Chapter Ii (p. 034)

THE CONSTITUTION SINCE THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

I. CROWN AND PARLIAMENT AFTER 1789

*33. Elements of Stability and Change.*--Structurally, the English governmental system was by the close of the seventeenth century substantially complete. The limited monarchy, the ministry, the two houses of parliament, the courts of law, and the local administrative agencies were by that time constituted very much as they are to-day. The fundamental principles, furthermore, upon which English government is operated were securely established. Laws could be enacted only by "the king in parliament"; taxes could be levied only in the same manner; the liberty of the individual was safeguarded by a score of specific and oft-renewed guarantees. In point of fact, however, the English constitution of 1689 was very far from being the English constitution of 1912. The overturn by which the last Stuart was driven from the throne not only marked the culmination of the revolution commenced in 1640; it comprised the beginning of a more extended revolution, peaceful but thoroughgoing, by which the governmental system of the realm was amplified, carried in new directions, and successively readapted to fresh and changing conditions. At no time from William III. to George V. was there a deliberate overhauling of the governmental system as a whole. Save in occasional parliamentary enactments and judicial decisions, the constitutional changes which were wrought were rarely given documentary expression. Yet it is hardly too much to say that of the principles and practices which to-day make up the working constitution of the United Kingdom almost all were originated or reshaped during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In describing, in succeeding chapters, the principal aspects of this governmental system it will be necessary frequently to allude to these more recent constitutional developments, and it would but involve repetition to undertake an account of them at this point. An enumeration and a brief characterization of a few of the more important will serve for the moment to impress the importance constitutionally of the period under consideration.

*34. The Decreased Authority of the Crown.*--First may be (p. 035) mentioned the gradual eclipse of the crown and the establishment of complete and unquestioned ascendancy on the part of Parliament. In consequence of the Revolution of 1688-1689 the sovereign was shorn definitely of a number of important prerogatives. William III., however, was no figure-head, and the crown was far from having been reduced to impotence. Understanding perfectly the conditions upon which he had been received in England, William none the less did not attempt to conceal his innate love of power. He claimed prerogatives which his Whig supporters were loath to acknowledge and he exercised habitually in person, and with telling effect, the functions of sovereign, premier, foreign minister, and military autocrat. His successor, Anne, though apathetic, was hardly less attached to the interests of strong monarchy. It was only with the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty, in 1714, that the bulk of those powers of government which hitherto the crown had retained slipped inevitably into the grasp of the ministers and of Parliament. George I. (1714-1727) and George II. (1727-1760) were not the nonentities they have been painted, but, being alien alike to English speech, customs, and political institutions, they were in a position to defend but indifferently the prerogatives which they had inherited. Under George III. (1760-1820) there was a distinct recrudescence of the monarchical idea. The king, if obstinate and below the average intellectually, was honest, courageous, and ambitious. He gloried in the name of Englishman, and, above all, he was determined to recover for the crown some measure of the prestige and authority which his predecessors had lost. The increasingly oligarchical character of Parliament in the period and the disintegration of the ruling Whig party created a condition not unfavorable for the realization of the royal programme, and through at least a score of years the influence which the sovereign exerted personally upon government and politics exceeded anything that had been known since the days of William III. In 1780 the House of Commons gave expression to its apprehension by adopting a series of resolutions, the first of which asserted unequivocally that "the influence of the crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished."

After the retirement of Lord North, in 1782, however, the influence of the sovereign declined perceptibly, and during the later portion of the reign, clouded by the king's insanity, all that had been gained for royalty was again lost. Under the Regency (1810-1820) and during the reign of the reactionary and scandal-smirched George IV. (p. 036) (1820-1830) the popularity, if not the power, of the crown reached its nadir. In the days of the genial William IV. (1830-1837) popularity was regained, but not power. The long reign of the virtuous Victoria (1837-1901) served completely to rehabilitate the monarchy in the respect and affections of the British people, a consummation whose stability more recent sovereigns have done nothing to impair. As will be pointed out in another place, the influence which the sovereign may wield, and during the past three-quarters of a century has wielded, in the actual conduct of public affairs is far from inconsiderable. But, as will also be emphasized, that influence is but the shadow of the authority which the crown once--even as late as the opening of the eighteenth century--possessed. It is largely personal rather than legal; it is asserted within the domain of foreign relations rather more than within that of domestic affairs; and as against the adverse will of the nation expressed through Parliament it is, in effect, powerless.

