ever a party had, and at once it
was necessary for them to set about giving every-
one that which the Newcastle Programme had
promised. There was not a day to be lost, for the
defection of any one of the little groups would
have left the Government in a minority. So the
Bills were produced one after another, the Bill for
the Irish, and the Bill for the teetotallers, and the
Bill for the Welsh and the Nonconformists, and
each little group put its shoulders to the wheel and
helped the other little groups in return for the
help the other little groups were to give to it.
With the result, for the most part, we need not
concern ourselves. Bill after Bill was adopted
in failure and discredit. It was the process, in
fact, which Lord Rosebery afterwards called
"ploughing the sands" — the miserable process of
trying to force unpopular legislation on a restive
and scornful country.
The Bills of the party were smothered, most of
them, before they left the House of Commons.
But there was one which the Commons were
compelled to pass. This was the Bill which was
demanded by the largest and most resolute of all
the sections supporting the Government: it was
THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
the Home Rule Bill. It was passed by the
Commons and rejected by the Lords.
The lesson was never forgotten. The Newcastle
Programme, though loyally carried out by the
Government and the sections, had failed to give
the Nationalists their desire of Home Rule. It
had failed, because the action of the second
chamber held up the Bill until the country had
a chance of sweeping away both it and the Govern-
ment that favoured it. Failure had befallen the
whole plan of the co-operation of small groups to
help one another to get what the general will of
the country would refuse to give them. The
failure, in the most conspicuous instance, was due
to the action of the second chamber, and from
that moment the Irish Nationalists decided that
the second chamber must go. The same feeling
affected the other disappointed sections in varying
degrees.
After this came the period described by Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman as ten years of Tory
Government. It was followed by a period of four
years of Liberal Government about which there
was a very remarkable peculiarity. This was in
the fact that the Liberal Government had such a
good majority as to be able to send several of
the sections about their business. They did not
depend on Irish votes, having a majority over
Unionists and Irish combined. So there was no
talk of Home Rule. Other sections had indeed
THE PARLIAMENT ACT 133
sufficient influence to press their claims on the
Government. There was a Licensing Bill, for in-
stance, and a Welsh Disestablishment Bill; but,
on the failure of these, whether through the action
of the second chamber or for some other reason,
no great outcry was raised. The reason was that
the Government was too strong to fear any sec-
tion. Their resentment against the House of Lords
went no further than to make them give a few
days of Parliamentary time to the passing of three
resolutions in the House of Commons which, hav-
ing no more legal force than moral force, did
nobody any harm nor any good.
After the General Election of January 1910 the
situation changed once more. Once again there
was a Liberal Government that depended on its
sections for the votes necessary to life. Once
again the Irish Nationalists were in a position to
induce the Government to compel the House of
Commons to undertake a Home Rule Bill. But
they had not forgotten the Home Rule Bill of
1893, nor the fate which overtook it. They re-
membered the lesson, and knew that it was waste
of time to press for a Home Rule Bill until the
double-chamber system was upset. That system
had proved the rock on which their hopes were
shattered in 1893, and until that rock was blown
out of the water the time spent on another Bill
would be wasted. And so, instead of using com-
pulsion to make the Government take up a Home
134 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Rule Bill, instigated a Bill for the removal of the
power of the second chamber.
It is sometimes protested that the system estab-
lished by the Parliament Act should not be called
a single-chamber system. There still remains a
body called the House of Lords, with power to
delay a Bill for two years. But if the Parliament
Act had not set up a single-chamber system it
would never have satisfied the Irish Nationalists.
The double-chamber system had baffled them
once, and they were perfectly well aware that it
would baffle them again if it endured long enough
to cause the Home Rule Bill of 1912 to be referred
to the judgment of the country, like the Bill of
1893. That system, therefore, had to go ; nothing
less than its effective removal would have been
acceptable to the Irish Nationalist section.
Yet, even as the matter then stood, after the
election of January 1910, the double-chamber
system might have withstood the attacks of its
enemies had it not been for the fact that from
the highest Ministerial quarters no statement was
made which could be proved to be literally and
verbally untrue, and yet it was found possible,
without literal lying, to obtain the advantages de-
sired. An impression was spread abroad in the
country that the step to be undertaken was not
the abolition of the double-chamber system, but
the alteration of the existing second chamber into
a new and improved second chamber. A part of
THE PARLIAMENT ACT 135
the skilfulness of this device was due to the action
taken by the Unionist party in admitting, of their
own free will, that the existing second chamber
was not perfect. "No/' said the Liberals, "we
agree with the Unionists : all are agreed on that ;
and we will set up a new second chamber which
shall be thoroughly satisfactory."
By this ingenious plan the Liberal party ob-
tained their narrow victory in the General Elec-
tion of December 1910, and it was certainly the
reward for uncommon political cleverness. Under
the impression that the second chamber was to
be reformed, the electorate accepted the preamble
to the Parliament Act, 1911, as being the expres-
sion of a sincere intention. That preamble, the
explanatory preface to the Act, announced and
promised the establishment of a new and improved
second chamber. The promise was accepted by
the electorate, of which the less reflecting portion
was also misled by the cry of ''Peers versus
People." This cry led to the belief that votes
cast for Liberals were votes, not against the double-
chamber system, but against individuals who were
then in a phase of unpopularity with most persons
of Liberal sympathies. The methods used to get the
Crown to promise a creation of peers in the event of
the Parliament Bill being thrown out by the House
of Lords need not be enlarged upon here. It is
enough to say that they bore a strong resemblance
to those used in dealing with the electorate.
136 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
The Irish Nationalist section, however, had now
triumphed. At the beginning of 1911 the new
Parliament assembled and shortly afterwards pro-
ceeded to pass the Parliament Bill, by which the
obstacle to Home Rule was to be removed. One
clause of this entirely removed Money Bills from
the purview of the second chamber, making it im-
possible for the second chamber either to amend
or reject them. Then came the clause that dealt
with legislation of other kinds. This must be
given in full.
The Parliament Act. Clause II.
" If any Public Bill (other than a Money Bill
or a Bill containing any provision to extend the
maximum duration of Parliament beyond five
years) is passed by the House of Commons in
three successive sessions (whether of the same
Parliament or not), and, having been sent up to
the House of Lords at least one month before
the end of the session, is rejected by the House
of Lords in each of those sessions, that Bill shall,
on its rejection for the third time by the House
of Lords, unless the House of Commons direct
to the contrary, be presented to His Majesty and
become an Act of Parliament on the Royal Assent
being signified thereto, notwithstanding that the
House of Lords have not consented to the Bill:
Provided that this provision shall not take effect
THE PARLIAMENT ACT 137
unless two years have elapsed between the date
of the second reading in the first of those sessions
of the Bill in the House of Commons, and the
date on which it passes the House of Commons
in the third of those sessions."
To any one who reads the clause slowly and
carefully its meaning is perfectly plain. Its mean-
ing is not plain at all if it be read together with
the promises contained in the preamble to the
Bill, but its object was that a Bill thrice passed
by the House of Commons should become law
without the assent of the second chamber or the
people. That is to say, a Bill thrice passed by a
single chamber becomes law. It does not matter
if the Bill be passed by a majority of one vote :
the effect is the same. It does not matter that
in every month of the two years a Government
may lose a bye-election: the effect is the same.
It does not matter that the Bill may be the most
revolutionary, the most iniquitous, or the most
unpopular : the effect is the same. It does not
matter that the Bill may be one which the
Commons themselves dislike, such as a Home
Rule Bill, which they pass only because a section
is able to intimidate the Government into com-
pelling the House to pass it : the Parliament Act
will still turn that Bill into law in the single
chamber.
These considerations were clearly revealed in
138 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
the course of the passing of the Parliament Act,
by reason of the amendments which the House
of Lords sought to introduce into it. A part of
the adroitness of the Liberal Government in their
dealings with the Bill in the country was that they
caused the General Election to be held before, and
not after, the amendments of the second chamber
had thrown light on their intentions. The con-
stitutional practice had been for a Government
to appeal to the country after a Bill had been
rejected by the Lords, or, after the agreement of
the two Houses had been shown to be impossible.
By this means the country could judge between
the Houses; it had heard the case of each, and
was in a position to make a decision. In the case
of the Parliament Act the country was called
upon to decide before the House of Lords had
even received the Bill. The prudence of the
course, from the Government's point of view, was
manifest. For the amendments of the Lords were
such as to bring the meaning of the single-chamber
system vividly to light. The amendments were
not accepted, and did not become a part of the
Bill. But, because of the tale they tell, or because
of the tale told by their rejection in the Commons,
they must be dwelt upon.
The amendments were mostly of the same
character. They did not represent the views of
the House of Lords or of the Unionist Party as
to the final settlement of the Constitutional ques-
THE PARLIAMENT ACT 139
tion, but they were an attempt to lessen the more
serious evils of the system which the Liberal
Government was setting up. They were attempts
to ensure that though a single-chamber system
was being instituted for ordinary legislation the
double-chamber system should be retained in
certain cases where the action of a narrow and
sectional majority in the House of Commons might
imperil the gravest national concerns.
Thus, the Lords proposed to retain the old
system in the case of any Bill which would " affect
the existence of the Crown or the Protestant
Succession thereto." Of this the Government
would not hear. Not even to safeguard the Crown
and the Protestant Succession would they make
an exception to the single-chamber system they
were setting up. Again the Lords proposed to
make an exception of any Bill which " establishes
a National Parliament or Assembly or a National
Council in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, or England,
Avith legislative powers therein." We can hardly
wonder at the Government refusing to entertain
this suggestion, for, had they done so, the Irish
Nationalists would have ejected them from power
immediately, This amendment would have given
the electorate a voice in the question of Home
Rule, and therefore could not be allowed. It was
again proposed by the Lords that the double-
chamber system should be retained in case of any
Bill to prolong the legal period of the existence
140 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
of Parliament. For a House of Commons to make
a law prolonging its own existence would be to
establish a despotism. It would be a step of the
most extreme description. It could be used so
as to deprive the country permanently of any
lawful method of expressing its will at any time.
On this point the action of the Government was
peculiar. They accepted the amendment, but kept
open a way for making it mean nothing. For they
retained for the single chamber, the right within
two years, by its own authority, to abolish either
the House of Lords itself, or the very restriction
which the amendment established. By either
method the single chamber could make itself
perpetual. This result the Government secured
by refusing an amendment which proposed to
make an exception of a Bill which, in the opinion
of an impartial committee, should " raise an issue
of great gravity upon which the judgment of the
country has not been sufficiently ascertained."
What does this amount to ? It means that
those who passed the Parliament Act were so
determined to establish the rule of a single
chamber that they would make no exception even
in cases of greatest magnitude, where a rash
change might effect the most extensive damage.
But it should be particularly observed that their
careful defence of the single-chamber system was
not a defence against the claims of a second
chamber, but, literally, a defence against the pos-
THE PARLIAMENT ACT 141
sible disapproval of the country. For the effect
of the Lords' amendments, had they been carried,
would not have been to leave the excepted Bills
to the absolute veto of a second chamber. No
such claim was put forward at that stage of the
controversy, except in the one case of the Bill
to prolong the existence of a Parliament ; no such
claim was made even as against a Home Rule
Bill, or a Bill of " great gravity." The claim was
that an excepted Bill should not become law
" until it had been submitted to and approved
by the electors in manner to be hereafter provided
by Act of Parliament."
If we were to forget the pressure exercised by
the Irish on the Government, it would be almost
impossible to believe that this alteration of the
Parliament Act could be refused. The House of
Lords were not asking to be allowed to retain
their right of rejection. They were not even
asking for it in the most important cases. They
were asking only that great and dangerous changes
should not be introduced until the electors had
expressed an opinion; yet this was refused. A
blank refusal was given to the request for even
the most slender safeguard for the country against
the power of the single chamber ; and the country
was explicitly refused a voice in any matter
whatsoever.
