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If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. From The Quarterly Review. THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT: ITS HISTORY AND ELOQUENCE.* mony of parts ? Which of the three branches of the legislature at its creation or inception held, or was intended to hold, THERE is a comic History of England. the same relative rank which it holds Why might there not be an anecdotical now? Mr. Butler relates in his "Reminone, in which the salient points should be iscences," that Moreton, Chief Justice of placed in broad relief by memorable say- Chester, happened to say in the House, ings, and striking incidents by well-"King, Lords, and Commons, or (looking chosen traits of valour, virtue, patriotism, at the first Pitt) as that right honourable eloquence, and wit? There is no pleas- member would term them, Commons, anter mode of conveying knowledge, no Lords, and King." Pitt called him to surer mode of durably impressing it. order, and desired the words to be taken The most fugitive attention is caught by down.. They were written down by the anecdotes: the most volatile mind retains clerk. "Bring them to me," said Pitt, in them so long as it retains anything; and his loftiest tone. By this time Moreton none but the shallowest will miss the was frightened out of his senses. "Sir," moral they point, the reflections they sug- he stammered out, addressing the Speaker, gest or the conclusions they justify. The I am sorry to have given any offence to compilers of "A Book of Parliamentary the right honourable member or to the Anecdote" have manifested no extraordi- House. I meant nothing. King, Lords, and nary amount of discrimination or research. Commons - Lords, King, and Commons Their materials are drawn from familiar Commons Lords, and King: tria juncta in and easily accessible sources; their ar- uno. I meant nothing; indeed, I meant rangement is open to grave objection; yet nothing." Pitt rose: "I don't wish to push their main object, as explained in their the matter further. The moment a man Preface, has been attained. They have acknowledges his error, he ceases to be produced an amusing, useful, and interest- guilty. I have a great regard for the ing work; nor is it well possible for any honourable member, and as an instance of thoughtful reader, at all given to political that regard, I give him this advice: whenspeculation, to skim their pages without ever he means nothing I recommend him picturing to himself the various stages by to say nothing." which the British Parliament has reached its proud pre-eminence amongst the legislative assemblies of both hemispheres; without evoking scene after scene, or crisis upon crisis, in which its independent existence was rudely threatened by highhanded prerogative from without, or its character, as an instrument of freedom and civilization, sadly compromised by faction or corruption from within. When Madame de Staël was expatiating to the Emperor Alexander on the good fortune of Russia in possessing such a ruler, he replied, "Alas, Madame, I am nothing but a happy accident." Can the British Parliament, looking either to its origin, its constitution, or its growth, be honestly described as anything else? Where are the marks of contrivance or design, of unity of plan, of calculated har A Book of Parliamentary Anecdote, Compiled from Authentic Sources. By G. H. Jennings and W. S. Johnstone. London, Paris, and New York, 1872, This incident is related in illustration of Pitt's ascendency, which must have been absolutely overwhelming if he could bully an eminent lawyer into a craven apology for words which, by no great latitude of interpretation, might be proved historically true. Again and again has the order of precedence been practically reversed. The very shifting of places which he blurted out in his confusion has occurred. It was Lords, King, and Commons frequently, if not normally, under the Plantagenets. King, Lords, and Commons, under the Tudors: Commons, Lords, and King, during the Great Rebellion. Where the varying arrangement fails, is in not conveying an accurate impression of the contrast presented by the Commons as they started and as they stand. The obscure and unhonoured state from which they emerged recalls "the dirt and seaThe weed whence proud Venice rose." burgesses were summoned solely to vote that though they had all with their voices trusted him, yet except every one of them could put into his own head their several wits, he alone in so weighty a matter was unmeet to make his grace answer." subsidies. The right of representation | arguments, proving that for them to make was regarded as an oppressive burthen answer was neither expedient nor agreefrom which the smaller boroughs fre- able with the ancient liberty of the quently petitioned to be freed. The House; in conclusion for himself showed Commons dared not initiate any measure of legislation: too happy to procure the redress of their grievances by tacking a humble prayer or a halting hesitating condition to a money bill. They prostrated themselves like slaves before the Crown. They crouched like menials, and bent uncovered, like vassals owing suit and service, before the Lords. They received wages from their constituents: like other paid agents, they were bound to abide by their instructions; and it would have puz- | fended, so would I too, my Lord,” replied zled Burke to confirm the proposition by authority when he told the electors of Bristol that member of the British Parliament was not a delegate. All readers of Hume will remember the story of Henry VIII. sending for Edward Montague, a member who was supposed to have considerable influence, and thus apostrophizing him: "Ha! man! will they not suffer my bill to pass?" and, laying his hand on Montague's head, then on his knees,Get my bill passed by to-morrow, or else to-morrow this head of yours shall be off." The Bill was passed on the morrow. To complete the humiliation of the Commons, the Cardinal Minister treated them with no more respect than his master. "In full blown dignity see Wolsey stand, Law in his voice and fortune in his hand." It was in this plenitude of pride and power in which the satirist has painted him, that Wolsey, fearing lest a subsidy of extraordinary amount (800,000.) might not pass smoothly, announced his intention to be