Part 116

24. William and Mary; Declaration of Right; Results of the Revolution.

William came; James fled to France. A Convention Parliament drew up a Declaration of Right which declared that the King had vacated the throne, and the crown was therefore offered to William and Mary (S494). They accepted. Thus by the bloodless Revolution of 1688 the English nation transferred the sovereignty to those who had no direct legal claim to it so long as James and his son were living (S490). Hence by this act the people deliberately set aside hereditary succession, as a binding rule, and revived the primitive English custom of choosing a sovereign as they deemed best. In this sense the uprising of 1688 was most emphatically a revolution (S491, 492). It made, as Green has said, an English monarch as much the creature of an act of Parliament as the pettiest taxgatherer in his realm (S497). But it was a still greater revolution in another way, since it gave a deathblow to the direct "personal monarchy," which began with the Tudors two hundred years before. It is true that in George III's reign we shall see that power temporarily revived, but we shall never hear anything more of that Divine Right of Kings, for which one Stuary "lost his head, and another his crown." Henceforth the House of Commons will govern England, although, as we shall see, it will be nearly a hundred and fifty years before that House will be able to free itself entirely from the control of either a few powerful families on the one hand, or that of the Crown on the other.

Convention Parliament: it was so called because it was not regularly summoned by the King,--he having fled the country.

25. Bill of Rights; the Commons by the Revenue and the Mutiny Act obtain Complete Control over the Purse and the Sword.

In order to make the constitutional rights of the people unmistakably clear, the Bill of Rights, 1689,--an expansion of the Declaration of Right--was drawn up (S497). The Bill of Rights declare: (1) That there should be no suspension or change in the laws, and no taxation except by act of Parliament. (2) That there should be freedom of election to Parliament and freedom of speech in Parliament (both rights that the Stuarts had attempted to contrl). (3) That the sovereign should not keep a standing army, in time of peace, except by consent of Parliament. (4) That in future no Roman Catholic should sit on the English throne. This last clause was reaffirmed by the Act of Settlement, 1701 (S497).

Bill of Rights: see Constitutional Documents, p. xxxi. See, too, Constitutional Documents, p. xxxii.

This most important bill, having received the signature of William and Mary, became law. It constitutes the third great written charter or safeguard of English liberty. Taken in connection with Magna Carta and the Petition of Right, it forms, according to Lord Chatham, *the Bible of English liberty* (S497).

But Parliament had not yet finished the work of reform it had taken in hand. The executive strength of every government depends on its control of two powers,--the purse and the sword. Parliament had, as we have seen, got a tight grasp on the first, for the Commons, and the Commons alone, could levy taxes; but within certain very wide limits the personal expenditure of the sovereign still practically remained unchecked. Parliament now, 1689, took the decisive step of voting by the Revenue Act (1) a specific sum for the maintenance of the Crown; and (2) of voting this supply, not for the life of the sovereign, as had been the custom, but for four years (S498). A little later this supply was fixed for a signle year only. This action gave to the Commons final and complete control of the purse (SS498, 588).

Next, Parliament passed the Mutiny Act (1689) (S496), which granted the King power to enforce martial law--in other words, to maintain a standing army--for one year at a time, and no longer, save by renewal of the law. This act gave Parliament complete control of the sword, and thus finished the great work; for without the annual meeting and the annual vote of that body, an English sovereign would at the end of a twelvemonth stand penniless and helpless.

26. Reforms in the Courts; the Toleration Act; the Press made Free.

The same year (1689) Parliament effected great and sorely needed reforms in the administration of justice (S492).

Next, Parliament passed the Toleration Act, 1689 (S496). This measure granted liberty of worship to all Protestant Dissenters except those who denied the doctrine of the Trinity. The Toleration Act, however, did not abolish the Corporation Act or the Test Act (SS472, 477), and it granted no religious freedom to Catholics. Still, the Toleration Act was a step forward, and it prepared the way for that absolute liberty of worship and of religious belief which now exists in England.

Freedom of worship was granted to Unitarians in 1812. The Act of Indemnity of 1727, and passed from year to year, suspended the penalties of the Test and the Corporation Acts; they were both repealed in 1828. Later, the fear that James II might be invited to return led to the enactment of very severe laws agaisnt the Catholics; and in the next reign (Anne's) the Act of Occasional Conformity and the Schism Act were directed against Protestant Dissenters.

In finance, the reign of William and Mary was marked by the practical beginning of the permanent National Debt in 1693 and by the establishment in 1694 of the Bank of England (S503).