The control of the people over taxation hereby
disappeared. In the case of other Bills the right
142 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
of delay remained for two years, but the opinion
of the country would have no more effect upon
such matters than the opinion of the Isle of Wight
upon the Emperor of Japan. It would not matter
what the second chamber thought ; it would not
matter what the country thought; nor did it
matter what the country came to think in the
future, nor how earnestly it thought it. Any Bill
would become law, and the only way of preventing
it was by armed rebellion. This is the single-
chamber system. There is nothing to prevent
the single chamber from abolishing even the two
years' delay which stands between it and its
desires.
It remains only to mention the theory — the
political philosophy — which was created to justify
this state of affairs. The Government of the day
had to discover a plausible principle which they
found in the last place anyone would have ex-
pected—in the " Will of the People." This theory
is that the House of Commons' majority, though
it be never so small, must be identical at any and
every moment, not merely with a passing feeling
in the mind of the nation, but with the nation's
considered and permanent judgment. If this be
true the people must in 1895 have set their hearts
upon Home Rule, Local Veto, payment of Mem-
bers and Welsh Disestablishment up to the very
moment when a most unexpected division in the
Commons suddenly put the Government in a
THE PARLIAMENT ACT 143
minority. Then the people changed their minds
abruptly and voted heartily against everything
they had so lately desired, for the new Parliament
was strongly Conservative. And there are other
instances of changes no less sudden and miracu-
lous. The truth is, of course, that there is no
necessary correspondence between the will of an
elected assembly and the will of those who elected
it a few months or years before. Further, there
is no correspondence between the will of an
ordinary elector, and that of either of the two or
three professional politicians between whom he
must choose at the polls. If his true will is to be
carried out, it can only be by a system of legisla-
tion which ensures moderation, reflection, and a
reasonable spirit.
That the will of the people is always a sure
index of desirable legislation may be a question-
able rule. But there are the gravest reasons for
preferring at any moment the judgment of the
people as a whole to that of an excited assembly
of professional politicians with a majority com-
posed of small bargaining groups. To this end
the power of revision and rejection is vested in
second chambers, not that the people may be
thwarted, but that they may finally decide. And
for this reason have political thinkers condemned
and avoided the single-chamber system.
CHAPTEE IX
THE ABSENCE OF CONSTITUTIONAL
SAFEGUARDS
IT is possible to ask the question why human
societies ever established laws. Often enough the
operation of a law seems harsh, and general opinion
must often incline to the view that the arbitrary
decision of a wise and well-meaning person might
have produced better results. But the utility of
laws is not so much in their universal and unvary-
ing wisdom, not in any certainty that they will
always work well in every case. Their utility is
rather in the fact that they do not vary.
Laws of primogeniture do not depend upon a
theory that the eldest son is fittest to succeed, but
upon the utility of one son being marked from
the first as destined to succeed if he should
live. The tax of seven-and-sixpence on the owner
of a dog is not imposed on any principle of calcu-
lated justice, but because a certain revenue is
wanted and it is best for every man to know the
exact sum which will be asked of him under certain
circumstances. The law introduces into life a
144
CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS 145
regularity and uniformity by which men are
enabled to foresee the consequences of their
actions and to rely with a measure of certainty
on the realisation of their expectations.
It acts also as a check upon self-interest and a
safeguard against those disturbances which will
occur where men are free to consult their own
interests alone. The law of contract, for instance,
is a check upon persons whose interests would
conflict if all might seek what they could get.
The law interposes to tell each one how much he
may expect to gain or lose, and thus, in ordinary
circumstances, to remove the causes of dispute
between men of common honesty.
The law aims at certainty ; yet, as conditions
change and public feeling develops, the law must
be modified. The expectations of a woman with
regard to her property on marriage were one thing
in 1881, but had become different in 1882. A
change of public feeling had required a change in
the law, and the legislature had performed its func-
tions by passing an Act to establish the change
required. It is because the desirability of occa*
sional change was recognised in Europe that
legislatures have been set up.
It is because the change, the alteration of estab-
lished certainty, the loosing of conflicting inter-
ests and ambitions, was best performed when
performed with the utmost care and caution, that
legislatures have been required to pause upon their
146 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
doings; they have been required to read Bills
three times, for instance, and to take each clause
in committee, and to secure the assent of a second
chamber and a sovereign. All this was required
lest the certainty and regularity of life should be
changed too often or too rashly ; lest the ambi-
tions of some people should range too freely, and
lest others should lose their sense of security in
the established order of things.
Now the greatest weight of opinion all over the
world has set up the principle that the most im-
portant public affairs should be changed less
often and with greater care than such private
matters as the rights of a married woman in her
property, or the rules of contract, or the tax upon
a dog, or other ordinary laws. The wisdom of
nations has inclined towards making distinctions
between those regions of law in which certainty
of conditions is more important and those regions
in which it is less important. To take an instance :
many continental countries have imparted a special
sanctity to the right of free speech and the right
of public meeting. They have held the view that
these rights were so important, so essential to the
well-being of the State, that they should be placed
on a different level from laws of less importance ;
that it should be made especially hard, or morally
impossible, for any power in the land to restrict or
change them. The British reader will begin to
see that here is an idea unknown to ourselves.
CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS 147
The British " right to free speech " depends on
nothing more than the absence of any law (outside
its laws of slander, &c.) to prevent a man saying
what he likes and when and where he likes to say
it. About this there is no special sanctity. It
could be changed any day by an Act of Parliament
as easily as the dog tax could be raised to eight
shillings. But in many continental countries it is
not so. The dog tax could there be raised by ordi-
nary legislative process. But the right of free
speech could not be curtailed except by a special
and elaborate process.
This, then, is the tendency of foreign jurispru-
dence ; it lays some special stress on such laws as
it desires to preserve from rash change. It finds
some way of making these laws stable and endur-
ing beyond all other laws, and especially difficult
to alter. Nowhere has this tendency been so
noticeable as in the peculiar emphasis laid by
foreign countries on the stability of the laws of
their Constitutions.
It is not surprising. If fixity and regularity of
laws is to be desired at all, how much the more
are they to be desired in respect of those laws on
which the stability of all other laws depends. If
it is well for men to have confidence in the per-
manence and certainty of the rules that govern
life, the rules which must govern all their calcu-
lations, how much the more necessary is it for
them to trust the stability of the power that can
148 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
change laws at will by legislation or by biassed
administration. No sooner has a country entered
on a period of social or political disquiet, such a
period as must visit every country now and then,
and there is no security for law, no hope of sta-
bility, except what is derived from the governing
powers. If the governing power is stable, there is
hope. If the governing power is liable to change
with the shock of every change in the direction
of the storm outside, there is an end of all security
whatsoever. Therefore, to ensure the stability of
the governing power a mantle of sanctity has been
thrown round the laws of Constitutions, and it has
been provided that they shall be difficult and slow
to change even when general opinion regards a
change with favour.
Let us first consider the case of a country that
has given to its Constitution a certain amount of
special stability, though only a small amount. The
two chambers of the French legislature can make
or repeal ordinary laws in the same manner as the
English Parliament. But when it is a question of
an alteration of the Constitution, a special process
is required. The Laws of the French Constitution
are to be found written in documents of special
sanctity which were drawn up in 1871 and 1875,
and these, by ordinary process of legislation, are
impossible to change. They cannot lawfully be
changed any more than the directors of one of
our railways could change the Acts of Parliament
CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS 149
under which that railway was built and is worked.
The directors may make bye-laws. They may,
within the authority conferred by the Acts of Par-
liament, change, repeal, or create any bye-laws
that they like, as the French legislature may
change, repeal, or create any ordinary law. But
if the directors wish to change their Acts of Par-
liament, which are, we may say, their Constitution,
then they must go through the special process of
an application to Parliament. And the French
legislature, if it wishes to change the Constitu-
tional laws of France, must go through a special
process too.
" The chambers shall have the right," says the
French Constitution, " by separate resolutions
taken in each chamber by a majority of votes,
whether of their own accord or at the request of
the President of the Republic, to declare that
there is need of a revision of the Constitutional
laws. After each of the two chambers shall have
adopted this resolution, they shall meet in a joint
sitting as a National Assembly to undertake the
revision. The decision causing a revision of the
Constitutional laws, in whole or in part, shall be
taken by the absolute majority of the members of
the National Assembly."
Now this is a case in which some care has been
taken to safeguard the laws of the Constitution
from change. But it is, as compared with others,
a weak case. It is easy to imagine circumstances
A^ / / UX>
150 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
in which the change of the French Constitution
might be effected rashly and hurriedly in the heat
of the moment. Yet it shows that those who
framed that Constitution were at any rate aware
of that need for Constitutional stability which
political thinkers in foreign lands have had so
constantly in their minds.
Let us now consider a case where the precau-
tions are rather stronger. The Constitution of
Belgium is closely modelled on that of England.
It is a written Constitution, but it is the result of
a careful study of British laws and customs. Yet
once the framers of the Constitution had arrived
at a conclusion which they thought satisfactory,
they proceeded to take care that their stability
should be guarded. The two chambers of the
Belgian legislature, as in France, can deal with
ordinary laws as they please. But when they
desire to alter the Constitution they must do as
follows: Each chamber must declare that there
is reason for changing a particular provision of
the Constitution. Having declared this, the
legislature is automatically dissolved. New elec-
j £ tions are held, and the legislature thus elected
has power to change that part of the Constitution
which the late legislature declared to stand in
need of change. Thus it is ensured that the Con-
stitution should have at least the buttress of the
people's will. It cannot be changed without the
knowledge and express consent of the electorate.
CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS 151
In the Commonwealth of Australia there is
a written Constitution, as in France and Belgium.
Its stability is guarded yet more carefully. Every
proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution
must be passed by an absolute majority of each
House of Parliament, and must then, after an
interval of not less than two and not more than
six months, be submitted in the form of a referen-
dum to the electors in each of the six States of
the Commonwealth. If it is to become law, it
must be approved by a majority of the States,
and also by a majority of the electors in the
Commonwealth as a whole.
The stability of the Constitution of the United
States is guaranteed by provisions even more
strict. The fifth article of that famous document
declares as follows : " The Congress (Parliament)
whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem
it necessary, shall propose amendments to this.
Constitution, or, on the application of two-thirds
of the legislatures of the several States, shall call
a convention for proposing amendments, which,
in either case, shall be valid to all intents and
purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified
by the legislatures of three-fourtJis of the several
States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof,
as the one or the other mode of ratification may
be proposed by the Congress."
It must be admitted that the case of Federal
States such as Australia and America is excep-
152 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
tional. They have, as the reader has seen, pro-
vided elaborate methods of preserving the stability
of their Constitutions, and they had exceptional
need to do so. Their Constitutions were a sort of
bargain between sovereign States, each jealous of
its liberties, fearful for its future, and in dread of
the power of the formidable central authority
which was about to be set up. So it was necessary
to take particular care that the bargain contained
in the Constitution, the bargain by which each
State was sacrificing a portion of its independence,
should never be broken or varied without the
largest measure of general agreement. Let us
now glance at a case in which there were no such
special reasons. Let us see how the stability of
the Constitution is valued in the single State of
New York.
" Any amendment or amendments to this
Constitution," says the thirteenth article of the
Constitution of New York, " may be proposed to
the Senate and Assembly (the two Houses of
Parliament), and, if the same be agreed to by a
majority of the members elected to each of the
two Houses (note, not merely a majority of those
who may happen to vote), such amendment or
amendments shall be entered on their journals
with the Yeas and Nays taken thereon and re-
ferred to the legislature to be chosen at the next
General Election, and shall be published for three
months previous to the time of making such
CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS 153
choice ; and if, in the legislature so next chosen
as aforesaid, such proposed amendment or amend-
ments shall be agreed to by a majority of all the
members elected to each House there " — (we might
suppose that the change would become law, but
it is not so) — " then it shall be the duty of the
legislature to submit such proposed amendment
or amendments to the people in such manner and
at such time as the legislature shall prescribe ;
and if the people shall approve and ratify such
amendment or amendments by a majority of the
electors qualified to vote for members of the legis-
lature voting thereon, such amendment or amend-
ments shall become part of this Constitution."