*35. Ascendancy of the House of Commons.*--A second transformation wrought in the working constitution since 1689 is the shifting of the center of gravity in Parliament from the House of Lords to the House of Commons, together with a notable democratizing of the representative chamber. In the days of William and Anne the House of Lords was distinctly more dignified and influential than the House of Commons. During the period covered by the ministry of Walpole (1721-1742), however, the Commons rose rapidly to the position of the preponderating legislative branch. One contributing cause was the Septennial Act of 1716, whereby the life of a parliament was extended from three years to seven, thus increasing the continuity and desirability of membership in the Commons. Another was the growing importance of the power of the purse as wielded by the Commons. A third was the fact that Walpole, throughout his prolonged ministry, sat steadily as a member of the lower chamber and made it the scene of his remarkable activities. The establishment of the supremacy of the Commons as then constructed did not, however, mean the triumph of popular government. It was but a step toward that end. The House of Commons in the eighteenth century was composed of members elected (p. 037) in the counties and boroughs upon a severely restricted franchise or appointed outright by closed corporations or by individual magnates, and it remained for Parliament during the nineteenth century, by a series of memorable statutes, to extend the franchise successively to groups of people hitherto politically powerless, to reapportion parliamentary seats so that political influence might be distributed with some fairness among the voters, and to regulate the conditions under which campaigns should be carried on, elections conducted, and other operations of popular government undertaken. Of principal importance among the enactments by which these things were accomplished are the Reform Act of 1832, the Representation of the People Act of 1867, the Ballot Act of 1872, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of 1883, the Representation of the People Act of 1884, and the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885. The nature of these measures will be explained subsequently.

II. RISE OF THE CABINET AND OF POLITICAL PARTIES

*36. Cabinet Origins.*--In the third place, the period under review is important by reason of the development within it of the most remarkable feature of the English constitutional system to-day, namely, the cabinet. The creation of the cabinet was a gradual process, and both the process and the product are utterly unknown to the letter of English law. It is customary to regard as the immediate antecedent of the cabinet the so-called "cabal" of Charles II., i.e., the irregular group of persons whom that sovereign selected from the Privy Council and took advice from informally in lieu of the Council itself. In point of fact, by reason principally of the growing unwieldiness of the Privy Council, the practice of deferring for advice to a specially constituted committee, or inner circle, of the body far antedated Charles II. By some it has been traced to a period as remote as the reign of Henry III., and it is known that not only the thing itself, but also the name "cabinet council," existed under Charles I. The essential justification of the creation of the cabinet was stated by Charles II. in 1679 in the declaration that "the great number of the Council has made it unfit for the secrecy and despatch that are necessary in many great affairs." The growing authority of the select circle of advisors was the object of repeated attacks, and the name "cabinet" (arising from the king's habit of receiving the members in a small private room, or cabinet, in the royal palace) was applied at first as a term of reproach. The device met, however, a genuine need, and by 1689 its perpetuation was assured. The larger (p. 038) Privy Council was continued in existence, and it exists to-day; but its powers became long ago merely nominal.

*37. Principles of Cabinet Government Established.*--Under William III. the cabinet took on rapidly the character which it bears to-day. Failing in the attempt to govern with a cabinet including both Whigs and Tories, William, in 1693-1696, gathered about himself a body of advisers composed exclusively of Whigs, and the principle speedily became established for all time that a cabinet group must be made up of men who in respect to all important matters of state are in substantial agreement. Before the close of the eighteenth century there had been fixed definitely the conception of the cabinet as a body necessarily consisting (a) of members of Parliament (b) of the same political views (c) chosen from the party possessing a majority in the House of Commons (d) prosecuting a concerted policy (e) under a common responsibility to be signified by collective resignation in the event of parliamentary censure, and (f) acknowledging a common subordination to one chief minister. During the eighteenth-century era of royal weakness the cabinet acquired a measure of independence by which it was enabled to become, for all practical purposes, the ruling authority of the realm; and, under the limitation of strict accountability to the House of Commons, it fulfills substantially that function to-day. Its members, as will appear, are at the same time the heads of the principal executive departments, the leaders in the legislative chambers, and the authors of very nearly the whole of governmental policy and conduct.

