he passed into popular history as the merry monarch.

The critical importance of the steps taken in the reign of Charles II,- crude and faltering though they were- was that for the first time a distinction was drawn between the nature of prerogative and the conditions of its exercise. Crown authority remained as unlimited as before; the means by which it might be exercised were now conditioned by law. An important fortification of this principle was set up in the reign of Queen Anne when the rule was adopted (July 11, 1713) prohibiting any grant of supply not recommended by the crown. This action was taken to counteract the operation of crown influence in securing supplies without assuming responsibility for the demand. As a consequence the government was no longer able to obtain any grant of funds without saying what it was wanted for or without incurring responsibility for the expenditure. This rule of order which puts up the bars against raids on the treasury by combinations of particular interests, as in the American practice of "log-rolling," is now the corner-stone of the English budget system.

Based upon these fundamental conditions an elaborate system of control over the particulars of the public business has been gradually developed, for the details of which special treatises

may be consulted.' What is here in place is to note the point that the position of control attained by the representative assembly in the English constitutional system, is due not at all to the fact of its representative character, but to the conditions imposed upon its behavior. Those conditions tend to maintain in their integrity the functions both of administration and control, just because each is kept intact and absolute within its own sphere, without impairment by any partition of authority or separation of power. Prerogative is undiminished; but its activity is subject to minute supervision. The administration may appoint and remove its agents in its own discretion, and the representative assembly has no power of direct interference with administrative choice. Even the officeholders in parliament's own service, -doorkeepers, clerks, pages, etc. are all appointed by the government. It is sufficiently obvious that such circumstances will be naturally apt to excite jealous concern that the government does not make an excessive use of such arbitrary authority. The representative assembly is in a position to control the situation since it can fix the number of positions available to executive

1 The subject of budget control has been systematically covered by a series of treatises published by The Institute for Government Research" at Washington, under the able direction of W. F. Willoughby.

appointment and limit their emoluments. The government has no power to enact laws; the representative assembly has no power of avoiding decisions upon the legislative proposals of the government in the shape preferred by the government. The assembly can not choose for itself what business it will consider; it has to face its responsibilities, and act on public account whether it wants to or not. The functioning of the representative assembly as an organ of control is thus contingent upon the massive and impervious character of executive authority. The control could not be complete unless executive authority were complete, for responsibility can not exist without freedom of action.

Appreciation of these principles is marred by the mistaken notion that constitutional progress has affected a diminution of crown authority. The customary description of the government of the United Kingdom as a limited monarchy is a misleading phrase. It is a strictly conditioned monarchy; not a really limited one. Crown authority instead of being smaller or weaker than in the past is now greater and stronger, and it is still rapidly growing. The point is stated with special emphasis by Professor Maitland, who, writing from the standpoint of jurisprudence, declared that "we must not confound the truth that the king's personal will has come to count

for less and less with the falsehood . . that his legal powers have been diminished. On the contrary, of late years they have enormously increased." 1 This is simply a natural consequence of the transformation of the royal office from an individual estate into a public trust, and as the duties of the trusteeship enlarge its activity is correspondingly increased since it has so much more to attend to. The way in which the advance of democracy is expanding the sphere of government and enlarging its authority is the most outstanding feature of the times. The force of this tendency intensifies the need of corresponding development in the means of control, and the most important task to which political science can apply itself is to explain the principles upon which effective control may be established.

1 F. W. Maitland, Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, Part I, p. X.

CHAPTER II

THE STATE OF POLITICAL THEORY

It is an impressive fact that representative government was scarcely known or considered in political theory before the nineteenth century, at which time its type was so mature and its powers so highly developed that it began to spread rapidly, superseding all other types of government. Blackstone, whose Commentaries appeared in 1765, knew nothing of representative government as a distinct system. It was to him simply an element in those constitutional arrangements which make the government of England a limited monarchy. He explained that it was the means by which "all such men of property in the kingdom as have not seats in the house of lords" could have a voice in parliament by their representatives when summoned "to advise his majesty."1

Considerable attention was paid to the details of representation in De Lolme's Constitution of

1 Commentaries, Book I, chap. II.

2 J. L. DeLolme (1740-1806) was a Swiss lawyer who got into trouble in his own country through his political writings, so that he took refuge in England. His work on English government was first written in French and was published in Holland in 1771. The first English edition was published the following year.