The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-02-12 00:00:00

Ely ctottrbrible ellf3erber.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1876.

THE MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.

ho associations which cluster round the
meeting of the British Parliament are as
venerable as they are ioteresting. Even in the
times of the Saxons there was a great council
of the nation periodically held in London. It

went by the Lime of Wittenagemot, obviously
an unwieldly and awkwardly sounding word.
The term Parliament, derived from the French

word parlinient, or discourse, appears to have
been used for the first time in the rripoi of
Edward the Coufessor as far back as 1041. Tht

first clear neconnt we have of the repre.4cnta
tives of the people forming a House of Com-
mons was in the forty-third year of the reign of
Henry 111. (1258), when it was settled by the
statutes of Oxford that twelve persons should
be chosen to represent the Commons in the

three Parliaments which were to he held yearly.
The general representation by knights, citizens,
and burgesses took place in 1265. The power
and jurisdiction of the Legislature are so
transcendent and absolute, that they cannot be
confined, either for causes or persons, within
any bounds. It possesses sovereign and uncon-
trollable authority in making and repealing
laws; it can regulate or remodel the succession

to the Crown, as was done in the reigns of
Henry VIII. and William 111., it can alter and
establish the religion of the country, as in the
times of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and
Elizabeth; it can depose the Sovereign as in
the case of James IL.; it has even deprived the
Monarch of his life for offences against the
State, as in the instance of Charles I.; it can
regulate the succession to the Crown, as was
done when the Throne passed into the joint
occupation of William 111. and Mary ; and later,
when the House of Hanover was invited to
assume the Sovereignty of these realms. And
when the composition of the two Houses is
examined, even in the most superficial degree, it
may well appear wonderful how two forces,
apparently so antagonistic, can ever work well
together. The House of Lords is entirely the
creation of the Crown, either of the present or
the former reigns; the House of Commons is
entirely the creation of the people. Manches-
ter or Birmingham, Liverpool or Leeds, would
have no more power to make a peer, either
spiritual or temporal, than the Crown would
have to add a member to the House of Corn.
' 1110118 without the consent of that assembly.
The Sovereign makes a peer by virtue of a right
appertaining to that exalted position, and it is
for no one to question that right, however
numerous the new peers might be, for practically
the number of members in the temporal peerage
1.4 unlimited. But the House of Commons must
consist of a certain number of members, no
more and no less, until alteration is made by the
act of the Legislature itrelf. The Sovereign
cculd no more, upon its own action, give a
fourth member to Birmingham or Manchester
than these great corntuereial centres could of
their own will, send a fourth representative to
the House of Commons, were either the Crown
or the electors to try such an experiment, and
we know what the result would be. As the writs
for new members of the House of Commons are
issued by the authority of the Speaker himself,
he would disregard any return which had not
been ordered by him acting under the directions
of the assembly over whose deliberations he
presides. But a new member is admitted to the
House of Lords on the presentation of his writ
of summons from the Cruwn, and whether the
new peers be two, four, or half a dozen, does
not signify.

When we look, therefore, at the apparently
antagonistic principle.a„foraiing the basis upon
which the two 1-1011r:13 are composed, it is
inanifest that it is only in the proverbial " wis-
doin of Parliament " that conflicts of authority
are avoided. One House is filled entirely with
nobles who receive their nominations direct
from the Crown, and who are responsible to no
one for the votes which they give. The other
House is comprised exclusively of men elected
by the people, to whom they are directly answer-
able for the way in which they exercise the
privileges of their position. The Crown cannot
call upon a peer for explanation of his conduct
in Parliament, and has no power to cancel his
patent of creation. But the people very often
demand explanations from their representatives
in the House of Commons, and often as not,
withdraw the power which they alone can confer
—that of sitting in the elective branch of the
Legislature. Yet the two seemingly opposite
forces of Lords and Commons very seldom have
anything like a collision. Between the law
giver selected by the Monarch, the outward and

viiblo emboditn-ent of influence, splendour, and
authority, and the legislature chosen by the
householder in boroughs, who enloYs his. vote
simply on the personal payment of rates, there
would at first sight seem to be all the difference
in the world. Yet wltcn sitting in Parliament,
the commoner for all legislative purposes, enjoys
quite as good a poiticu as the lord; indeed
there can be no question that practically the
House of Commons is now the supreme power
in the State. .ft has not always been so. From
the time when Simon de Montfort, Earl of
Leicester, summoned the first Parliament to-
gether in 1265, up to less than half a century
ago, the controlling influence in the State was
either the Crown m the aristocraq—sometimes
acting jointly to keep the Commons in check.
Conflicts between the estates of the realm were
then of frequent occurrence, and less than a
hundred years ago the Commons declared that
"the power of the Crown has increased, is in-
creasing, and ought to be diminished." Happily
there is now no necessity for such an outspoken
declaration. The power of the Crown. though
no longer what it was in former times, is still
considerable, and it is invariably exercised %Nail
an absence of anything like a spirit tending to
produce irritation or savouring of high-handed-
ness. The peerage, no longer in league with the
Crown to defeat the known wishes of the people,
see when the time leis come for them to surrendrr
their own views to the expressed desires of the
nation ' while the C .mmons themFelves, kno..e-
ing that the eyes of the constituencies watch a:1
their deliberations, cowl act their debates accord-
ingly, and if one of tin ir decisions is occasi..n-
ally overruled in the Upper House of the legisla-
ture, there is at all events an advantage in time
being afforded for farther consideration, and in
an opportunity being given for concessions which
are in most cases gracefully made.