I. THE CROWN: LEGAL STATUS AND PRIVILEGES

*48. Contrasts of Theory and Fact.*--The government of the United Kingdom is in ultimate theory an absolute monarchy, in form a limited, const.i.tutional monarchy, and in fact a thoroughgoing democracy.[59] At its head stands the sovereign, who is at the same time the supreme executive, a co-ordinate legislative authority (and, in theory, much more than that), the fountain of justice and of honor, the "supreme governor" of the Church, the commander-in-chief of the army and navy, the conservator of the peace, and the _parens patriae_ and _ex officio_ guardian of the helpless and the needy. In law, all land is held, directly or indirectly, of him. Parliament exists only by his will. Those who sit in it are summoned by his writ, and the privilege of voting for a member of the lower chamber is only a franchise, not a right independent of his grant. Technically, the sovereign never dies; there is only a demise of the crown, i.e., a transfer of regal authority from one person to another, and the state is never without a recognized head.

[Footnote 59: From this essential incongruity of theory, form, and fact arises the special difficulty which must attend any attempt to describe with accuracy and completeness the British const.i.tutional system. In the study of every government the divergences of theory and fact must be borne constantly in mind, but nowhere are these divergences so numerous, so far-reaching, or so fundamental as in the government of the United Kingdom.]

The a.s.sertions that have been made represent with substantial accuracy the ultimate theory of the status of the crown in the governmental system. In respect to the form and fact of that system as it actually operates, however, it would hardly be possible to make a.s.sertions that would convey a more erroneous impression. The breadth of the discrepancy that here subsists between theory and fact will be made apparent as examination proceeds of the organization and workings of the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the government of the realm. It is necessary first of all, however, to give attention to certain of the more external aspects of the position which the monarch occupies.

*49. t.i.tle to the Throne: the Act of Settlement, 1701.*--Since (p. 049) the Revolution of 1688 t.i.tle to the English throne has been based solely upon the will of the nation as expressed in parliamentary enactment. The statute under which the succession is regulated is the Act of Settlement, pa.s.sed by the Tory parliament of 1701, by which it was provided that, in default of heirs of William III. and Anne, the crown and all prerogatives thereto appertaining should "be, remain, and continue to the most Excellent Princess Sophia, and the heirs of her body, being Protestants."[60] Sophia, a granddaughter of James I., was the widow of the Elector of Hanover, and although in 1701 she was not first in the natural order of succession she was first among the surviving heirs who were Protestants. It was by virtue of the act mentioned that, upon the death of Anne in 1714, the throne devolved upon the son of the German Electress (George I.). The present sovereign, George V., is the eighth of the Hanoverian dynasty.

Although it would be entirely within the competence of Parliament to repeal the Act of Settlement and to vest the crown in a member of some house other than the Hanoverian, there is, of course, no occasion for such an act, and the throne may be expected to continue to pa.s.s from one member of the present royal family to another in strict accordance with the principles of heredity and primogeniture. The rules of descent are essentially identical with those governing the inheritance of real property at common law.[61] Regularly, the sovereign's eldest son, the Prince of Wales,[62] inherits. If he be not alive, the inheritance pa.s.ses to his issue, male or female. If there be none, the succession devolves upon the sovereign's second son, or upon his issue; and in default thereof, upon the eldest son who survives, or his issue. If the vacancy be not supplied by or through, a son, daughters and their issue inherit after a similar order. No Catholic may inherit, nor anyone marrying a Catholic; and by the Act of 1701 it was stipulated that every person who should attain the throne "shall join in communion with the Church of England as by law established." (p. 050) If after accession the sovereign should avow himself a Catholic, or should marry a Catholic, his subjects would be absolved from their allegiance. It is required, furthermore, that the sovereign shall take at his coronation an oath wherein the tenets of Catholicism are abjured. Until 1910 the phraseology of this oath, formulated as it was in a period when ecclesiastical animosities were still fervid,[63] was such as to be offensive not only to Catholics but to temperate-minded men of all faiths. By act of parliament pa.s.sed in antic.i.p.ation of the coronation of George V., the language employed in the oath was made very much less objectionable. The sovereign is required now merely to declare "that he is a faithful Protestant and that he will, according to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the throne of the Realm, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of his power according to law."