Comment is not needed. But it should be ob-
served that the State of New York is no exception
in the extraordinary precautions it takes against
rash or hurried changes of its Constitution. Such
precautions are the general rule in the States of
the Union ; and, in some cases, they are even
more complete than in New York.
Before we consider the amazing difference be-
tween British and foreign nations in respect of
constitutional stability, it will be well to read some
remarks made by Sir Henry Maine shortly after
the constitutional crisis of 1884. In that year the
House of Commons passed a Bill for the extension
of the suffrage, and the House of Lords refused to
pass it until the Commons should send up also a
Bill for the redistribution of constituencies. Hence
154 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
arose a sharp conflict between the Houses, and
Sir Henry Maine comments upon it, after having
described some of the safeguards provided for
the stability of Constitutions in America. He
says : —
"Such are the securities against surprise and
haste, in conducting the most important part of
legislation, which American political sagacity has
devised. They may well suggest to the English
politician some serious reflections. What was most
remarkable in the discussions of twelve months
since was far less the violent and inflammatory
language in which it was carried on than the ex-
treme vagueness of the considerations on which
it has turned. The House of Lords, for instance,
was threatened with extinction or mutilation for
a certain offence. Yet, when the offence is
examined, it appears to have consisted in the
violation of some rule, or understanding, never
expressed in writing, at variance with strict law,
and not perhaps construed in precisely the same
way by any two thinking men in the country.
Political history shows that men have at all times
quarrelled more fiercely about phrases and for-
mulas than even about material interests, and it
would seem that the discussion of British constitu-
tional legislation is distinguished from all other
discussion by having no fixed points to turn upon
and therefore by irrational violence."
Here is Sir Henry Maine offering a double
CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS 155
argument for fixity and certainty in the most
important of all laws. In the first place, he pleads
for some special safeguard against the " surprising
and hasty" alteration of a constitution; in the
second place, he pleads for definite and intelligible
constitutional laws. He desires all men to know
for certain under what laws they are living, and
to feel secure against the risk of these laws being
lightly changed.
Sir Henry Maine's advice has been followed, for
the most part, by our admirers and imitators. In
Europe, in America, and in the British Dominions
the general practice has been to give extreme pre-
cision to constitutional laws, and to make their
alteration depend on a process more solemn and
prolonged than is the case with ordinary laws.
But in England we remain without definite safe-
guards in our Constitution. The gravest of our
constitutional laws can be altered as easily as the
dog tax, while much of the Constitution is so un-
certain and indefinite that there is the strongest
temptation for politicians to change it at any
moment of political excitement, or to force a new
interpretation upon it, and to excite passion by a
mere difference of opinion as to what is constitu-
tional and what is not.
Early in the reign of Queen Victoria, Lord
Palmerston, the Prime Minister, desired to bring
a new element into the House of Lords. He
had taken up the notion of a nominated second
156 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
chamber, to some extent, and he wished to in-
troduce into the House of Lords an element of
peers nominated for life. To this end he caused
a writ of summons to the House of Lords to be
addressed to a judge, Sir James Parke, together
with letters patent creating him a peer for life.
It was at once asserted that this action was illegal,
and that Sir James Parke could not take his seat
in the House of Lords. The question was whether
the Crown could lawfully give a seat in the House
of Lords to a peer who was only a peer for life.
No one knew. Prolonged litigation followed, and
considerable excitement was aroused. " The right
of the Crown to create a life peerage by patent
was practically undisputed," says Sir William
Anson, " but it was admitted that for four hundred
years there had been no instance of a commoner
being sent, under a peerage for life, to sit and vote
in the House of Lords, and it was contended that
even before that time no such instance had been
satisfactorily established."
Four hundred years! Upon a question that
was arousing sharp political excitement it was
necessary for learned judges to hunt the records
of four hundred years and more in order to dis-
cover the lawful method of constituting our second
chamber. To mark the difference between Eng-
lish and foreign practice in such matters, it is only
necessary to read the words of the American Con-
stitution, which lays down that : " The Senate of the
CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS 157
United States shall be composed of two senators
from each State, chosen by the legislature thereof,
for six years."
The case of Sir James Parke was not, as it seems
now, a matter of first-rate importance. It illus-
trates the constantly recurring indefmiteness of
British constitutional law. We will now turn to
.-in event of much greater moment, which illustrates
not the indefmiteness of the Constitution, but its
instability. It has occasionally happened that Par-
liament has attempted to throw a peculiar sanctity
over some very important Act. This was done at
the time of the Act of Union with Scotland. It
svas desired that the utmost measure of security
should be accorded to the Scottish Established
Church, among other things, so that Scotsmen
joining the Union might feel assured that under
no circumstances whatever would their Church
be tampered with by the new Parliament of the
Union of Great Britain. So the language of the
Act of Union did all that language could do to
ensure that the Scottish Church should stand for
ever. It was enacted that every sovereign on his
accession should swear an oath to maintain the
Scottish Church inviolate. Here we see English
lawyers and Parliaments straining and striving to
establish " a constitutional law," such as those
words mean on the Continent or in America, a
law that can never be broken. They had some
idea that the sovereign's oath would prevent his
158 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN7
ever being able to assent to a Bill directed against
the Church he had sworn to defend. Exactly the
same was done in 1800, when Great Britain and
Ireland were joined together as the United King-
dom, and the English and Irish Churches were
joined as the United Church of England and Ire-
land. The most emphatic language in the Act of
Parliament declared the everlasting inviolability
of this United Church. Each sovereign was to
swear a solemn oath, on his accession, to preserve
it. Everything was done which English ingenuity
could devise to protect the United Church by a
law which should never be broken. But in 1869
it was broken without the slightest difficulty by
an ordinary Act of Parliament, and the Church in
Ireland was disestablished and disendowed.
Suppose that the Irish Church had been guar-
anteed, not by a solemn Act of Parliament and a
Royal oath, but by a clause in the Constitution of
the United States. Then the Act of disestablish-
ment and disendowment might indeed have passed
through the American Congress ; every member
might have voted for it, and the President might
have given it his assent. But the moment that
anyone attempted to put the Act into force, the
moment that a finger was laid upon the property
of the Irish Church, that Church would have
sought and obtained the protection of the Law
Courts. The Courts would have pronounced the
Act of Congress to be unconstitutional, and imme-
CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS 159
diately the Act would have become so much waste
paper. There could be no better instance of the
value of safeguards. What the American Con-
stitution has safeguarded is safe against all comers,
against the President, against the Congress, against
the States, and against the Union, until with the
assent of an overwhelming majority of the Ameri-
can people the Constitution itself, in the most
deliberate, solemn, and conspicuous way, has been
amended. What is safeguarded by the British
Parliament, however solemnly, and by the oath of
the British Sovereign, could be upset by a casual
majority of the two Houses before 1911, and can
now be upset by a casual majority of the single
chamber.
Under our own Constitution there is a complete
absence of any safeguard for anything, even for
the Constitution itself, and the only rule that
cannot be altered is the rule that Parliament can
alter everything. With every year that intensifies
the bitterness of feeling in politics, with every
year that develops the art of co-operation among
small sections in the House of Commons to force
the particular desires of each section on the nation
as a whole, the danger of the absence of safeguards
must grow more acute. Since all is at the mercy
of Parliament, it is clear that danger must vary
in exact proportion with the amount of confidence
that can be placed in Parliament itself. More
obvious than anything is the increased gravity
160 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
which the danger has assumed since the Parlia-
ment Act gave to a single chamber of Parliament
all the powers hitherto exercised only when two
chambers agreed.
It may not be much that the Parliament Act
has left to the authority of the second chamber ;
it is the power to delay legislation for two years.
Were such a provision inserted in a Constitution
like that of the United States, there would arise
at any rate a confident certainty that no rash
change could ever be introduced without a period
in which the nation could at least plead with the
single chamber against its own decision. But the
provision is in fact no part of such a Constitution
as that of the United States. It is a mere law of
to-day, to be varied or abolished whenever the
single chamber chooses to exercise its powers.
There is no security about it. It has no more
or less sanctity than the existing rate of the dog
tax.
If we are to preserve our system of Parliamen-
tary omnipotence, and if at the same time we are
to have any security for the existence of our in-
stitutions as we know them, and if we are to be able
to face troubled times with any confidence in our
power to survive them as a national unit, the only
hope lies in maintaining a strong second chamber
within the omnipotent Parliament itself. In old
times a revolutionary change in England required
the concurrence of two Houses of Parliament and
CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS 161
of a sovereign who by no means always assented.
In this there were safeguards. Later, a revolu-
tionary change required the concurrence of the
elected and the hereditary chambers. Here, also,
there was a safeguard whose value was shown at
least at the time of the second Home Rule Bill.
At present a revolutionary change requires no
more than the concurrence of a bare majority of
a single chamber whenever they can be cajoled or
excited into holding together for a period of two
years. Nor does this represent only the shrinking
of three safeguards into one. Not one of the three
parts of the old legislature ever willingly assented
to a shrinkage of its own power or an increase in
the power of the others. The legislature as a
whole was self-checking. As in a watch, the main-
spring neutralised the inertness of the hair-spring
and the hair-spring neutralised the explosiveness
of the main-spring. There was little probability
of the organism as a whole ever doing a wild
action, or even going utterly to sleep. But now
the very conception of checking is lost. There is
a single chamber with no rival to fear, and open
to all the temptations that have beset every
despot since the days when David numbered
the children of Israel. It is a change from a
legislature that was automatically moderate to a
legislature which is inevitably rash, headstrong,
and proud.
As if to give a foretaste of its future, the House
162 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
of Commons in 1911, when on the eve of becoming
a single chamber, refused to consent to the pro-
vision of a checking process even in the most
supremely important matters. It was proposed
that some of the powers of a second chamber
should be left to the House of Lords in case of
a Bill to affect the existence of the Crown or
the Protestant Succession, or to set up National
Parliaments within the United Kingdom, or to do
something of great gravity on which the people's
will had not been ascertained. It was proposed
that in such cases, as a safeguard, a reference to
the electorate should precede the passing of the
single chamber Bills into law. But it was not
permitted. Even this safeguard, so limited in
scope, was refused by the House of Commons
when it saw its single chamber powers just coming
into its hands.
CHAPTER X
THE REFERENDUM
THOSE who laid the foundations of representative
government in England acted on the principle
that what concerned all should be approved by
all. The same principle, whether conceded by a
government or extorted by a people, has been the
inspiration of every attempt at representative
government in the world. And yet it has a
weakness. The seeds of failure lie in the words
themselves, for that which concerns all is in fact
approved only by a majority. Again, a country
has to think itself happy if its majority is fairly
represented. The other chapters of this book
have dealt so largely with instances of the diverg-
ence between representative chambers and the
people they represent, with the manifest failure of
representative government at some of the most
important crises, that it will not be necessary to
enter again upon details.
It will be sufficient to say that experience has
shown how easily the decision of a representative
chamber may be the opposite of that which would
163
164 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
have been pronounced by the majority of the elec-
torate for which the chamber speaks. For proof of
this assertion we need only look to the fact that
country after country has set itself to find some
novel plan by which the failures of the representa-
tive system may be corrected. Again and again
it has become necessary for statesmen to adopt, or
at least to consider, the system of the Referendum
or poll of the people.
Liberal writers and speakers in England have
been under the necessity, for party purposes, of
representing the Referendum as a great evil. One
of the charges brought against it has been its
alleged complicatedness ; it has been held up as
something so obscure and difficult that no good
honest democratic Englishman could ever be ex-
pected to understand it. British intelligence was not
expected to be equal to the effort of grasping the
meaning of what the Swiss and Americans and
Australians have understood with the greatest
ease; nor did Liberal speakers condole with
English voters on this intellectual inferiority, but
praised it loudly.