*38. Beginnings of Political Parties.*--A fourth phase of governmental development within the period under survey is the rise of political parties and the fixing of the broader aspects of the present party system. In no nation to-day does party play a role of larger importance than in Great Britain. Unknown to the written portions of the constitution, and all but unknown to the ordinary law, party management and party operations are, none the less, of constant and fundamental importance in the actual conduct of government. The origins of political parties in England fall clearly within the seventeenth century. It was the judgment of Macaulay that the (p. 039) earliest of groups to which the designation of political parties can be applied were the Cavalier and Roundhead elements as aligned after the adoption of the Grand Remonstrance by the Long Parliament in 1641. The first groups, however, which may be thought of as essentially analogous to the political parties of the present day, possessing continuity, fixity of principles, and some degree of compactness of organization, were the Whigs and Tories of the era of Charles II. Dividing in the first instance upon the issue of the exclusion of James, these two elements, with the passage of time, assumed well-defined and fundamentally irreconcilable positions upon the essential public questions of the day. Broadly, the Whigs stood for toleration in religion and for parliamentary supremacy in government; the Tories for Anglicanism and the prerogative. And long after the Stuart monarchy was a thing of the past these two great parties kept up their struggles upon these and other issues. After an unsuccessful attempt to govern with the co-operation of both parties William III., as has been pointed out, fell back definitely upon the support of the Whigs. At the accession of Queen Anne, in 1702, however, the Whigs were turned out of office and the Tories (who already had had a taste of power in 1698-1701) were put in control. They retained office during the larger portion of Queen Anne's reign, but at the accession of George I. they were compelled to give place to their rivals, and the period 1714-1761 was one of unbroken Whig ascendancy. This was, of course, the period of the development of the cabinet system, and between the rise of that system and the growth of government by party there was an intimate and inevitable connection. By the close of the eighteenth century the rule had become inflexible that the cabinet should be composed of men who were in sympathy with the party at the time dominant in the House of Commons, and that the returning by the nation to the representative chamber of a majority adverse to the ruling ministry should be followed by the retirement of the ministry.

III. THE SCOTTISH AND IRISH UNIONS

*39. The Union with Scotland, 1707.*--Finally may be mentioned the important changes in the governmental structure which arose from the Act of Union with Scotland, in 1707, and the Act of Union with Ireland, in 1801. Except during a brief portion of the period of the Protectorate, the legal relation of England and Wales, on the one side, and the kingdom of Scotland, on the other, was from 1603 to (p. 040) 1707 that simply of a personal union through the crown. Scotland had her own parliament, her own established church, her own laws, her own courts, her own army, and her own system of finance. By the Act of 1707 a union was established of a far more substantial sort. The two countries were erected into a single kingdom, known henceforth as Great Britain. The Scottish parliament was abolished and representation was accorded the Scottish nobility and people in the British parliament at Westminster. The quota of commoners was fixed at forty-five (thirty to be chosen by the counties and fifteen by the boroughs) and that of peers (to be elected by the entire body of Scottish peers at the beginning of each parliament) at sixteen. All laws respecting trade, excises, and customs were required to be uniform throughout the two countries, but the local laws of Scotland upon other subjects were continued in operation, subject to revision by the common parliament. The Scottish judicial system remained unchanged; likewise the status of the established Presbyterian Church.

*40. The Union with Ireland, 1801.*--The history of Ireland, in most of its phases, is that of a conquered territory, and until late in the eighteenth century the constitutional status of the country approximated, most of the time, that of a crown colony. During the Middle Ages the Common Law and the institutions of England were introduced in the settled portions of the island (the Pale), and a parliament of the English type began to be developed; but Poynings's Law of 1494, by requiring the assent of the English king and council for the convening of an Irish parliament, by enjoining that all bills considered by the Irish parliament must first have been considered by the English parliament, and by declaring all existing statutes of the English parliament to be binding upon Ireland, effectually stifled, until its repeal in 1782, Irish parliamentary development. From the middle of the seventeenth century Catholics were debarred from membership, and, from the early eighteenth, from voting at parliamentary elections. The repeal of Poynings's Law in 1782 and the removal of the Catholic disqualification ten years later bettered the situation, yet at the close of the eighteenth century Irish governmental arrangements were still very unsatisfactory. Parliament was independent in the making of laws, but not in the control of administration; and it was in no true sense a national and representative body. The policy urged by Pitt, namely, the establishment of a (p. 041) legislative union on the plan of that which already existed between England and Scotland, gradually impressed itself upon the members of Parliament as more feasible than any other.