present when it was brought forward, He came in state, and delivered a solemn oration setting forth that less than the sum demanded would not answer the prince's occasions; and then looked round for a reply. "Getting none, he required answer of Mr. Speaker (Sir Thomas More), who first reverently on his knees excusing the silence of the House, abashed at the presence of so noble a personage, able to amaze the wisest and best learned in a realm, and then, by many probable The Cardinal, angry and mystified, as he well might be, suddenly arose and departed. The next time More waited on him at Whitehall, he said: "I wish to God, Mr. More, you had been at Rome when I made you Speaker." "Your Grace not of Sir Thomas, "for then should I have seen the place I long have desired to visit.” The subserviency of the Third Estate is rendered more glaring by the means which More's ready wit suggested for extricating them from the dilemma. Queen Elizabeth expressly prohibited Parliament from meddling with State matters or ecclesiastical causes, and she sent members to prison who dared to transgress her imperial edict in these particulars. When James commanded a conference between the House of Commons and the Judges, he commanded it (to use his own words), "as an absolute king," from whom all their privileges have been derived. He stuck to this pretension, which was rather evaded than contested; never called together his faithful Commons except when he wanted money; and never met them without quarrelling with them. His sense of their growing importance, however, was betrayed in 1620 by his pettish exclamation when the deputation of twelve waited on him at Newmarket to present the declaration against monopolies: "Chairs! chairs! here be twal kynges comin." And again, by his apostrophe to the restive horse: "The de'ili my saul, sirrah, an you be not quiet, I'se send you to the five hundred kings in the House of Commons; they'll quickly tame you." When the Prince (Charles I.) and Buckingham were promoting the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex, the canny old king told his son that "he would live to * Roper's "Life of Sir Thomas More." have his bellyfull of Parliamentary impeachments." During the Reform Bill agitation of 1831, an enthusiastically loyal orator at Nottingham called on the lieges to rally round their sovereign "like the barons at Runnymede." This style of rallying was discontinued after the wars of the Roses, which made sad havoc amongst the peerage. Only twenty-nine temporal peers were summoned to the first Parliament of Henry VII. They numbered fifty-nine at the death of Elizabeth, 139 the year after the Restoration, 168 at the death of Queen Anne, exclusive of the 16 representative peers of Scotland, 174 at the accession of George III. In the first ten years of his reign forty-two peers were created, or raised to a higher order in the peerage. Lord North created or promoted about thirty. In 1801, when Mr. Pitt temporarily left office, he had created or promoted 140 British peers.* The House of Lords now consists of nearly five hundred members, including the episcopal bench and the representative peers; yet the augmentation has hardly kept pace with the increase of wealth and population. The silken barons, who replaced the iron barons, were, most of them, the creatures of the Crown, and the House of Lords could hardly be said to possess an independent existence or will of its own till after the Great Rebellion. When it began to play a leading part in Government and legislation, its leaning towards the Crown was influenced by the frequent attendance of the King at its sittings. Charles the Second used to say they were as good as a comedy. They lost their comic character towards the conclusion of the reign, but the King was present during the whole debate on the Exclusion Bill, which was prolonged till eleven at night, Subsequently to the Revolution, the attendance of the Sovereign as a listener would have been deemed unconstitutional, and the custom has consequently fallen into disuse. The conflicts between the two Houses, with their comparative weight and influ ence at different epochs, are replete with dramatic situations and details. Take, for example, the conflict in 1700, when the Commons brought in a Bill for annulling royal grants of forfeited property and sought to force it intact through the Lords by coupling it with a money Bill. The Lords passed amendments: the Commons rejected them: the Lords passed them a second time, and a second time received the Bill back again with a threatening intimation that it must pass. In every conflict of this kind the final appeal must be to the people, and the boldest chainpions of the peerage felt that they had no alternative but to give way. It is worthy of remark that the hero of Blenheim then acted the part so frequently acted in our time by the hero of Waterloo. The Duke of Marlborough counselled concession as the less of two evils. Better pass a bad Bill than provoke another revolution or civil war. This is substantially the same argument by which the Duke of Wellington persuaded the Lords to pass the Reform Bill, the same by which he satisfied himself that he was bound to support the Bill for the abolition of the Corn Laws. He told a Protectionist Peer, who expressed a bad opinion of it," Bad opinion of the Bill, my Lord! You can't have a worse opinion of it than I have, but it was recommended from the throne; it was passed by the Commons by a large majority, and we must all vote for it. Queen's Government must be supported." The Has not this (the great Duke's favourite) doctrine been carried farther than he intended or could have wished? The Queen's Government-meaning government as involving law and order - must be supported; but not any particular government or ministry, nor any particular policy in which their official existence may be wrapped up. Sound well-considered legislation is an impossibility, if all honest judgment is to be waived in deference to a so-called public opinion, which we are to take on trust, forgetting that it is we ourselves who, by falling in with it whilst we dissent from it, give it weight. Let no man, either Peer or Commoner, support • "Treatise upon the Law, Privileges, &o. of Par- or vote for what he deems a bad Bill or Hament." By Sir T. Erskine May. measure. We shall then, at all events, be |