In point of fact, the Referendum is the simplest
device ever adopted by democracy. It is an idea
more easy to grasp than the idea of representative
government. It would be more easy to explain to
a child what the Referendum was than to get him
to understand the significance of the return of a
member to the House of Commons. This is not
THE REFERENDUM 165
wonderful, for the Referendum originated among
a people whose system of government is more
simple and direct than any other in the world.
In some of the cantons, or states, which form
the federation of Switzerland, it was the custom
for the whole adult male population to assemble
and act as their own Parliament. The arrange-
ment, obviously, was only possible in a canton of
small area; but, where the limits of time and
space permit such a gathering, it is clear that the
last word of democracy is being spoken. There
could be no more thorough example of democratic
government, and there could certainly be none
more simple. The people are directly and imme-
diately deciding upon all questions that arise.
It is easy to see how this system became im-
practicable with the growth of population and the
increased complexity of life. The necessities of
more convenience forced the Swiss cantons to
adopt the representative system and get their
legislation done by a Parliament after the manner
of the larger countries. Yet the recollection of
the older systems remained. It could not fail to
influence the minds of the electors strongly on
every occasion when the Parliament was not in
close accord with popular sentiment. The desire
for the older and simpler form of democracy
increased under the working of the representative
system, and, in 1831, a bold but very obvious step
was taken in the single canton of St. Gallen. The
166 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
older system was reproduced in a form suited to
modern conditions. The general assembly of the
people was revived in the form of written instead
of verbal voting.
This was and is the Referendum. It certainly
presented no difficulties to the minds of those
Swiss citizens who had knowledge of democratic
government by assemblies of the whole people.
In the assembly a proposal had been made, a pro-
posal for a new law or for the repeal or amendment
of an old law, and the decision was given by the
voices of those present. In the Referendum the
proposal was made, communicated to the voters
by writing instead of by a speech, and the vote of
each man was given in writing instead of by shout-
ing or showing hands. Even in England we are
not unfamiliar with the practice of showing hands
at a public meeting. We should also be able to
imagine that instead of a show of hands in favour
of the resolution from the platform every person
present might be given a piece of paper on which
would be written : " Are you in favour of this reso-
lution ? " Each would write " Yes " or " No " on
the paper given him. The papers would be col-
lected and counted, and the result would be ascer-
tained. The Referendum is nothing more or less
than this.
In England it occasionally happens that a
General Election is held in particular reference
to a particular legislative proposal. With this we
THE REFERENDUM 167
are familiar. In 1886, after the first Home Rule
Bill had been rejected by the House of Commons,
Mr. Gladstone dissolved Parliament and appealed
to the electors to return a new House of Commons
in favour of the Bill, a House that would pass the
Bill instead of rejecting it. He clearly and exclu-
sively appealed to the voters on this ground. He
" referred," in fact, the Home Rule Bill to the
voters. The result was that the voters went to
the poll and received voting papers on which were
written the names of two persons, of whom one
was known to be in favour of the Bill and the
other was known to be opposed to it. It remained
for the voter to mark his cross against the name
of the person whose views he supported, and very
well the voter understood what he was doing. He
knew that he was voting for or against the Home
Rule Bill. Such was the procedure at a General
Election.
But is it so difficult to imagine the same results
obtained by the other method — the Swiss method
of the Referendum ? In the same way the voter
goes to the poll. In the same way he receives a
voting paper. And then begins that which those
who are opposed to the Referendum declare to be
beyond human comprehension. Instead of finding
the names of two persons written on the voting
paper, the voters finds these words : " Are you in
favour of the Home Rule Bill?" A space is pro-
vided on the paper, in which space the voter is
168 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
expected to write " Yes " or " No." The following
forms put the two methods in a more simple
way: —
Voting Paper in a General Election.
JONES, JOHN JOSEPH.
SMITH, SAMUEL SIMON.
Voting Paper in a Referendum.
Are you in favour of the Home
Rule Bill? —
It has occasionally happened that a voter on
entering the polling booth and receiving his vot-
ing paper has been seized with an attack of heart
disease and has expired immediately. Whether
it is feared that calamities of this sort would
become more general when voters who are accus-
tomed to the first of these voting forms are
suddenly confronted with the second, must be
left for opponents of the scheme to explain. But
there can be no other ground for saying that the
THE REFERENDUM 169
Referendum is a thing beneath consideration. It
is not difficult to understand. It is not difficult
to arrange and organise. And it is quite definite
and unmistakable in its results.
Without entering on a general argument for the
Referendum it is well to lay stress on one point in
which it is sharply distinguished from the present
English way of arriving at the opinion of the
electorate. In 1886 the General Election turned
almost entirely on one issue. The politics of the
last six months had rendered it inevitable that
voters going to the poll should have hardly any
other subject in their minds except the Home
Rule Bill, and their decision was undoubtedly a
decision on that Bill and on nothing else. But
this state of affairs very seldom occurs. It usually
happens that the two candidates in any election
are supporters of parties that have large and
varied programmes. It may be, and possibly it is
usual, that each candidate whole-heartedly accepts
the whole policy of his party. From their sub-
sequent votes in the House the candidates are
entitled to this assumption.
We may allow, for instance, and for the sake of
argument, that all Liberal candidates in 1910,
with three or four exceptions, were supporters of
Home Rule, Welsh Disestablishment, the Single
Chamber system, the Land Taxes of 1909, Free
Imports, and the system of tenancy small-holdings
as against proprietary small-holdings. We can
170 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
suppose also that they placed their views fully
and unreservedly before the electors, which was
not, in fact, the case. They were opposed by
Unionists who differed from them in all the par-
ticulars mentioned. Now if the decision between
each two candidates depended on the votes of
electors whose general stock of opinions was always
identical with that of one or other of them, the
return of either would be an exact representation
of the views of the majority at the moment. But
the fact is that opinions are not to be classed so
easily. A belief in Free Imports does not prove
that the believer is also a single- chamber man.
With professional politicians, as a general rule, the
whole stock of opinions can be guessed from any
one ; but it is not so with the electors. The
deciding factor in the mind of the ordinary citizen
is either a traditional attachment to his party or a
preference for the measures of one party on the
whole, or a strong opinion on some single question
among the many that fill the field of politics.
Then comes the theory of the mandate and
makes nonsense of all that the electors have done.
The Liberal Churchman who votes Conservative
because of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill is
taken to have given a mandate for Tariff Reform,
for proprietary small-holdings, and all the rest of
the Conservative programme. Indeed he has
actually assisted these causes, for he has sent a
man to Parliament who will labour to carry them
THE REFERENDUM 171
into effect. So also the Conservative Free Traders,
in the days of their importance, were forced into
the position of giving a mandate and a measure of
practical help to every item in the programme of
the Liberals. Of the two elections of 1910 it was
utterly impossible for a man who wished to support
the cause of Free Imports to avoid supporting
also the attack on the second chamber, on the
Church in Wales, and the Union of the Kingdom.
However earnestly a man desired to see Home
Rule in Ireland without also seeing a Church
despoiled and disestablished, he was bound to vote
against his own desires on one question or the
other. If he voted for Jones he was pronouncing
for the spoliation of the Church. If he voted for
Smith he was pronouncing against what he thought
the just claims of the Irish.
Considerations of this nature have led to many
and many a proposal for improving the machinery
of representation, most of which, unlike a poll of
the people, are extremely hard to understand and
apply. In the middle of the last century the
philosopher John Stuart Mill, in conjunction with
Thomas Hare, propounded a scheme that was to
open the gates of a political paradise. Constitu-
encies were to be abolished. Electors were no
longer to be limited to a choice between two
candidates in their own borough or county, but
were to be free to choose whomsoever they might
think the truest representative of their particular
172 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
variety of opinion. A Conservative Free Trader,
for instance, would not have been confined to a
choice between a Liberal and a Tariff Keformer.
He could have chosen his own representative, and
then, by his own vote, and by the votes of nine
thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine others
from any part of the country, he could have sent
his man to Parliament. There is no doubt that
this system, once at work, would end the anomalies
of the representative system as we know it.
Electors would no longer be forced to vote for
much they do not like. But the practical diffi-
culties of working the scheme are terrible to con-
template. The formation of these voluntary con-
stituencies of persons in complete agreement on
every subject would require an amount of organisa-
tion quite beyond what is possible. The interest
of the subject is therefore mostly in the fact that
Mr. Mill was aware of the imperfections of the
system we now use.
The Referendum is as nearly as possible an
absolute cure for misrepresentation. In England
it would enable a Liberal elector to vote Liberal
because he wished to see a Liberal Government,
yet to veto the Welsh Disestablishment Bill because
that Bill was not a part of the work he desired the
Liberal Government to undertake. Any ordinary
combination of opinions could, under a poll of the
people, be exactly expressed by every person with
a vote.
THE REFERENDUM 173
It is not surprising, therefore, that the adoption
of the Referendum, where it has been adopted, has
been due in part to a desire to elicit the true will
of the electorate on specific questions. For the
rest it has been due to the wish for something not
less important. It has been adopted as a final
safeguard against the dangerous alteration of very
important parts of the law of the land, especially
against the alteration of Constitutions.
In Switzerland there are two varieties of the
Referendum in use. These are known as the
Compulsory and the Optional. The effect of the
Compulsory Referendum is that all Bills which
fall within a certain category — roughly, all Bills
of any public importance — must be submitted to
a Referendum after their passage through Parlia-
ment, and cannot pass into law until a majority
of the votes cast in a poll of the people have been
cast in their favour. The Optional Referendum
is different. Under this system a Bill may become
law on passing the Parliament unless a certain
number of the electors demand a Referendum
upon it. If this demand is made, a Referendum
must be held, and the Bill can only pass on obtain-
ing a majority of votes in its favour. Some of the
Swiss cantons have adopted the one system, and
some the other. In the Swiss Confederation, as a
whole, there have been two periods in the history
of the Referendum. Between 1848 and 1874 there
was a Compulsory Referendum on all changes
174 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
in the Federal Constitution. After 1874 another
Referendum was added. This was to be applied
in the case of all new laws of any sort on the de-
mand of 30,000 electors, or on the demand of
eight of the cantons.
It is interesting to note that Conservative
opinion in Switzerland was much alarmed by
the introduction of the Referendum system, and
that the alarm proved peculiarly false. No sooner
was this extreme authority granted to the Swiss
people than they fell into the habit of using it in
a manner the very reverse of revolutionary. If
we regard the Swiss electorate as a kind of second
chamber, which indeed they are, they are the
strongest and most cautious second chamber in
the world. The testimony of observers goes to
show that the consciousness of influence and
authority has worked in the Swiss citizen so as to
deepen and widen his interest in politics, while
making him intensely cautious.
It may not be without interest to note some of
the subjects upon which the Swiss electorate has
been asked to pronounce by means of a poll of
the people, and the decisions to which it has
come. If the list does not appear very startling
or sensational, that detracts nothing from the
credit due to the stability and regularity of Swiss
politics.
In 1875 the Parliament of the Confederation
passed a Bill to change the voters' qualifications.
THE REFERENDUM 175
It was rejected on a Referendum by 207,263 votes
to 202,583.
In the same year the Parliament passed a Bill
to alter the law of marriage. The Bill abolished
the cantonal regulations with regard to marriage,
and made a civil ceremony of marriage compul-
sory throughout the Confederation. The voters
accepted it by 213,199 votes to 205,669.
In 1876 the Parliament passed a law on the sub-
ject of bank notes. This was rejected by 193,253
to 120,068.
In the same year the Parliament passed a Bill
fixing the indemnities to be paid to the Confedera-
tion by citizens who were dispensed from mili-
tary service. This was rejected by 184,894 to
156,157.