An Act of Union creating the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" was adopted by the Irish parliament in February, 1800, and by the British parliament five months later, and, January 1, 1801, it was put in operation. Under the terms of this measure the Irish parliament was abolished, and it was arranged that Ireland should be represented in the common parliament by four spiritual lords and twenty-eight temporal peers, chosen by the Irish peerage for life, and by one hundred members (sixty-four sitting for counties, thirty-five for boroughs, and one for the University of Dublin) of the House of Commons. The Anglican Church of Ireland was amalgamated with the established Church of England, though, subsequently in 1869, it was disestablished and disendowed. The union with Ireland was in the nature of a contract, and while in a number of respects the conditions which were involved in it have been altered within the past hundred years, its fundamentals stand to-day unchanged. It is these fundamentals, especially the assimilation of Ireland with Great Britain for legislative purposes, which are the object of relentless attack on the part of the Home Rule and other nationalistic and reforming elements.

IV. THE NATURE AND SOURCES OF THE CONSTITUTION

*41. The Elusiveness of the Constitution.*--The description of the British governmental system which is hereafter to be undertaken will be clarified by a word of comment at this point upon the character which the English constitution of to-day has assumed, upon the form in which it exists, and upon the sources from which it has been drawn. The term "constitution," as is familiarly understood, may be employed to denote a written instrument of fundamental law which has been framed by a constituent assembly, drafted by an ordinary legislative body, or promulgated upon the sole authority of a dictator or monarch; or, with equal propriety, it may be used to designate a body of (p. 042) customs, laws, and precedents, but partially, or even not at all, committed to writing, in accordance with which the machinery of a given governmental system is operated. The constitution of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is of this second type. The student who desires to bring together the principles and to tabulate the working details of the British constitutional order will find no single document, nor any collection of documents, in which these things are wholly, or even largely, set down. For the accomplishment of such a task it would be necessary to review intensively a thousand years and more of history, to lay hold of a statute here and of a judicial decision there, to take constant cognizance of the rise and crystallization of political usages, and to probe to their inmost recesses the mechanisms of administration, law-making, taxation, elections, and judicial procedure as they have been, and as they are actually operated before the spectator's eyes. Foremost among its compeers in antiquity, in comprehensiveness, and in originality, the British constitution is at once the least tangible and the most widely influential among European bodies of fundamental law.

*42. Constituent Elements: the Law.*--The elements of which this constitution is to-day composed have been classified in various ways. For present purposes they may be gathered in five principal categories. In the first place, there are treaties and other international agreements, which in Great Britain as in the United States are invested with the character of supreme law of the land. In the second place, there is a group of solemn engagements which have been entered into at times of national crisis between parties representing opposed, or contracting, political forces. Of such character are the Great Charter, the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights. A third and larger category comprises parliamentary statutes which add to or modify governmental powers or procedure. Statutes of this type include clearly the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, the Act of Settlement of 1701, the Septennial Act of 1716, Fox's Libel Act of 1792, the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884, the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections Act of 1872, the Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894, and the Parliament Act of 1911. In the fourth place there is the Common Law, a vast body of legal precept and usage which through the centuries has acquired fundamental and immutable character. The first three elements mentioned, i.e., treaties, solemn political engagements, and statutes, exist solely, or almost so, in written form. The rules of the Common Law, however, have not been reduced to writing, save in so far as they are contained in reports, legal opinions, and, more particularly, authoritative decisions of the courts, such as those (p. 043) on the rights of jurymen, on the prerogative of the crown, on the privileges of the houses of Parliament and of their members, and on the rights and duties of the police.