Now, too, 1695, the English press, for the first time in its history, became, in large measure, free (SS498, 556), though hampered by a very severe law of libel and by stamp duties. From this period the influence of newspapers continued to increase, until the final abolition of the stamp duty (1855) made it possible to issue penny and even halfpenny papers at a profit. These cheap newspapers sprang at once into an immense circulation among all classes, and thus they became the power for good or evil, according to their character, which they are to-day; so that it would be no exaggeration to say that back of the power of Parliament now stands the greater power of the press.

Debates in Parliament could not be reported until 1771 (S556), and certain Acts (1793, 1799) checked the freedom of the press for a time. See May's "History of England."

27. The House of Commons no longer a Representative Body; the First Two Georges and their Ministers.

But now that the Revolution of 1688 had done its work, and transferred the power of the Crown to the House of Commons, a new difficulty arose. This was the fact that the Commons did not represent the people, but stood simply as the representative of a small number of rich Whig landowners. In many towns the right to vote was confined to the town officers or to the well-to-do citizens. In other cases, towns which had dwindled in population to a very few inhavitants continued to have the right to send two members to Parliament, while, on the other hand, large and flourishing cities had grown up which had no power to send even a single member (S578). The result of this state of things was that the wealthy Whig families bought up the votes of electors, and so regularly controlled the elections (S538).

The influence of the Whigs had secured the passage of the Act of Settlement which brought in the Georges; for this reason the Whigs had gained the chief political power.

Under the first two Georges, both of whom were foreigners, the ministers--especially Sir Robert Walpole, who was the first real Prime Minister of England, and who held his place for twenty years (1721- 1742)--naturally stood in the foreground. They understood the ins and outs of English politics, while the two German sovereigns, the first of whom never learned to speak English, neither knew nor cared anything about them. When men wanted favors or offices, they went to the ministers for them (S538). This made men like Walpole so powerful that George II said bitterly, "In England the ministers are king" (S534).

See S21 of this Summary.

28. George III's Revival of "Personal Monarchy"; the "King's Friends."

George III was born in England, and prided himself on being an Englishman. He came to the throne fully resolved, as Walpole said, "to make his power shine out," and to carry out his mother's constant injunction of, "George, be King!" (S548). To do this, he set himself to work to trample on the power of the ministers, to take the distribution of offices and honors out of their hands, and furthermore to break down the influence of the great Whig families in Parliament. He had no intention of reforming the House of Commons, or of securing the representation of the people in it; his purpose was to gain the control of the House, and use it for his own ends. In this he was thoroughly conscientious, according to his idea of right,--for he believed with all his heart in promoting the welfare of England,--but he thought that welfare depended on the will of the King much more than on that of the nation. His maxim was "everything for, but nothing by, the people." By liberal gifts of money,--he spent 25,000 pounds in a single day (1762) in bribes,--by gifts of offices and of honors to those who favored him, and by taking away offices, honors, and pensions from those who opposed him, George III succeeded in his purpose. He raised up a body of men in Parliament, known by the significant name of the "King's Friends," who stood ready at all times to vote for his measures. In this way he actually revived "personal monarchy" for a time, and by using his "Friends" in the House of Commons and in the Lords as his tools, he made himself quite independent of the checks imposed by the Constitution.

Pitt (Lord Chatham) was one of the few public men of that day who would neither give nor take a bribe; Walpole declared with entire truth that the great majority of politicians could be bought,--it was only a question of price. The King appears to have economized in his living, in order to get more money to use as a corruption fund. See May's "Constitutional History." "Personal monarchy": see S15 of this Summary.

29. The American Revolution.

The King's power reached its greatest height between 1770 and 1782. He made most disastrous use of it, not only at home but abroad. He insisted that the English colonists in America should pay taxes, without representation in Parliament, even of that imperfect kind which then existed in Great Britain. This determination brought on the American Revolution--called in England the "King's War" (SS549- 552). The war, in spite of its ardent support by the "King's Friends," roused a powerful opposition in Parliament. Chatham, Burke, Fox, and other able men protested against the King's arbitrary course. inally, Dunning moved and carried this resolution (1780) in the Commons: "Resolved, that the power of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished" (S548). This vigorous proposition came too late to affect the conduct of the war, and England lost the most valuable of her colonial possessions. The struggle, which ended successfully for the patriots in America, was in reality part of the same battle fought in England by other patriots in the halls of Parliament. On the western side of the Atlantic it resulted in the establishment of national independence; on the eastern side, in the final overthrow of royal tyranny and the triumph of the constitution. It furthermore laid the foundation of that just and generous policy on the part of England toward Canada and her other colonies which has made her mistress of the largest and most prosperous empire on the globe.

The area of the British Empire in 1911 was nearly 12,000,000 square miles.

30. John Wilkes and the Middlesex Elections; Publication of Parliamentary Debates.