In 1877 the same Bill was rejected by 181,363
to 170,223.
In 1879 the Parliament passed a Bill granting
subsidies for railway construction in the Alps.
This was accepted by 278,731 to 115,571.
In 1882 the Parliament, singularly misjudging
the popular opinion) passed a Bill that laid down
regulations for the prevention of certain epidemics.
This was rejected by the large majority of 254,340
to 68,027.
In 1884 four Bills which had been passed by
the Parliament were rejected by the people in a
a single day. One was ensure the appointment
of a new official in the Department of Justice.
176 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Another to appoint a secretary to the Swiss Lega-
tion at Washington. Another was to exempt
commercial travellers from certain taxes. Another
was to remove certain criminal trials from the
courts of the cantons to the courts of the Con-
federation.
Switzerland has pushed the principle of the
Referendum to lengths beyond anything that
other countries are likely to follow. It should be
remembered, however, that in a small country
small matters bulk large. It is not likely that
any Englishman would advocate the Referendum
for the appointment of a legation secretary. But
none the less is Switzerland interesting as an in-
stance of the intelligibility and practicability of
the Referendum system, and of its potent value
as a safeguard against the rash actions of a tem-
porarily irresponsible Legislature.
In one form or another the Referendum has
now been adopted by all but one of the States of
the American Union.
In Oregon, where the system is well developed,
some typical cases are the following. In 1907 the
Legislature passed a law requiring the railways
to grant free passes to State officials. This was
rejected on a Referendum. In 1908, five measures
were enacted by the Referendum.^ One provided
Jor the " recall " or dismissal of public functionaries
at popular demand. Another practically trans-
ferred the choice of Federal senators from the
THE REFERENDUM 177
Legislature to the electorate. Another introduced
a form of proportional representation. Another
was the Corrupt Practices Act. Another reformed
the Grand Jury system.
The law of Oregon provides that the Govern-
ment shall print a pamphlet on the occasion of
each General Election, which means once in two
years. This pamphlet contains the text of every
measure passed by the Legislature within the last
two years. It is sent at the cost of the Govern-
ment to every elector fifty-five days before the
date of the General Election about to be held.
The electors are then supposed to read and con-
sider the Bills. Each one has a title at its head,
which is not the title given by the Legislature,
but a special descriptive title drafted by the
Attorney-General. When the election occurs the
voting papers contain not only the names of the
candidates for election, but also the special de-
scriptive titles of all the Bills in the pamphlet
against which the elector is expected to mark his
Yes or No. Thus, while voting for the members
of the new Legislature, the elector gives his assent
or veto to the measures passed by the Legislature
which has expired. Only the measures which
survive this test are embodied in the law of the
State. Those that do not secure a majority of
votes are dropped. As many as thirty- two Bills
have thus been referred to the electors of Oregon
on a single voting paper.
178 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
The Referendum has been adopted in Queens-
land, in South Australia, and in the Common-
wealth of Australia. In Queensland it is used to
settle differences between the two Houses of Legis-
lature. These, before the adoption of a poll of
the people, were frequent and bitter ; but such a
reference to the electors has provided a perfect
solution. In South Australia the question of
denominational teaching in schools, the question
that has agitated England for so long, was settled
by reference to the electors. In the Common-
wealth it has been adopted as a Constitutional
safeguard. No change in the Constitution can be
effected without recourse to this method of testing
the will of the electorate, and there have already
been notable instances of the value of the safe-
guard. One case was in 1911, when the Labour
Ministry of the Commonwealth submitted two
Constitutional amendments. The first would have
transferred from the State Governments to the
Commonwealth Government the control of all
legislation affecting industry and commerce. The
second was a proposal for the nationalisation of
monopolies. Both of these were rejected by the
electorate, and the numbers of votes cast on the
question went to show that an electorate is not
less willing to take the trouble of voting at a
Referendum than at a General Election.
One generalisation can be made about the use
of the Referendum, which is, without doubt, the
THE REFERENDUM 179
last that would have been expected by the Con-
servatives of the past. This powerful weapon of
democracy has never been used in a Socialistic
or predatory spirit. Not even in America, where
the fight against corruption has excited such
dangerous passions, has the newly-forged sword
of the people been directed against the security
of property. Proposals of that nature have been
made, but have been rejected by the electorates.
In Australia the doubtful ventures of a Labour
Government have been checked. In Switzerland
the Conservatism of the electors has been astonish-
ing. The Referendum, therefore, may claim some
part of the blessing pronounced by Disraeli upon
those who are wise enough to trust the instincts
of a people.
APPENDIX I
LEGISLATURES OF THE OVERSEA STATES
AUSTRALIA, COMMONWEALTH OF. — Second Chamber ;
36 members, 6 for each State, directly elected by the
people of each State for six years, one-half retiring
every three years.
House of Representatives ; 75 members (about),
elected for three years. In cases of deadlocks on
general legislation and finance a simultaneous dis-
solution of both Houses, followed by a joint sitting •
in cases of disagreements on constitutional alterations,
the Referendum.
New South Wales. — Second Chamber: 54 members
(about), nominated by the Governor for life.
Legislative Assembly : 90 members elected for
three years by men and women over 21, with residen-
tial qualification. No provision made for removing
deadlocks, but the number of the second chamber
is unlimited, and the Governor may add members to
such extent as he thinks fit.
Victoria. — Second Chamber : 34 members elected for
six years, half retiring every three years, by electors of
both sexes having property, educational, medical,
ecclesiastical, naval, or military, qualifications.
180
THE OVERSEA STATES 181
Legislative Assembly : 65 members elected for
three years by universal suffrage. In case of dead-
lock the Governor may dissolve both chambers.
Queensland. — Second Chamber: Number not limited,
usually between 40 and 50 members; in 1911 there
were 42, summoned for life by the Governor.
Legislative Assembly: 72 members elected for
three years by adult electors having residential
qualification. In case of deadlock it is provided
that the measure in dispute shall be submitted to
a Referendum of the electors.
South Australia. — Second Chamber: 18 members
elected for six years, 9 members retiring every three
years ; elected by adult British subjects of either sex
having six months' residential, in addition to pro-
perty, occupation, or official, qualification.
House of Assembly .-40 members elected for three
years by electors of 21 having six months' residen-
tial qualification, male or female. In cases of dead-
lock the Governor may dissolve both Houses or he
may issue writs for the election of 9 additional mem-
bers to the second chamber.
Tasmania. — Second Chamber: 18 members elected for
six years, one-sixth retiring every year, by adults of
either sex possessing property, university, profes-
sional, or service, qualification.
House of Assembly : 30 members elected for three
years by citizens, male or female, having one year's
residential qualification. There is no provision made
for removing deadlocks.
Western Australia. — Second Chamber: 30 members
elected for six years, one-third retiring every two
G
182 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
years, by adult British subjects of either sex having
a property and six months' residential qualification.
Legislative Assembly: 50 members elected for
three years by electors over 21 having six months'
residential qualification. Electors for both Houses
may be male or female. No provision for removing
deadlock. q^
CANADA, DOMINION OF. — Second Chamber: 87 members
nominated by Governor-General for life.
House of Commons: 221 members elected by
constituencies, voting by ballot, for five years ; fran-
chise varies in different provinces. No express pro-
vision is made for removing deadlocks, but six new
members may be added to the second chamber.
The nine provinces of Canada have each a separate
parliament and administration.
Nova Scotia. — Second Chamber: 21 members nomi-
nated for life by the Lieutenant-Governor.
Legislative Assembly: 38 members. No pro-
vision exists for the adjustment of differences
between the two chambers.
Quebec. — Second Chamber : 24 members appointed for
life by the Lieutenant-Governor.
Legislative Assembly : 74 members. No pro-
vision exists for the adjustment of differences
between the two chambers.
New Brunswick. — Single Chamber : 46 members.
Ontario. — Single Chamber: 106 members.
Manitoba. — Single Chamber : 40 members.
British Columbia. — Single Chamber : 38 members.
Prince Edward Island. — Single Chamber : 30 members.
Alberta. — Single Chamber: 41 members.
THE OVERSEA STATES 183
Saskatchewan. — Single Chamber: 41 members-
Yukon. — Executive Council .-10 members elected by the
people.
NEWFOUNDLAND. — Second Chamber : 20 members (about),
appointed by the King, who remain members during
his pleasure.
House of Assembly : 36 members. There is no
provision for removing deadlocks, but there is no
limit to the power of the Crown to add to the mem-
bers of the second chamber.
NEW ZEALAND, DOMINION OP. — Second Chamber : 38
members summoned by the Governor for seven years
(excepting those summoned before 1891, who are
life members).
House of Representatives: 80 members elected for
three years by the people : adult suffrage with
residential qualification. There is no provision made
for removing deadlocks, and there is no fixed limit
to the number of members of the second chamber.
SOUTH AFRICA, UNION OF. — Second Chamber: 40 mem-
bers, for ten years after establishment of Union, 8
nominated by Governor-General and 32 elected in
the first instance by the Legislatures of each of the
original provinces in joint assembly.
House of Assembly : 121 members elected for five
years, electors to possess same qualification as before
Act of Union. In case of deadlock, joint sitting of
both Houses.
APPENDIX II
LEGISLATURES OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES
ABYSSINIA. — State Council consisting of most important
rases, under whom for administrative purposes are
governors of districts and provinces and chiefs of
villages. A Council of Ministers has been con-
stituted by the Emperor.
ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. — Second Chamber : 30 members,
being two representatives from the capital elected
by a special body of electors, and two from each
province elected by provincial legislatures ; one-third
retire every third year.
House of Deputies : 1 20 members elected for four
years, one-half retiring every two years.
Constitutional changes must be sanctioned by a
Constituent Assembly especially elected for the
purpose.
AUSTRIA. — Second Chamber: 248 to 268 members, vary-
ing according to number of life members ; imperial
princes ; hereditary nobles who are landowners ; 10
archbishops ; 7 bishops ; life members nominated by
the Crown for distinguished services ; maximum of
life members, 170; minimum, 150. If the two Houses
are unable to agree a Joint Committee is formed.
184
FOREIGN COUNTRIES 185
Abgeo?'ductenhau8 : 516 members elected by citi-
zens over 24 ; one year's residential qualification.
BELGIUM. — Second Chamber: 110 members, who must
be 40 years of age, own or occupy real estate valued
at £480 per annum or pay £48 a year in direct
taxes, elected for eight years, half retiring every
four years ; 83 by direct election by those electors,
being over 30 years of age, who elect the Chamber
of Representatives ; and 27 by County Councils.
Chamber of Representatives : 166 members elected
for four years, half retiring every two years ; elected
by citizens over 25 holding a year's residential quali-
fication ; supplementary votes given to citizens for
property or educational special qualifications; no
person to possess more than three votes ; propor-
tional representation for both chambers. Deadlocks
evaded by the re-election every four years of one-half
of the Senate and the possibility of a parliamentary
dissolution.
BOLIVIA. — Second Chamber: 16 members, 2 for each
Department, elected for six years, one-third retiring
every two years.
Chamber of Deputies : 75 members elected for
four years, one-half retiring every two years. Both
chambers elected by direct vote of all who can read
and write.
BRAZIL — Second Chamber : 63 members elected for nine
years, one-third retiring every third year ; three
from each State elected by direct vote.
Chamber of Deputies: 212 members elected by
direct vote, under universal suffrage, for three years.
BULGARIA. — National Assembly: 215 members elected
186 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
by universal manhood suffrage for four years.
(Single chamber.)
Questions concerning the acquisition or cession
of territory, constitutional changes, vacancy on the
throne, or appointment of a regent, have to be decided
by a Grand Sobranje elected for the special purpose.
CHILE. — Second Chamber: 37 members elected for six
years by provinces, in proportion of one Senator to
three Deputies.
Chamber of Deputies: 108 members elected for
three years ; proportional representation. Both
bodies elected by same electors, who must be 21,
and able to read and write.