*43. Constituent Elements: the Conventions.*--Finally, there are those portions of the constitution which have been denominated with aptness by Mr. Dicey "the conventions." The "law" of the constitution, comprising the four categories of elements which have been enumerated, is at all points, whether written or unwritten, enforceable by the courts; the conventions, although they may and not seldom do relate to matters of vital importance, are not so enforceable. The conventions consist of understandings, practices, and habits by which are regulated a large proportion of the actual operations of the governmental authorities. They may have acquired expression in written form, but they do not appear in the statute-books or in any instrument which can be made the basis of action in a court of law. For example, it is a convention of the constitution which forbids the king to veto a measure passed by the houses of Parliament. If the sovereign were in these days actually to veto a bill, the political consequences might be serious, but there could be no question of the sheer legality of the deed. It is by virtue of a convention, not a law, of the constitution, that ministers resign office when they have ceased to command the confidence of the House of Commons; that a bill must be read three times before being finally voted upon in the House of Commons; that Parliament is convened annually and that it consists of two houses. The cabinet, and all that the cabinet, as such, stands for, rests entirely upon convention. To these things, and many others, the student who is concerned exclusively with the constitutional law of the British nation may give little or no attention. But by one who is seeking to understand the constitutional system as it is and as it operates attention must be fixed upon the conventions quite as steadily as upon the positive rules of law. If the conventions are not to be regarded as technically parts of the constitution, they are at least not infrequently as binding in practice as are these rules; and they may be even more determinative of the operations of the public powers. The English constitution is indeed, as Mr. Bryce has described it, "a mass of precedents carried in men's minds or recorded in writing, dicta of lawyers or statesmen, customs, usages, (p. 044) understandings and beliefs, a number of statutes mixed up with customs and all covered over with a parasitic growth of legal decisions and political habits." At no time has an attempt been made to collect and to reduce to writing this stupendous mass of scattered material, and no such attempt is likely ever to be made. "The English," as remarks the French critic Boutmy, "have left the different parts of their constitution where the waves of history have deposited them; they have not attempted to bring them together, to classify or complete them, or to make of it a consistent or coherent whole."

V. THE FLEXIBILITY OF THE CONSTITUTION

*44. Aspects of Continuity and of Change.*--In pursuance of what has been said two observations, representing opposite aspects of the same truth, are pertinent. The first is that in respect to the principles and many of the practices of the English constitution it is pre-eminently true that, to employ a familiar phrase of Bishop Stubbs, the roots of the present lie deep in the past. The second is that the English constitution is a living organism, so constantly undergoing modification that any description of it which may be attempted is likely to be subject to correction almost before it can be completed. At no time, as Mr. Freeman wrote, "has the tie between the present and the past been rent asunder; at no moment have Englishmen sat down to put together a wholly new constitution in obedience to some dazzling theory." On the contrary, each step in the growth of the constitutional system has been the natural consequence of some earlier step. Great changes, it is true, have been wrought. To mention but the most obvious illustration, autocratic kingship has been replaced by a parliamentary government based upon a thoroughgoing political democracy. None the less, transitions have been regularly so gradual, deference to tradition so habitual, and the disposition to cling to ancient names and forms, even when the spirit had changed, so deep-seated, that the constitutional history of England presents elements of continuity which cannot be paralleled in any other country of Europe.

The letter of a written constitution may survive through many decades unchanged, as has that of the Italian Statuto of 1848, and as did that of the American constitution between 1804 and 1865. No (p. 045) constitutional system, however, long stands still, and least of all one of the English variety, in which there exists but little of even the formal rigidity arising from written texts. Having no fixed and orderly shape assigned it originally by some supreme authority, the constitution of the United Kingdom has retained throughout its history a notably large measure of flexibility. It is by no means to-day what it was fifty years ago; fifty years hence it will be by no means what it is to-day. In times past changes have been accompanied by violence, or, at least, by extraordinary manifestations of the national will. Nowadays they are introduced through the ordinary and peaceful processes of legislation, of judicial interpretation, and of administrative practice. Sometimes, as in the instance of the recent overhauling of the status of the House of Lords, they are accompanied by heated controversy and widespread public agitation. Not infrequently, however, they represent inevitable and unopposed amplifications of existing law or practice and are taken note of scarcely at all by the nation at large.

