made by the commons, of the practice we mention they insisted that bills should be framed" in the old and decent way of parlia "ment;" and at last made it a standing order of their house, to reject, upon the sight of them all bills that are tacked to money bills.

Again, about the thirty-first year of the same reign, a strong party prevailed in the house of commons; and their efforts were not entirely confined, if we may credit the historians of those times, to serving their constituents faithfully, and providing for the welfare of the state. Among other bills which they proposed in their house, they carried one to exclude from the crown the immediate heir to it; an affair this, of a very high nature, and with regard to which it may well be questioned whether the legislative assemblies have a right to form a resolution, without the express and declared concurrence of the body of the people. But both the crown and the nation were delivered from the danger of establishing such a precedent, by the interposition of the lords, who threw out the bill on the first reading.

In the reign of king William the Third, a few years after the Revolution, attacks were

ན

made upon the crown from another quarter. A strong party was formed in the house of lords; and, as we may see in Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Times, they entertained. very deep designs. One of their views, among others, was, to abridge the royal prerogative of calling parliaments, and judging of the proper times of doing it.* They accordingly framed and carried in their house a bill for ascertaining the sitting of parliament every year: but the bill, after it had passed in their house, was rejected by the commons.†

Again, we find, that a little after the accession of king George the First, an attempt was made by a party in the house of lords, to wrest from the crown a prerogative which is one of its finest flowers, and is, besides, the only check

*

They, besides, proposed to have all money bills stopped in their house, till they had procured the right of taxing, themselves, their own estates, and to have a committee of lords, and a certain number of the commons, appointed to confer together concerning the state of the nation; "which committee (says Bishop Burnet) would "soon have grown to have been a council of state, that "would have brought all affairs under their inspection, " and never had been proposed but when the nation was ready to break into civil wars." See Burnet's History,

anno 1693.

+ Nov. 28, 1693.

it has on the dangerous views which that house (which may stop both money bills and all other bills) might be brought to entertain; I mean the right of adding new members to it, and judging of the times when it may be necessary to do so. A bill was accordingly presented, and carried, in the house of lords, for limiting the members of that house to a fixed number, beyond which it should not be increased but, after great pains taken to ensure the success of this bill, it was at last rejected by the commons.

In fine, the several attempts which a majority in the house of commons have in their turn made to restrain, farther than it now is, the influence of the crown arising from the distribution of preferments and other advantages, have been checked by the house of lords; and all place-bills have, from the beginning of this century, constantly miscarried in that house.

Nor have these two powerful assemblies only succeeded in thus warding off the open attacks of each other on the power of the crown. Their co-existence and the principles upon which they are severally framed, have been productive of another effect much more extensive, though at first less attended to,-I mean

the preventing even the making of such attacks; and in times too, when the crown was of itself incapable of defending its authority; the views of each house destroying, upon these occasions, the opposite views of the other, like those positive and negative equal quantities (if I may be allowed the comparison) which destroy each other on the opposite sides of an equation.

Of this we have several remarkable examples for instance, when the sovereign has been a minor. If we examine the history of other nations, especially before the invention of standing armies, we shall find that the event we mention never failed to be attended with open invasions of the royal authority, or even sometimes with complete and settled divisions. of it. In England, on the contrary, whether we look at the reign of Richard II. or that of Henry VI. or of Edward VI. we shall see that the royal authority was quietly exercised by the councils that were appointed to assist those princes; and, when they came of age, it was delivered over to them undiminished.

But nothing so remarkable can be alleged on this subject as the manner in which the two houses have acted upon those occasions, when the crown being without any present possessor,

they had it in their power, both to settle it on what person they pleased, and to divide and distribute its effectual prerogatives, in what manner, and to what set of men, they might think proper. Circumstances like these we mention have never failed in other kingdoms, to bring on a division of the effectual authority of the crown, or even of the state itself. In Sweden, for instance (to speak of a kingdom which has borne the greatest outward resemblance to that of England), when queen Christina was put under a necessity of abdicating the crown, and it was transferred to the prince who stood next to her in the line of succession, the executive authority in the state was immediately divided, and either distributed among the nobles, or assigned to the senate, into which the nobles alone could be admitted; and the new king was only to be a president over it.

After the death of Charles the Twelfth, who died without male heirs, the disposal of the crown (the power of which Charles the Eleventh had found means to render again absolute) returned to the states, and was settled on the princess Ulrica, and the prince her husband. But the senate, at the same time it thus settled the possession of the crown