CHINA. — Not completed since Revolution of 1911.
COLOMBIA. — Second Chamber : 35 members indirectly
elected by electors specially chosen for the purpose ;
elected for four years.
House of Representatives : 92 members elected by
people for four years ; proportional representation.
COSTA RICA. — Chamber of Representatives : 43 members,
being one representative to every 8000 inhabitants
chosen in electoral assemblies, members of which are
returned by suffrage of all able to support them-
selves. Elected for four years, half retiring every
two years. (Single chamber.)
CRETE. — Bule: 65 members elected for three years in
proportion of one to every 5000 inhabitants. (Single
chamber.)
CUBA. — Second Chamber: 24 members, four for each
province.
House of Representatives : 83 members ; propor-
tional representation.
FOREIGN COUNTRIES 187
DENMARK. — Second Chamber : 66 members, 12 nominated
by Crown for life; 54 elected for eight years by
electoral bodies composed partly of largest tax-payers
in country districts, partly of largest tax-payers in
cities, and partly of deputies from the totality of
citizens possessing the franchise, half retiring every
four years. In the event of deadlocks a joint-com-
mittee is formed, the report of which is decided upon
in each chamber separately ; no finality is therefore
ensured.
Folketing : 114 members, elected for three years
by direct election ; electors over 30 with one year's
residential qualification.
ECUADOR. — Second Chamber : 32 members elected for
four years, two for each province.
Chamber of Deputies : 48 members elected for
two years ; proportional representation. Both
chambers elected by adults who can read and
write.
FRANCE. — Second Chamber: 300 members, elected for
nine years by an electoral college composed of dele-
gates chosen by municipal council of each commune
in proportion to population ; of parliamentary depu-
ties; and of departmental and district councillors.
One-third retire every three years.
Chamber of Deputies: 597 members elected by
universal suffrage. In cases of deadlock provision is
made for appointment of a joint-committee to confer ;
for constitutional revisions each chamber separately
declares the necessity, and both then meet as a
National Assembly. When deadlock is absolute,
second chamber cannot be dissolved, and appeal to
188 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
country can only be if second chamber consents to
dissolution of Chamber of Deputies.
GERMAN EMPIRE. — Second Chamber : 61 members ap-
pointed by the Governments of the individual States
for each Session.
The Reichstag : 397 members elected by universal
suffrage and ballot for five years.
All laws for the Empire must receive the votes
of an absolute majority of the Bundesrath and the
Reichstag.
Bavaria (German State). — Second Chamber : 80 mem-
bers (about) ; royal princes ; nobles owning manorial
estates ; hereditary and life members nominated by
the Crown; 4 ecclesiastical representatives. Life
members not to exceed one-third of whole. Dis-
puted matters sent backwards and forwards until
disposed of.
Kammer der Abgeorducten : 163 members elected
by men over 25 ; one year's residential qualification.
Prussia (German State). — Second Chamber : 365 mem-
bers (about), but number unlimited ; royal princes ;
hereditary members; life members nominated by
Crown ; civic, ecclesiastical, and territorial represen-
tatives.
Abgeorductenliaus : 443 members, elected by in-
direct electors of three classes according to amount
paid in taxes. No provision for deadlocks.
Saxony, Kingdom of (German State). — Second Chamber:
46 members ; royal princes ; hereditary members ;
members nominated for life by the Crown ; members
elected for life by owners of nobiliar estates ; official
and ecclesiastical members and representatives.
FOREIGN COUNTRIES 189
Lower Chamber .-91 members, elected by citizens
over 25 with small property qualification ; supple-
mentary votes given to citizens with special quali-
fications— age, property, or education. In case of
deadlock matter referred to deputations of both
chambers for consideration only.
Wiirtemburg (German State). — Second Chamber: 50
members (about) ; royal princes ; hereditary nobles
owning landed estates ; life members nominated by
the Crown ; representatives of the lower nobility ;
elected representatives of industrial interests ; ecclesi-
astical and educational representatives. Budget
disputes settled by the majority of votes in both
chambers when added together ; if votes equal,
president of lower chamber has casting vote.
Lower Chamber : 93 members.
Baden (German State). — Second Chamber: 40 mem-
bers (about) ; princes of the ducal house ; hereditary,
ecclesiastical, and official members ; members elected
by landed nobility ; educational and industrial repre-
sentatives ; and members nominated by Grand
Duke.
Lower Chamber : 73 members elected for four
years by citizens over 25. In case of Budget dis-
putes votes cast in both chambers for and against
added together. Constitutional changes dependent
on majority of votes of both chambers.
Hesse Darmstadt (German State). — Second Chamber :
34 members (about); princes of the ducal house;
hereditary members; life members nominated by
the Grand Duke; and ecclesiastical and official
members.
190 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Lower Chamber : 58 members, elected by electors
over 25 years of age paying direct taxes for six
years; half retire every three years. Alterations
and additions to the Constitution must have consent
of both chambers.
Oldenburg (German State). — Landtag: 45 members
elected for five years by the votes of tax -pay ing
citizens. (Single chamber.)
Saxony (German State). — Single Chamber: 33 members,
10 chosen by landowners and others, with income of
£1 50 per annum or more, 5 representing education
and principal industries, and 23 by other inhabit-
ants. All citizens over 25 have votes.
Anhalt (German State). — Diet : 36 members, 2 nomi-
nated by the reigning Duke, 8 representatives of
landholders who pay highest taxes, 2 representatives
of the mercantile and industrial classes, 14 repre-
sentatives of towns, and 10 of the rural districts,
the representatives being elected by indirect vote
for six years. (Single chamber.)
Brunswick (German State). — Single Chamber; 48 mem-
bers, 15 elected by towns, 15 by rural districts, 2
by Protestant clergy, 4 by landlords, 3 by industrial
classes, 4 by scientific professions, and 5 by those
highest taxed for income. Chamber meets every
two years.
Saxe- Altenburg ( German State). — Single Chamber : 32
members elected for three years, 9 chosen by highest
taxed inhabitants, 11 by inhabitants of towns, and
12 by inhabitants of rural districts.
Saxe-Coburg & Gotha (German State). — Single Cham-
ber: Coburg Chamber consists of 11, and Gotha
FOREIGN COUNTRIES 191
Chamber of 19 members, for common affairs. Cham-
bers meet in common. Elected by indirect voting
of every citizen over 25 years of age paying direct
taxes. Elections every four years.
Saxe-Meiningen (German State). — Single Chamber:
24 members; 4 elected by payers of highest land
and property tax, 4 by those paying income tax on
XI 50 or more, 16 by all other inhabitants : elections
every six years.
Lippe (German State). — Diet: 21 members elected in
3 divisions determined by scale of rates.
Schaumburg-Lippe (German State). — Single Chamber :
15 members, 2 appointed by the reigning Prince,
3 nominated by nobility, clergy, &c., rest elected by
the people.
Schwarzburg - Rudolstadt (German State). — Single
Chamber .-16 members, 4 elected by highest assessed
inhabitants, rest elected by the people, all elected
for three years.
Schwarzburg-Sondershausen (German State). — Single
Chamber: 18 members, 6 appointed by the ruling
Prince, 6 elected by certain highly taxed landowners
and others, and 6 elected by people.
Bremen (German State). — Second Chamber: 16 mem-
bers elected by itself and the Convent.
Convent: 150 members elected for six years by
the votes of all the citizens, divided into classes.
Hamburg (German State). — Second Chamber : 18 mem-
bers elected for life by the House of Burgesses.
House of Burgesses: 160 members, 80 of whom
are elected by ballot by all tax-paying citizens, 40
chosen by ballot by house-property owners, and 40
192 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
by legislators, ex-legislators, and others. Elected
for six years, half retiring every three years.
Liibeck (German State). — Second Chamber : 14 mem-
bers elected for life.
Burgerschaft : 120 members chosen by all the
citizens.
Alsace-Lorraine (German State). — Second Chamber:
40 members (about) ; ecclesiastical, legal, educational,
civic, industrial, and agricultural representatives
number 23, and a number nominated by the Em-
peror not to exceed this ; elected for five years.
Lower Chamber : 60 members elected on general
direct suffrage, by ballot, for five years.
GREECE. — Council of State, re-established in 1911 as a
substitute for a second chamber.
Bule : 173 members elected by manhood suffrage,
for four years.
GUATEMALA. — Second Chamber: 13 members, forming a
Council of State, partly elected by the National
Assembly, and partly nominated by the President of
the Kepublic.
National Assembly : 100 members (about), elected
by universal suffrage for four years.
HAITI. — Second Chamber: 39 members elected for six
years, one- third retiring every two years, by Chamber
of Communes from list compiled partly by the Pre-
sident and partly by the electors.
Chamber of the Communes: 99 members elected
for three years by direct popular vote.
HONDURAS. — Chamber of Deputies : 42 members elected
for four years by direct popular vote. (Single
chamber.)
FOREIGN COUNTRIES 193
HUNGARY. — Second Chamber: 384 members (about);
hereditary members ; life members ; official and legal
members ; ecclesiastical members ; and 3 members-
representing Croatia-Slavonia.
House of Representatives : 453 members elected by
male citizens of 20 years of age who are direct tax-
payers or have professional or educational qualifi-
cations.
ITALY. — Second Chamber : 380 members (about), but
number unlimited ; nominated, out of twenty-one
different categories, by the King on the proposition
of his Ministers.
Chamber of Deputies : 508 members elected by
citizens over 21 having educational, property, taxable,
occupational, or military service qualification. Bills
in dispute passed backward aud forward until agree-
ment reached; no provision made for a definite
settlement.
JAPAN. — Second Chamber : Males of the Imperial family >
hereditary members, members of the nobility, elected
by their respective orders, members nominated by
the Emperor for services to the State or erudition, or
as representing land, industry, or trade; membership,
when not for life, for seven years.
House of Representatives : 379 members, elected
by ballot by citizens of not less than 25, possessing
one year's residential and small property qualifica-
tions.
LIBERIA. — Second Chamber elected for six years.
House of Representatives for four years. Electors1
must be of negro blood and owners of land.
LIECHTENSTEIN. — Single Chamber: 1 5 members appointed
194 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
for four years, 3 by the reigning Prince, 12 by in-
direct vote.
LUXEMBURG. — Single Chamber of Deputies : 53 members
elected directly by cantons for six years, half retiring
every three years.
MEXICO. — Second Chamber : 56 members elected for two
years.
House of Representatives: 233 members elected
for two years. Both chambers elected by votes of
all respectable male resident adults of 25 years of
age.
MONACO. — National Council: 21 members elected by
universal suffrage and scrutin de liste for four
years.
MONTENEGRO. — Single Chamber: 74 members, 62 elected
by universal suffrage for four years, 12 ex officio,
ecclesiastical, official, and military members.
NETHERLANDS. — Second Chamber : 50 members, by indi-
rect election by Provincial States for nine years, one-
third retiring every third year.
Lower Chamber: 100 members, elected by male
citizens not under 25 having small property quali-
fication. Sovereign may dissolve both chambers.
NICARAGUA. — Single Chamber: 36 members elected for
six years by universal suffrage.
NORWAY. — Second Chamber: 30 members, elected by
and from the lower chamber.
Lower Chamber: 123 members elected by male
and female citizens over 25 with small property
qualification. In case of disagreement, joint sitting;
a two-thirds majority then necessary to enable Bills
;to become law.
FOREIGN COUNTRIES 195
PANAMA. — Single Chamber of Deputies: 32 members,
meeting biennially.
PARAGUAY. — Second Chamber: 60 members (about).
Chamber of Deputies: 120 members (about).
Both chambers elected directly by the people.
PERU. — Second Chamber : 62 members.
House of Representatives: 116 members. Mem-
bers of both chambers are elected by direct vote ;
one third of the members of each chamber retire
every two years.