[Footnote 60: The text of the Act of Settlement is printed in Stubbs, Select Charters, 528-531; Adams and Stephens, Select Doc.u.ments, 475-479; and Gee and Hardy, Doc.u.ments Ill.u.s.trative of English Church History, 664-670, As safeguards against dangers which might conceivably arise from the accession of a foreign-born sovereign the Act stipulated (1) that no person who should thereafter come into possession of the crown should go outside the dominions of England, Scotland, or Ireland, without consent of Parliament, and (2) that in the event that the crown should devolve upon any person not a native of England the nation should not be obliged to engage in any war for the defense of any dominions or territories not belonging to the crown of England, without consent of Parliament.]

[Footnote 61: Lowell, Government of England, I., 17.]

[Footnote 62: This t.i.tle was created by Edward I.

in 1301. Its possession has never involved the exercise of any measure of political power.]

[Footnote 63: The words to be employed were prescribed originally in the Act for Establishing the Coronation Oath, pa.s.sed in the first year of William and Mary. For the text see Robertson, Select Statutes, Cases, and Doc.u.ments, 65-68. An historical sketch of some value is A. Bailey, The Succession to the English Crown (London, 1879).]

*50. Regencies.*--The age of majority of the sovereign is eighteen. The const.i.tutions of most monarchical states contain more or less elaborate stipulations respecting the establishment of a regency in the event of the sovereign's minority or incapacitation. In Great Britain, on the contrary, the practice has been to make provision for each such contingency when it should arise. A regency can be created and a regent designated only by act of Parliament. Parliamentary enactments, however, become operative only upon receiving the a.s.sent of the crown, and it has sometimes happened that the sovereign for whom a regent was required to be appointed was incapable of performing any governmental act. In such a case, there has been resort usually to some legal fiction by which the appearance, at least, of regularity has been preserved. A regency act regularly defines the limits of the regent's powers and establishes specific safeguards in respect to the interests of both the sovereign and the nation.[64]

[Footnote 64: For the text of the Regency Act of 1811, pa.s.sed by reason of the incapacitation of George III., see Robertson, Statutes, Cases and Doc.u.ments, 171-182. For an excellent survey of the general subject see May and Holland, Const.i.tutional History of England, I., Chap. 3.]

*51. Royal Privileges: the Civil List.*--The sovereign is capable of owning land and other property, and of disposing of it precisely as may any private citizen. The vast acc.u.mulations of property, however, which at one time comprised the princ.i.p.al source of revenue of the crown, have become the possession of the state, and as such are administered entirely under the direction of Parliament. In lieu (p. 051) of the income derived formerly from land and other independent sources the sovereign has been accorded for the support of the royal household a fixed annual subsidy--voted under the designation of the Civil List--the amount of which is determined afresh at the beginning of each reign. The Civil List was inst.i.tuted by an act of 1689 in which Parliament settled upon the king for the meeting of personal expenses, the payment of civil officers, and other charges, a stipulated sum, thus separating for the first time the private expenditures of the crown from the public outlays of the nation.[65] The sum given William III. was 700,000. George III., in return for a fixed Civil List, surrendered his interest in the hereditary revenues of the crown, and William IV. went further and, in return for a Civil List of 510,000 a year, surrendered not only the hereditary revenues but also a large group of miscellaneous and casual sources of income.[66] At the accession of Queen Victoria the Civil List was fixed at 385,000. The amount was comparatively small, but opportunity was taken at the time finally to transfer to Parliament the making of provision for all charges properly incident to the maintenance of the state. In addition to various annuities payable to the children of the royal family, the Civil List of Edward VII., established by Act of July 2, 1901, amounted to 470,000, of which 110,000 was appropriated to the privy purse of the king and queen, 125,000 to salaries and retiring allowances of the royal household, and 193,000 to household expenses.