*45. The Constituent Powers of Parliament.*--The principal means by which changes are wrought in the English constitution to-day is that of parliamentary enactment. It is to be observed that in Great Britain there is not, nor has there ever been, any attempt to draw a line of distinction between powers that are constituent and powers that are legislative. All are vested alike in Parliament, and in respect to the processes of enactment, repeal, and revision there is no difference whatsoever between a measure affecting the fundamental principles of the governmental system and a statute pertaining to the commonest subject of ordinary law. "Our Parliament," observes Mr. Anson, "can make laws protecting wild birds or shell-fish, and with the same procedure could break the connection of Church and State, or give political power to two millions of citizens, and redistribute it among new constituencies." The keystone of the law of the constitution is, indeed, the unqualified omnipotence which Parliament possesses in the spheres both of constitution-making and of ordinary legislation. In Parliament is embodied the supreme will of the nation; and although from time to time that will may declare itself in widely varying and even inconsistent ways, at any given moment its pronouncements are conclusive.

*46. What are "Constitutional" Laws?*--From this unrestricted competence of Parliament arise two highly important facts. One of them is that the distinction between "constitutional" laws, on the one hand, and ordinary statutes, on the other, is neither so obvious nor so essential as under most governmental systems. The concept, (p. 046) even, of constitutional law has developed but slowly among the English, and the phrase is as yet seldom employed in legal discussion. In the United States constitutional amendments or addenda, in so far at least as they assume written form, emanate from sources and by processes different from those that obtain in the enactment of ordinary statutes. In most continental nations the constituent process is at least somewhat different from that employed in the enactment of simple laws. And these specially devised processes are designed to emphasize the essential differentiation of the product from the handiwork of the ordinary legislative bodies. In Great Britain, however, there is, as has appeared, no difference of process, and the distinction between the law of the constitution and ordinary statute law is not infrequently all but impossible to trace. If it is to be traced at all, it must be derived from the circumstances of enactment. Some measures, e.g., the Habeas Corpus Act, the Act of Settlement, and the Parliament Act of 1911, relate obviously to the most fundamental and enduring aspects of state. Others just as clearly have to do with ephemeral and purely legislative concerns. Precisely where the line should be drawn between the two no man can say. It is, in the opinion of Mr. Bryce, because of this obstacle primarily that no attempt has been made to reduce the English constitution to the form of a single fundamental enactment.

*47. All Parts of the Constitution subject to Amendment.*--In the second place, no portion whatsoever of the constitution is immune from amendment or abrogation at the hand of Parliament. So forcefully was the French observer De Tocqueville impressed with this fact that he went so far as to assert that there really is no such thing as an English constitution at all. De Tocqueville wrote, however, from the point of view of one who conceives of a constitution as of necessity an "instrument of special sanctity, distinct in character from all other laws, and alterable only by a peculiar process, differing to a greater or less extent from the ordinary forms of legislation"; and this conception is recognized universally nowadays to be altogether inadequate. There is, in every proper sense, an English constitution. No small portion of it, indeed, is in written form. And it is worth observing that in practice there is tending to be established in England in our own day some measure of that (p. 047) distinction between constituent and legislative functions which obtains in other countries. There is no disposition to strip from Parliament its constituent powers; but the feeling is gaining ground that when fundamental and far-reaching innovations are contemplated action ought not to be taken until after there shall have been an appeal to the nation through the medium of a general election at which the desirability of the proposed changes shall be submitted as a clear issue. The principle, broadly stated, is that Parliament ought to exercise in any important matter its constituent powers only under the sanction of direct popular mandate. It was essentially in deference to this principle that the elections of December, 1910, turning squarely upon the issue of the reform of the House of Lords, were ordered. Thus, while in numerous continental countries the distinction between constituent and legislative functions is being nowadays somewhat relaxed, in Great Britain there is distinctly a tendency to establish in a measure a differentiation in this matter which long has been in practice non-existent.

In effect, every measure of Parliament, of whatsoever nature and under whatsoever circumstances enacted, is "constitutional," in the sense that it is legally valid and enforceable. When an Englishman asserts of a measure that it is unconstitutional he means only that it is inconsistent with a previous enactment, an established usage, the principles of international law, or the commonly accepted standards of morality. Such a measure, if passed in due form by Parliament, becomes an integral part of the law of the land, and as such will be enforced by the courts. There is no means by which it may be rendered of no effect, save repeal by the same or a succeeding parliament. In England, as in European countries generally, the judicial tribunals are endowed with no power to pass upon the constitutional validity of legislative acts. Every such act is ipso facto valid, whether it relates to the most trivial subject of ordinary legislation or to the organic arrangements of the state; and no person or body, aside from Parliament itself, possesses a right to override it or to set it aside.