PORTUGAL. — Second Chamber: 71 members elected by
municipal councils for three years, half retiring every
three years.
National Council: 164 members elected by direct
suffrage for three years.
ROUMANIA. — Second Chamber: 120 members elected for
eight years by two colleges of electors, the first
comprising citizens in receipt of X80 per annum or
more, and the second of those in receipt of from .£32
to X80 per annum.
Chamber of Deputies: 183 members elected for
four years by three colleges of electors possessing
different franchise qualifications.
RUSSIA. — Second Chamber: Equal number of elected
members and members nominated by the Emperor ;
elected members sit for nine years, one-third retiring
every three years.
Duma: Members elected indirectly by electoral
bodies of chief towns of governments or provinces
and of greatest cities, composed of delegates chosen
by district or town elective assembly. Members
elected for five years.
196 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
SALVADOR. — Single Congress of Deputies: 42 members
elected for one year by universal suffrage.
SANTO DOMINGO. — Second Chamber: 12 members.
Chamber of Deputies .-24 members. Members of
both chambers chosen by indirect selection for four
years.
SERVIA. — Single Chamber : 160 members elected for four
years by male citizens over 21, with small property
qualification.
Si AM. — Legislative Council: 40 members, nominated by
the King; (Single Chamber.)
SPAIN. — Second Chamber : 360 members ; royal princes ;
hereditary members; members nominated for life
by the Crown ; members elected by the communal
and provincial States, Church, universities, acade-
mies, &c., and by largest taxpayers ; non-elected
members not to exceed elected members. When
lower chamber dissolves, elective portion of upper
chamber dissolves.
Chamber of Deputies : 406 members, elected under
system of compulsory voting by male electors over
25. Joint-committee confers and reports on a disputed
Bill ; if the report is accepted by both Houses the
Bill is held to be passed.
SWEDEN. — Second Chamber: 150 members elected by
the provincial and municipal councils for six years.
Proportional representation.
Lower Chamber: 230 members elected for three
years by citizens over 24. Proportional representa-
tion. Financial questions in dispute settled in joint
session.
FOREIGN COUNTRIES 197
SWITZERLAND. — Second Chamber: 44 members elected
by cantons, two members for each canton.
National Council: 167 members elected by citi-
zens over 21. Joint-committee confers and reports,
but consent of both chambers is indispensable for
the passing of a measure.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. — Upper Chamber: 92 mem-
bers elected for six years by State legislatures, each
State electing two members ; one-third renewed every
two years. The biennial renewal coincides with the
meeting of a newly-elected House of Representatives.
House of Representatives: 436 members elected
for two years; electoral qualification very compli-
cated owing to the different systems prevailing in
different States. Both chambers possess equal
legislative powers; differences referred to a joint
Conference Committee to report; if disagreement
continues, a measure becomes extinct at end of the
Congress.
URUGUAY. — Second Chamber : 19 members chosen for six
years by an electoral college whose members are
elected by the people, one-third of the members retire
every two years.
Chamber of Representatives : 75 members elected
for three years by male adults who can read and
write.
VENEZUELA. — Second Chamber: 40 members elected for
four years.
Chamber of Deputies: Each State by direct
election chooses for four years one deputy for
every 35,000 inhabitants, and one more for an
excess of 15,000.
APPENDIXHEH-.,_
1>\U
THE PARLIAMENT ACT, 1911
An Act to make provision with respect to the powers of
the House of Lords in relation to those of the House
of Commons, and to limit the duration of Parlia-
ment. [ISth August 1911.]
WHEREAS it is expedient that provision should be made
for regulating the relations between the two Houses of
Parliament :
And whereas it is intended to substitute for the House
of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber con-
stituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but
such substitution cannot be immediately brought into
operation :
And whereas provision will require hereafter to be
made by Parliament in a measure effecting such substitu-
tion for limiting and denning the powers of the new
Second Chamber, but it is expedient to make such pro-
vision as in this Act appears for restricting the existing
powers of the House of Lords :
Be it therefore enacted by the King's most Excellent
Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the
Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this
198
THE PARLIAMENT ACT, 1911 199
present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of
the same, as follows : —
Powers of the House of Lords as to Money Bills. —
1. — (1) If a Money Bill, having been passed by the
House of Commons, and sent up to the House of Lords
at least one month before the end of the Session, is not
passed by the House of Lords without amendment within
one month after it is so sent up to that House, the Bill
shall, unless the House of Commons direct to the contrary,
be presented to His Majesty and become an Act of Parlia-
ment on the Royal Assent being signified, notwithstand-
ing that the House of Lords have not consented to the
Bill.
(2) A Money Bill means a Public Bill which in the
opinion of the Speaker of the House of Commons contains
only provisions dealing with all or any of the following
subjects, namely, the imposition, repeal, remission, altera-
tion, or regulation of taxation ; the imposition for the
payment of debt or other financial purposes of charges on
the Consolidated Fund, or on money provided by Parlia-
ment, or the variation or repeal of any such charges ;
supply; the appropriation, Keceipt, custody, issue or
audit of accounts of public money ; the raising or guar-
antee of any loan or the repayment thereof ; or subor-
dinate matters incidental to those subjects or any of
them. In this subsection the expressions " taxation,"
" public money," and " loan " respectively do not include
any taxation, money, or loan raised by local authorities or
bodies for local purposes.
(3) There shall be endorsed on every Money Bill when
it is sent up to the House of Lords and when it is pre-
sented to His Majesty for assent the certificate of the
200 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Speaker of the House of Commons signed by him that it
is a Money Bill. Before giving his certificate, the Speaker
shall consult, if practicable, two members to be appointed
from the Chairmen's Panel at the beginning of each
Session by the Committee of Selection.
Restriction of the powers of the House of Lords as to
Bills other than Money Bills. — 2— (1) If any Public Bill
(other than a Money Bill or a Bill containing any pro-
vision to extend the maximum duration of Parliament
beyond five years) is passed by the House of Commons in
three successive sessions (whether of the same Parliament
or not), and, having been sent up to the House of Lords
at least one month before the end of the session, is re-
jected by the House of Lords in each of those sessions,
that Bill shall, on its rejection for the third time by the
House of Lords, unless the House of Commons direct
to the contrary, be presented to His Majesty and become
an Act of Parliament on the Royal Assent being signified
thereto, notwithstanding that the House of Lords have
not consented to the Bill : Provided that this provision
shall not take effect unless two years have elapsed between
the date of the second reading in the first of those
sessions of the Bill in the House of Commons and the
date on which it passes the House of Commons in the
third of those sessions.
(2) When a Bill is presented to His Majesty for assent
in pursuance of the provisions of this section, there shall
be endorsed on the Bill the certificate of the Speaker of
the House of Commons signed by him that the provisions
of this section have been duly complied with.
(3) A Bill shall be deemed to be rejected by the House
of Lords if it is not passed by the House of Lords either
THE PARLIAMENT ACT, 1911 201
without amendment or with such amendments only as
may be agreed to by both Houses.
(4) A Bill shall be deemed to be the same Bill as a
former Bill sent up to the House of Lords in the preced-
ing Session if, when it is sent up to the House of Lords,
it is identical with the former Bill or contains only such
alterations as are certified by the Speaker of the House of
Commons to be necessary owing to the time which has
elapsed since the date of the former Bill, or to represent
any amendments which have been made by the House of
Lords in the former Bill in the preceding session, and any
amendments which are certified by the Speaker to have
been made by the House of Lords in the third session and
agreed to by the House of Commons shall be inserted in
the Bill as presented for Royal Assent in pursuance of
this section :
Provided that the House of Commons may, if they
think fit, on the passage of such a Bill through the House
in the second or third session, suggest any further amend-
ments without inserting the amendments in the Bill, and any
such suggested amendments shall be considered by the
House of Lords, and,- if agreed to by that House, shall be
treated as amendments made by the House of Lords and
agreed to by the House of Commons ; but the exercise of
this power by the House of Commons shall not affect the-
operation of this section in the event of the Bill being
rejected by the House of Lords.
Certificate of Speaker. — 3. Any certificate of the Speaker
of the House of Commons given under this Act shall be
conclusive for all purposes, and shall not be questioned
in any court of law.
Enacting Words. — 4. (1) In every Bill presented to
202 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
His Majesty under the preceding provisions of this Act,
the words of enactment shall be as follows, that is to
say : —
"Be it enacted by the King's most Excellent
Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the
Commons in this present Parliament assembled, in
accordance with the provisions of the Parliament
Act, 1911, and by authority of the same, as follows."
(2) Any alteration of a Bill necessary to give effect to
this section shall not be deemed to be an amendment of
the Bill.
Provisional Order Bills excluded. — 5. In this Act the
•expression " Public Bill " does not include any Bill for
confirming a Provisional Order.
Saving for existing Rights and Privileges of the House
vf Commons. — 6. Nothing in this Act shall diminish or
qualify the existing rights and privileges of the House of
Commons.
Duration of Parliament, 1 Geo. 1, Stat. 2, c. 38.— 7.
Five years shall be substituted for seven years as the time
fixed for the maximum duration of Parliament under the
Septennial Act, 1715.
Short Title.— %. This Act may be cited as the Parlia-
ment Act, 1911.