At the accession of George V., in 1910, the Civil List was continued in the sum of 470,000.[67]

[Footnote 65: Under Charles II. Parliament began to appropriate portions of the revenue for specific purposes, and after 1688 this became the general practice. Throughout a century the proceeds of particular taxes were appropriated for particular ends. But in 1787 Pitt simplified the procedure involved by creating a single Consolidated Fund into which all revenues were turned and from which all expenditures were met.]

[Footnote 66: Accuracy requires mention of the fact that, by exception, the crown still enjoys the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall, the latter being part of the appanage of the Prince of Wales.]

[Footnote 67: On the history of the Civil List see May and Holland, Const.i.tutional History of England, I., 152-175.]

The sovereign enjoys unrestricted immunity from political responsibility and from personal distraint. The theory of the law has long been that the king can do no wrong, which means that for his public acts the sovereign's ministers must bear complete responsibility and for his private conduct he may not be called to account in any court of law or by any legal process. He cannot be arrested, his goods cannot be distrained, and as long as a palace remains a royal residence no sort of judicial proceeding can be executed in it. (p. 052) Strictly, the revenues are the king's, whence it arises that the king is himself exempt from taxation, though lands purchased by the privy purse are taxed. And there are numerous minor privileges, such as the use of special liveries and a right to the royal salute, to which the sovereign, as such, is regularly ent.i.tled.

II. THE POWERS OF THE CROWN

*52. Sources: the Prerogative.*--Vested in the crown is, in the last a.n.a.lysis, an enormous measure of authority. The sum total of powers, whether or not actually exercised by the sovereign immediately, is of two-fold origin. There are powers, in the first place, which have been defined, or conferred outright, by parliamentary enactment. Others there are, however--more numerous and more important--which rest upon the simple basis of custom or the Common Law. Those powers which belong to the statutory group are, as a rule, specific and easily ascertainable. But those which comprise the ancient customary rights of the crown, i.e., the prerogative, are not always possible of exact delimitation. The prerogative is defined by Dicey as "the residue of discretionary or arbitrary authority which at any time is legally left in the hands of the crown."[68] The elements of it are to be ascertained, not from statutes but from precedents, and the sources of it, as enumerated by Anson, are (1) the residue of the executive power which the king in the early stages of English history possessed in all of the branches of government; (2) survivals of the power once accruing to the king as the feudal chief of the country; and (3) attributes with which the crown has been invested by legal theory, e.g., the attribute of perpetuity popularly expressed in the aphorism "the king never dies," and that of perfection of judgment, similarly expressed in the saying "the king can do no wrong."[69] The most considerable element in the prerogative is that which Anson first mentions, i.e., the power which the king has carried over, in the teeth of the popularization of the governmental system, from days when the royal authority was not hedged about as since the seventeenth century it has been. It is further to be observed that no inconsiderable portion of the royal powers as they exist to-day represent original prerogative worked over and delimited by parliamentary enactment, so that in many instances it becomes difficult to determine whether a given power exists by virtue of a statute, by which it is to be regarded as absolutely defined, or (p. 053) by virtue of an anterior prerogative which may be capable of being stretched or interpreted more or less arbitrarily. Nominally, the sovereign still holds by divine right. At the head of every public writ to-day stand the words "George V., by the Grace of G.o.d of Great Britain and Ireland King." But no principle of the working const.i.tution is more clearly established than that in accordance with which the prerogatives of the crown may be defined, restricted, or extended by the supreme legislative power. Among prerogatives once claimed and exercised, but long since rendered obsolete by prohibitive legislation may be mentioned those of imposing taxes without parliamentary consent, suspending or dispensing with laws, erecting tribunals not proceeding according to the ordinary course of justice, declaring forfeit the property of convicted traitors,[70] purveyance, pre-emption, and the alienation of crown lands at pleasure.

[Footnote 68: Law of the Const.i.tution (7th ed.), 420.]

[Footnote 69: Law and Custom of the Const.i.tution, II., Pt. I., 3-5.]

[Footnote 70: Abolished by the Felony Act of 1870.]

*53. Powers, Theoretical and Actual.*--It is not, however, the origin of the royal power, but rather the manner of its exercise, that fixes the essential character of monarchy in Great Britain to-day. The student of this phase of the subject is confronted at the outset with a paradox which has found convenient expression in the aphorism that the king reigns but does not govern. The meaning of the aphorism is that, while the sovereign is possessed of all of the inherent dignity of royalty, it is left to him actually to exercise in but a very restricted measure the powers which are involved in the business of government. Technically, all laws are made by the crown in parliament; all judicial decisions are rendered by the crown through the courts; all laws are executed and all administrative acts are performed by the crown. But in point of fact laws are enacted by Parliament independently; verdicts are brought in by tribunals whose immunity from royal domination is thoroughly a.s.sured; and the executive functions of the state are exercised all but exclusively by the ministers and their subordinates. One who would understand what English monarchy really is must take account continually both of what the king does and may do theoretically and of what he does and may do in actual practice. The matter is complicated further by the fact that powers once possessed have been lost, that others which have never been formally relinquished have so long lain unused that the question may fairly be debated whether they still exist, and that there never has been, nor is likely ever to be, an attempt to enumerate categorically or to define comprehensively the range of powers, either theoretical or actual.

*54. Executive Powers.*--Disregarding for the moment the means of their actual exercise, the powers of the crown to-day may be said to (p. 054) fall into two princ.i.p.al groups. The first comprises those which are essentially executive in character; the second, those which are shared with the two houses of Parliament, being, therefore chiefly legislative.

The first group is distinctly the more important. It includes: (1) the appointment, directly or indirectly, of all national public officers, except some of the officials of the parliamentary chambers and a few unimportant hereditary dignitaries; (2) the removal, upon occasion, of all appointed officers except judges, members of the Council of India, and the Comptroller and Auditor General; (3) the execution of all laws and the supervision of the executive machinery of the state throughout all its branches; (4) the expenditure of public money in accordance with appropriations voted by Parliament; (5) the pardoning of offenders against the criminal law, with some exceptions, either before or after conviction;[71] (6) the granting, in so far as not prohibited by statute, of charters of incorporation; (7) the creating of all peers and the conferring of all t.i.tles and honors; (8) the coining of all money; (9) the summoning of Convocation and, by reason of the headship of the Established Church, the virtual appointment of the archbishops, bishops, and most of the deans and canons; (10) the supreme command of the army and navy, involving the raising and control of the armed forces of the nation, subject to such conditions only as Parliament may impose; (11) the representing of the nation in all of its dealings with foreign powers, including the appointment of all diplomatic and consular agents and the negotiation and conclusion of peace; and (12) the exercise, largely under statutory authority conferred within the past half-century, of supervision or control in respect to local government, education, public health, pauperism, housing, and a wide variety of other social and industrial interests.

[Footnote 71: This power, in practice, is seldom exercised. The Act of Settlement prescribed that "no pardon shall be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in parliament."]

*55. The Composition of the Executive.*--The executive branch of the government, through whose agency these powers are exercised, consists of the sovereign, the ministry, and the entire hierarchy of administrative officials reaching downwards from the heads of departments and the under-secretaries at London through the several grades of clerks to the least important revenue and postal employees.