INDEX
ABGEORDUCTENHAUS, Austria,
185
— Bavana, 188
— Prussia, 188
Abyssinia, State Council, 184
Accession oath, the, 157
Administrations, the effect of their
fall, 124
Alberta, Single Chamber, 182
Alsace-Lorraine, Lower Chamber,
192
— Second Chamber, 192
America, United States of, Con-
gress, 41, 122, 197
— Constitution, 3, 5, 122, 151
— House of Representatives, 197
— Referendum in, 176
— Senate, 41, 89, 197
American Constitution, the, 151
Anhalt, Diet, 190
Anne, Queen, creates the twelve
peers, 73
Anson, Sir William, 156
Argentine Republic, House of
Deputies, 184
— Second Chamber, 184
Athenians and Mytilene, the, 107
Australia, Commonwealth of, 60
— House of Representatives, 180
— Money Bills, 79
— Parliament of, 60
— Senate, the, 57, 60, 79, 180
Australian Constitution, its
stability, 151
Austria, Second Chamber, 28, 91,
184, 185
BADEN, Lower Chamber, 189
Baden, Second Chamber, 78, 189
Bavaria, Kammer der Abgeor-
ducten, or Second Chamber,
1 88
Belgium, Chamber of Represen-
tatives, 185
— Constitution, 150
— Second Chamber, 85, 185
— Senate, 40
Bi-cameral and uni-cameral, 7
Bishops, exclusion of the, 10
Bolivia, Chamber of Deputies,
185
— Second Chamber, 185
Brazil, Chamber of Deputies, 185
— Second Chamber, 185
Bremen, Convent, 191
— Second Chamber, 191
Brunswick, Chamber, 190
Bryce, James, on bi-cameral
government, 103
Bule, Crete, 186
— Greece, 192
Bulgaria, Grand Sobranje, 186
— National Assembly, 185
Bundesrath, the German, 44, 188
Biirgerschaft, Lubeck, 192
Burgesses, House of, Hamburg,
191
CABINETS and Parliaments, 124
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry,
132
Canada, Constitution of, 51
— House of Commons, 182
— Senate, 90, 182
Cape Colony, Second Chamber,
65
204 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Charley, Sir William, 97
Chile, Chamber of Deputies, 186
Chile, Second Chamber, 186
Church oaths, the, 157, 158
— the, not tolerated by the
Puritans, 12
Civil War, the, 8
Colombia, House of Represen-
tatives, 186
— Second Chamber, 186
Colonial Constitutions, 48
Commons, House of, purged by
Colonel Pride, 14
— Resolutions claiming supreme
power, 15
Commonwealth of Australia, the,
60
— Constitution, 151
— House of Representatives,
180
— Money Bills, 79
— Parliament, 60
— Senate, 57, 60, 79, 180
Communes, Chamber of the,
Haiti, 192
Compulsory Referendum , the, 173
Congress, the American, 122,
197
— and Ministries, 123
— and Parliament, 124
Conservators of liberty, 22
Constitution, the word denned, I
— the American, 3, 5
— the British, 4
— suggestions for reform, 22
Constitutional experiments, 96
— laws, precision of, 155
— safeguards, 144
Constitutions, altering, 148
Convent, Bremen, 191
Convention, the, 33
Cortes, Spanish, 196
— Mexican, 194
Costa Rica, Chamber of Repre-
sentatives, 186
Council of Ancients, the, 34
Council of States, the Swiss, 197
Crete, Bule, 186
Cromwell, Oliver, 17
— his Parliaments, 18
Cromwell, Oliver, on Single-
Chamber Government, 17, 20
— his House of Lords, 20
— dissolves the Long Parlia-
ment, 21
Cromwell, Richard, 21
Cuba, House of Representatives,
1 86
— Second Chamber, 186
DEADLOCKS, means of avoiding,
71
Democracy, despotic, 17, 161
Denmark, Folketing, 187
— Second Chamber, 84, 187
— Senate, 40
Diet, Anhalt, 190
— Lippe, 191
Differences between Chambers, 71
— settled by electorate, 78
Diodotus the orator, 108
Directory, the, 34
Dominion of Canada, 52
— Constitution, 51
— House of Commons, 182
— Senate, 90, 182
Dominion of New Zealand, the,
64
— House of Representatives,
183
— Second Chamber, 64, 76,
183
Double-Chamber system, the, 92
ECUADOR, Chamber of Deputies,
187
— Second Chamber, 187
Education Bill of 1906, 113
Election, General, of January
1910, the, 114, 133
— of December 1910, 135
— the principle of, 32
Elections in England, 166
— single measure, 166
Elsass-Lothringen, Lower Cham-
ber, 192
— Upper Chamber, 192
Empire of Napoleon, the, 35
FEDERAL Assembly, Swiss, 197
INDEX
205
Federal Constitution of the United
States, the, 41
— Council of Germany, the, 44
— States and stable Constitu-
tions, 151
Federation, the principle of, 41
Folketing, Danish, 187
Foreign Legislatures, 184
France, Chamber of Deputies,
187
— Senate, 32, 37, 87, 187
Free speech, 146
French Constitution, the, 148
French constitutional experi-
ments, 96
GERMAN Empire, Reichstag, 188
Second Chamber, 28,91,188
Gladstone on the necessity of a
Second Chamber, 101
Glove trade, the, and the Insur-
ance Bill, 119
Government, forms of, 2
Greece, Bule, 192
— Council of State, 192
Grey, Lord, on Colonial Consti-
tutions, 49
Guatemala National Assembly,
192
— Second Chamber, 192
HAITI, Chamber of the Com-
munes, 192
— Second Chamber, 192
Hamburg, House of Burgesses,
191
— Second Chamber, 191
Hamilton, Alexander, on the
American Constitution, 44
— on the power of the many, 98
Hare, Thomas, and proportional
representation, 171
Heredity, the principle of, 27
Herschell, Lord, on the House of
Lords, 102
Hesse Darmstadt, Lower Cham-
ber, 190
— Second Chamber, 189
Holland, Lower Chamber, 194
— Senate of, 40, 84, 194
Home Rule, 116, 130, 132, 133,
134. 167
Honduras, Chamber of Deputies,
192
House of Lords in the Civil War
and in 1832, 9
Hungary, Magnates, 27, 75, 193
— House of Representatives,
193
INSTRUMENT of Government, the,
18
Insurance Act, the, 119, 127
Irish Church disestablished, 158
Irish Party, the, 125, 129, 132,
133
Italy, Chamber of Deputies, 193
— Senate, 29, 75, 193
JAPAN, House of Representatives,
193
— Second Chamber, 28, 193
Joint sittings, settlement of
differences by, 77
LAGTING, Norwegian, 194
Landtag of Oldenburg, 190
Laud, death of Archbishop, 10
Legislation, unrevised, dangers
of, 145
Legislatures, colonial, 180
— foreign, 184
Liberia, House of Representatives,
X93
— Second Chamber, 193
Licensing Bill of 1907, the, 113
Lieber, Professor, on bi-cameral
government, 99
Liechtenstein, Chamber, 193
Life peerages, 156
Lippe, Diet, 191
Local Veto, 130
Long Parliament, the, 12
— dissolved, 21
Lords' Amendments to Parliament
Act, 138
Lords, House of, origin of, 25
— and the rejection of Bills, 70
Liibeck, Burgerschaft, 192
— Second Chamber, 192
206 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Luxemburg, Chamber of De-
puties, 194
MAGNATES, the Table of, 27, 193
Maine, Sir Henry, on the House
of Lords, 154
Mandate, the theory of the, 170
Manitoba, Chamber, 182
Matters for the Referendum, 174
Measures and Programmes, 170
Mexico, Cortes, 194
— House of Representatives,
194
— Second Chamber, 194
Mill, John Stuart, condemns
Single Chambers, 100
— and proportional representa-
tion, 171
Ministers and Congress, 123
Ministry and Parliament, 124
Mirabeau on Single Chambers, 32
Monaco, National Council, 194
Monck, General, and the Restora-
tion, 22
Money Bills, 68, 75, 76, 77, 81, 82,
83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 136
Montenegro, Chamber, 194
Mytilene, the story of, 107
NATIONAL Assembly, the, 32
— Insurance Act, the, 119, 127
Nayler, James, the case of, 18
Netherlands, Lower Chamber,
— Second Chamber, 40, 84, 194
New Brunswick, Chamber, 182
Newcastle Programme, the, 131
Newfoundland, House of As-
sembly, 183
— Legislative Council, 183
New South Wales, Constitutions
of, 58
— Legislative Assembly, 180
— Senate, 58, 76, 180
New York State, its Constitution,
IS2
— Method of Amendment, 153
New Zealand, House of Repre-
sentatives, 183
— Second Chamber, 64, 76, 183
Nicaragua, Chamber, 194
Nominated Second Chambers, 29
Nomination by Executive Govern-
ment, 29
Norway, Lower Chamber, 194
— Second Chamber, 40, 84, 194
Nova Scotia, Legislative As-
sembly, 182
— Legislative Council, 182
ODELSTING of Norway, 194
Oldenburg, Landtag of, 190
One Man One Vote, 130
Ontario, Legislative Assembly,
182
Optional Referendum, the, 173
Orange River Colony, Second
Chamber, 65, 83
Oregon, Referendum in, 176
Other House, the, 20
PALMERSTON, Lord, and Life
Peerages, 155
Panama, Chamber of Deputies,
J95
Paraguay, Chamber of Deputies,
195
— Second Chamber, 195
Parke, Sir James, and Life Peer-
ages, 158
Parliament Act of 1911, the, 70,
126, 136
— and bad Bills, 127
— Preamble, the, 135
— and Single Chamber, 128
— Text, 198
Parliament and Congress, 124
— and Ministry, 124
— of 1910, the, 115
— powers of, 68
Parliamentary groups, 125
Parties in Parliament, 125
Party groups, 125, 130
Party politics, 112, 125, 130
Peerages, Life, 158
Peers in 1832, 9
— in the Civil War, 9
— Petition for abolition of, 13
— Resolutions regarding aboli-
tion of, 15
INDEX
207
Peers, the Cromwellian, 20
Peru, House of Representatives,
— Second Chamber, 195
Ploughing the sands, 131
Portugal, National Council, 195
— Second Chamber, 195
Preamble of the Parliament Act,
the, 135
Presidential System, the, 122
Pride, Colonel John, purges the
House of Commons, 14
Prince Edward Island, Legis-
lative Assembly, 182
Programmes and measures, 170
Proportional representation, 171
Prussia, Abgeorductenhaus, or
Second Chamber of, 28, 76,
188
Puritans and the Church, 12
QUEBEC, Legislative Assembly,
182
— Second Chamber, 182
Queensland, Legislative Assem-
bly, 181
— Referendum in, 178
— Second Chamber, 59, 85,
181
REFERENDUM, the, 162
— in Switzerland, 173
— in America, 176
— in Australia, 178
Religion during the Civil War,
12
Representatives in Parliament,
character of, in
Representation, proportional, 171
Republic of France, the First, 32
— the Second, 36
— the Third, 37
Restoration, the, and the Army,
23
Right to work, the, 36
Rosebery, Lord, on the neces-
sities of a Second Chamber, 103
— on ploughing the sands, 131
Roumania, Chamber of Deputies,
195
Roumania, Second Chamber, 195
Russia, Duma, 195
— Second Chamber of, 40,
195
SAFEGUARDS, constitutional, 144
Salvador, Congress of Deputies,
196
Santo Domingo, Chamber of
Deputies, 196
— Second Chamber, 196
Saskatchewan, Single Chamber,
183
Saxe-Altenburg, Chamber, 190
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Cham-
ber, 190
Saxe-Meiningen, Chamber, 191
Saxony, Kingdom of, Lower
Chamber, 189
— Second Chamber, 188
Saxony, Duchy of, Single Cham-
ber, 190
Schaumberg-Lippe, Chamber, 191
Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Cham-
ber, 191
— Sondershausen, Chamber,
191
Scottish Established Church, the,
157
Second Chambers, Foreign, 25
Senate, American, 89, 197
— Australian, 60, 180
— Belgian, 40
— Canadian, 53, i8a
— Danish, 40
— Dutch, 40, 84, 194
— French, 37, 87, 187
— Italian, 29, 79, 193
Servia, Chamber, 196
Siam, Legislative Council, 169
Simplicity of the Referendum, 164
Single Chamber Government dur-
ing the Civil War, 16
— Cromwell on, 17
Single Chamber System, failures
of the, 95
— — da
dangers of the, 107
Skuptschina, Servia, 196
Smith, Goldwin, on the Canadian
Senate, 56
208 THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
Sobranje, Bulgarian, 186
South Australia, House of As-
sembly, 181
— Referendum in, 178
— Second Chamber, 59, 82, 181
South Africa, Constitutions of,
65
— House of Assembly, 183
— Second Chamber, 77, 183
Sovereign's oath, the, 157, 158
Spain, Chamber of Deputies, 196
— Second Chamber, 28, 40, 85,
196
Stability of Constitutions, 148
State Constitutions in America,
152
— workshops, 36
Storthing, Norwegian, 194
Strafford, death of, 10
Stuarts, the, 9
Swamping the Second Chamber,
7i
Sweden, Lower Chamber, 196
— Second Chamber, 40, 83,
196
Switzerland, National Council,
197
— Referendum in, 173
— Second Chamber, 197
TASMANIA, House of Assembly,
181
— Second Chamber, 59, 181
Taxation, control over, 141
Thiers, and the bi-cameral sys-
tem, 97
— on constitutional govern-
ment, 34
Transvaal, Second Chamber, 65,
83
Treaties and the French Senate,
88
Tudors, the, 9
UNI-CAMERAL and bi-cameral, 7
Union of South Africa, the, Con-
stitution of, 65
United States, Congress, 41, 122,
197
— Constitution, the, 3, 5, 122, 151
— House of Representatives, 197
— Referendum in, 176
— Senate of, 41, 197
— Senate and Money Bills, 89
Upper House, Cromwell's, 20
Uruguay, Chamber of Repre-
sentatives, 197
— Second Chamber, 197
VENEZUELA, Chamber of Depu-
ties, 197
— Second Chamber, 197
Victoria, Legislative Assembly,
181
Victoria, Second Chamber, 59,
80, 180
Voting by Referendum, 167
WELSH Disestablishment, 130,
132
— group, the, 126
Western Australia, Legislative
Assembly, 182
— Second Chamber, 59, 181
Will of the People, the, 142
Wiirtemburg, Lower Chamber,
189
— Second Chamber, 78, 189
YUKON, Council, 183
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