There are various points of view from which the chief of the executive may be conceived of as the sovereign, the prime minister, the ministry collectively, or the king and ministry conjointly. So far as executive functions go, the sovereign, in law, is very nearly as supreme as (p. 055) in the days of personal and absolute monarchy. The ministers are but his advisers, the local administrative authorities his agents. The government is conducted wholly in his name. In practice, however, supreme executive acts of the kinds that have been mentioned are performed by the ministers; or, if performed by the crown immediately, will not be undertaken without the ministers' knowledge and a.s.sent.

The ministers, and not the sovereign, may be held to account by parliament for every executive act performed, and it is but logical that they should control the time and tenor of such acts. It falls very generally to the prime minister to speak for and otherwise represent the ministerial group. On the whole, however, it accords best with both law and fact to consider the executive under the working const.i.tution as consisting of the crown as represented and advised by the ministry.

*56. The Crown and Legislation.*--The second general group of powers lodged in the crown comprises those which relate to legislation.

Technically, all legislative authority is vested in "the king in parliament," by which is meant the king acting in collaboration with the two houses. Parliament transacts business only during the pleasure of the crown. The crown summons and prorogues the houses, and it is empowered at any time to dissolve the House of Commons. No parliamentary act, furthermore, is valid without the crown's a.s.sent.

It is on the legislative, rather than the executive side, none the less, that the crown has lost most heavily in actual authority. There was a time when the crown possessed inherent law-making power and through the agency of proclamations and ordinances contributed independently to the body of enforceable law. To-day the sovereign may exercise no such power, save alone in the crown colonies. It is true that ordinances with the force of law are still issued, and that their number and importance tend steadily to be increased. But in all cases these ordinances have been, and must be, authorized specifically by statute. As "statutory orders" they emanate from a delegated authority purely and bear no relation to the ancient ordinance by prerogative.

The king may not even, by virtue of any inherent power, promulgate ordinances in completion of parliamentary statutes--the sort of thing which the French president, the Italian king, and virtually every continental ruler may do with full propriety. Of his own authority, furthermore, the sovereign may not alter by one jot or t.i.ttle the law of the land. There was a time when the crown claimed and exercised the right to suspend, or to dispense with, laws which had been duly enacted and put in operation. But this practice was forbidden definitely (p. 056) in the Bill of Rights, and no sovereign since the last Stuart has sought to revive the prerogative. Still another aspect of the ancient partic.i.p.ation by the king in the legislative function was the influencing of the composition of the House of Commons through the right to confer upon boroughs the privilege of electing members. This right, never expressly withdrawn, is regarded now as having been forfeited by disuse. Finally, the power to withhold a.s.sent from a measure pa.s.sed in Parliament has not been exercised since the days of Queen Anne,[72] and while legally it still exists, it is conceded for all practical purposes to have been extinguished.

[Footnote 72: In 1707, when the Queen refused her a.s.sent to a bill for settling the militia in Scotland.]

*57. Principles Governing the Actual Exercise of Powers.*--After full allowances have been made, the powers of the British crown to-day comprise a sum total of striking magnitude. "All told," says Lowell, "the executive authority of the crown is, in the eye of the law, very wide, far wider than that of the chief magistrate in many countries, and well-nigh as extensive as that now possessed by the monarch in any government not an absolute despotism; and although the crown has no inherent legislative power except in conjunction with Parliament, it has been given by statute very large powers of subordinate legislation.... Since the accession of the House of Hanover the new powers conferred upon the crown by statute have probably more than made up for the loss to the prerogative of powers which have either been restricted by the same process or become obsolete by disuse. By far the greater part of the prerogative, as it existed at that time, has remained legally vested in the crown, and can be exercised to-day."[73]

[Footnote 73: Government of England, I., 23, 26.]

The next fundamental thing to be observed is that the extended powers here referred to are exercised, not by the king in person, but by ministers with whose choosing the sovereign has but little to do and over whose acts he has only an incidental and extra-legal control.

Underlying the entire const.i.tutional order are two principles whose operation would seem to reduce the sovereign to a sheer nonent.i.ty. The first is that the crown shall perform no important governmental act whatsoever save through the agency of the ministers. The second is that these ministers shall be responsible absolutely to Parliament for every public act which they perform. From these principles arises the fiction that "the king can do no wrong," which means legally that the sovereign cannot be adjudged guilty of wrongdoing (and that therefore no proceedings may be inst.i.tuted against him), and politically that the ministers are responsible, singly in small affairs and (p. 057) conjointly in more weighty ones, for everything that is done in the crown's name. "In a const.i.tutional point of view," writes an English authority, "so universal is the operation of this rule that there is not a moment in the king's life, from his accession to his demise, during which there is not some one responsible to Parliament for his public conduct; and there can be no exercise of the crown's authority for which it must not find some minister willing to make himself responsible."[74] In continental countries the responsibility of ministers is established very commonly by specific and written const.i.tutional provision. In Great Britain it exists by virtue simply of a group of unwritten principles, or conventions, of the const.i.tution; but it is there none the less real. In the conduct of public affairs the ministry must conform to the will of the majority in the House of Commons; otherwise the wheels of government would be blocked. And from this it follows that the crown is obliged to accept, with such grace as may be, the measures which the ministry, working with the parliamentary majority, formulates and for which it stands ready to shoulder responsibility. It is open to the king, of course, to dissuade the ministers from a given course of action. But if they cannot be turned back, and if they have the support of a parliamentary majority, there is nothing that the sovereign can do save acquiesce.

[Footnote 74: Todd, Parliamentary Government in England, I., 81.]

*58. Appointment of Ministers.*--In the naming of a new premier, following the retirement of a ministry, the king is legally unhampered; but here again in practice he is bound to designate the recognized leader of the dominant party, and so to pursue a course in which there is left no room for the exercise of discretion. Only when there is no clearly recognized leader, or when circ.u.mstances compel the formation of a coalition ministry, is there a real opportunity for the sovereign to choose a premier from a number of more or less available men.[75] In the appointment of the remaining ministers, and of all persons whose offices are regarded as political, the crown yields uniformly to the judgment of the premier. The King's Speech, on the opening of Parliament, is written by the ministers; all public communications of the crown pa.s.s through their hands; peers are created and honors bestowed in accord with their advice; measures are framed and executive acts are undertaken by them, sometimes without the sovereign's knowledge and occasionally even contrary to his wishes.

[Footnote 75: This sort of situation presented itself several times during the reign of Queen Victoria, but in general it is exceptional.]

III. THE IMPORTANCE AND STRENGTH OF THE MONARCH (p. 058)

*59. The Real Authority and Service of the Crown.*--It would be an error, however, to conclude that kingship in England is unimportant, or even that the power wielded in person by the crown is negligible.

On the contrary, the uses served by the crown are indisputable and the influence exerted upon the course of public affairs may be decisive.

The sovereign, in the words of Bagehot, has three rights--the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn. "A king of great sense and sagacity," it is added, "would want no others."[76]

Despite the fact that during upwards of two hundred years the sovereign has not attended the meetings of the cabinet, and so is deprived of the opportunity of wielding influence directly upon the deliberations of the ministers as a body, the king keeps in close touch with the premier, and cabinet councils at which important lines of policy are to be formulated are preceded not infrequently by a conference in which the subject in hand is threshed out more or less completely by king and chief minister. Merely because the ancient relation has been reversed, so that now it is the king who advises and the ministry that arrives at decisions, it does not follow that the advisory function is an unimportant thing. Queen Victoria many times wielded influence of a decisive nature upon the public measures of her reign, especially in respect to the conduct of foreign relations. The extent of such influence cannot be made a matter of record, because the ministers are in effect bound not to publish the fact that a decision upon a matter of state has been taken at the sovereign's instance. It is familiarly known, however--to cite a recent ill.u.s.tration--that Edward VII. approved and encouraged the Haldane army reforms, that he sought to dissuade the House of Lords from the rejection of the Lloyd-George budget of 1909, and that he discouraged the raising, in any form, of the issue of the reconst.i.tution of the upper chamber. In other words while, as a const.i.tutional monarch content to remain in the background of political controversy, the late king not only had opinions but did not hesitate to make them known; and in the shaping and execution of the Liberal programme his advice was at times a factor of importance.[77]

[Footnote 76: The English Const.i.tution (rev. ed.), 143.]

[Footnote 77: The most satisfactory estimate of the political and governmental activities of Edward VII. is contained in Mr. Sidney Lee's memoir of the king, printed in the Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement (London and New York, 1912), I., 546-610.]

*60. Why Monarchy Survives.*--Monarchy in Great Britain is a solid (p. 059) and, so far as can be foreseen, a lasting reality. Throughout the tempestuous years 1909-1911, when the nation was aroused as it had not been in generations upon the issue of const.i.tutional reform, and when every sort of project was being warmly advocated and as warmly opposed, without exception every suggested programme took for granted the perpetuation of the monarchy as an integral part of the governmental system. In the general bombardment to which the hereditary House of Lords was subjected hereditary kingship wholly escaped. The reasons are numerous and complex. They arise in part, though by no means so largely as is sometimes imagined, from the fact that monarchy in England is a venerable inst.i.tution and the innate conservatism of the Englishman, while permitting him from time to time to regulate and modify it, restrains him from doing anything so revolutionary as to abolish it. That upon certain conspicuous occasions, as in the Cromwellian period, and again in 1688, kingship has owed its very life to the conservative instinct of the English people is well enough known to every student of history. But to-day, as ever, the inst.i.tution rests upon a basis very much more substantial than a mere national predilection. Monarchy remains impregnably entrenched because the crown, in addition to comprising an accustomed feature of the governmental economy, fulfills specific ends which are recognized universally to be eminently worth while, if not indispensable. As a social, moral, and ceremonial agency, and as a visible symbol of the unity of the nation; king and court occupy an immeasurable place in the life and thought of the people; and even within the domain of government, to employ the figure of Lowell, if the crown is no longer the motive power of the ship of state, it is the spar on which the sail is bent, and as such it is not only a useful but an essential part of the vessel.[78] The entire governmental order of Great Britain hinges upon the parliamentary system, and nowhere has that system been reduced to satisfactory operation without the presence of some central, but essentially detached, figure, whether a king or, as in France, a president with the attributes of kingship. It is fundamentally because the English people have discerned that kingship is not necessarily incompatible with popular government that the monarchy has persisted. If royalty had been felt to stand inevitably in the path of democratic progress, it is inconceivable that all the forces of tradition could have pulled it through the past seventy-five or eighty years. As it is, while half a century ago there was in the country a small republican group which was fond of urging that the monarchy was but a source of needless (p. 060) expense, to-day there is hardly a vestige, in any grade of society, of anti-monarchical sentiment.[79]

[Footnote 78: Government of England, I., 49.]

[Footnote 79: The best brief discussions of the position of the crown in the governmental system are Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap, 1; Moran, English Government, Chaps. 2-3; Marriott, English Political Inst.i.tutions, Chap. 3; Macy, English Const.i.tution, Chap. 5; and Low, Governance of England, Chaps. 14-15. More extended treatment of the subject will be found in Anson, Law and Custom of the Const.i.tution, II., Pt. 1, Chaps 1 and 4; Todd, Parliamentary Government in England, I, Pt. 2; Bagehot, English Const.i.tution, Chaps. 2-3; H. D. Traill, Central Government, Chap. 1. Mention may be made of N. Caudel, Le souverain anglais, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, July, 1910, and J. Bardoux, Le pouvoir politique de la couronne anglaise, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, May 15, 1911.]

IV. PRIVY COUNCIL, MINISTRY, AND CABINET