(6 & 7 Will. & Mar. c. 2) provided that three years should be the maximum duration parliament. It was superseded by the Septennial Act of 1716 (1 Geo. I., st. 2, c. 38), to id the danger of a Jacobite Parliament.*

ne of the first acts of the Convention Parliament was to secure the enjoyment of reJus liberty (within the limits then still deemed necessary) by the Toleration Act (1 Will. & . c. 18, 24th May, 1689), which relieves from the penalties against separate conventior absence from the Established Church, all such Dissenters as shall take the oaths of ziance and subscribe the declaration against the Roman Catholic religion: no conticles are to be held with closed doors: all such meeting-houses are to be registered, are protected from insult: but it is provided "that no part of this toleration be extended 'apists, or such as deny the Trinity." The first step to universal freedom of thought, to its influence upon the government of the country, was made by the concession for h Milton had so eloquently pleaded, when the last act passed to restrain unlicensed ting (4 Will. & Mar. c. 24) was suffered to expire in 1695. There remains one most ortant statute of William III., the Act "for regulating of trials for Treason or Mison of Treason" (7 & 8 Will. III. c. 3, 1696). It allows the accused counsel a copy of Indictment, and of the panel of jurors, and process to compel the attendance of witnesses. prosecution is to be commenced within three years of the alleged treason: two wites are necessary, "either both of them to the same overt act, or one of them to one another of them to another overt act of the same treason:" and no evidence is to be uced on the trial of any overt act not mentioned in the indictment. The further ession of a list of the witnesses was made in the reign of Anne (1709), when the ish law of treason was extended to Scotland. By the same Act, torture, disused since s I., was formally abolished, excepting the horrible infliction of the peine forte et (or pressing to death) on persons refusing to plead, which was retained till 1772. he Tory reaction, in the fourth parliament of Anne's reign, was signalised by the sition of the property qualification for Members of Parliament (9 Ann. c. 5), repealed e reign of Victoria; as well as by the passage of the Schism Act, requiring all teachers nform to the Established Church, and of the Act against Occasional Conformity, to stop to the practice of persons, who habitually attended dissenting worship, taking the ment in the Established Church to qualify for municipal offices. Both Acts were led in 1718, under the government of Stanhope.

at the great measure of Anne's reign was the legislative union of England and Scotland. name of Great Britain had already been adopted for England, Wales, and Scotland, the accession of James I., in 1604). The Act provides for the perpetual union of wo kingdoms, under the name of Great Britain; for the succession of the crown ding to the Act of Settlement; for a parliament of the United Kingdom; for the munity of commercial and other rights; for the identity of the laws concerning public ', policy, and civil government, and for the preservation to Scotland of her laws ivate right and her courts of judicature. Scotland is to be represented in Parliament he Triennial Act of William (that each Parliament shall only last three years) was quite different, in its e and its object, from the Triennial Act of Charles I. (that more than three years should not pass without liament.

by 16 elected peers and 45 commoners: (the latter number was increased to 53 in 1832, and to 60 in 1868). The peers of Scotland are to rank next after the English peers of like degree and the crown is not to create new Scotch peers. The regalia and public records of Scotland are to remain in the country; the Church of Scotland is to retain its Presbyterian government and form of discipline.

COMMERCE AND COLONIZATION.-The cessation of civil war left Great Britain free to resume the progress on which she had entered when the defeat of the Armada dispelled the alarm of foreign invasion. Commerce was even aided by the Dutch wars, which transferred much of the carrying trade of Holland to English ships. The amount of our shipping was computed to have been doubled from the Restoration to the Revolution; and, of the total of about 210,000 tons, one-third belonged to London, whose population was about 530,000. Bristol owed her rank as the second sea-port of the kingdom to her commerce with the American and West Indian colonies and plantations. The beginning of successful Colonization dates from the reign of James I., with the foundation of Jamestown, in Virginia (1604). The settlements of the "Pilgrim Fathers" in New England began in 1620; and, two years later, Scottish colonists gave to Acadia the name of Nova Scotia. The islands of St. Christopher (St. Kitts) and Barbadoes were settled in 1623 and 1624. To the time of Charles I. belong the Puritan settlement of Massachusetts (1627), Connecticut (1630 and 1635), Rhode Island (1635), and the Roman Catholic Maryland (1633). Jamaica was taken from the Spaniards in 1655; and New York (then New Amsterdam) from the Dutch in 1644 (ceded, with New Jersey and Delaware, by the Peace of Breda). To the reign of Charles II. belong, also, the colonies of Carolina (1669), and Pennsylvania (1682). Thus all the thirteen original "States," except Georgia (1732), were settled before the Revolution. In 1670, the Hudson's Bay Company obtained its charter for opening a trade in minerals and furs. The East India Company, after obtaining factories at Madras (1640; erected into a Presidency, 1652), Bombay (ceded to Charles II. as his queen's dowry, 1662), and Calcutta (1698), was finally constituted by a union of the two rival companies in 1702, which received a new charter in 1709.

INSTITUTIONS AND POPULATION. Among the Institutions which we owe to this period (besides the Standing Army already noticed) are the Post Office, established for Great Britain in 1660, and for all the British dominions in 1710; the Bank of England, which originated with a company of merchants, who advanced £1,200,000* to William III., and received a charter 27th July, 1694; the South Sea Company (1710), which became responsible for a Government debt of £8,971,325, in consideration of £568,279 10s. of annual interest and the exclusive trade to the South Sea; and, last not least, the NATIONAL DEBT, of which an account is given in the "Remarks on the Hanoverian Line." The population of England at the Revolution has been ascertained, by three careful computations, to have been at the least 5,200,000, or, at the most, 5,500,000.

*This loan to Government, since increased to £14,000,000, forms the fixed capital of the Bank. It was originally lent at 8 per cent., the interest is now 3 per cent.

The exclusive trade was abolished after the crash of the Company in 1720; and the South Sea Stocks were consolidated with the rest of the National Debt by Mr. Gladstone in 1853.

religion, and the laws and liberties of this kingdom," and setting forth, under a similar classification, the following principles :-(1, 2, 3, 4, 6,) the illegality of the suspending and dispensing powers; of the late court of commissioners for ecclesiastical causes; of the levy of money, and the keeping of a standing army, without the consent of Parliament: (5, 7, 8, 9,) the right of petitioning the king; of carrying arms by Protestants; of freedom of Parliamentary elections and debates, not to be questioned in any other court or place: (10,) denouncing excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments: (11,) the due empanelling and return of jurors: (12,) declaring all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction, illegal and void: (13,) and that, for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Parliament ought to be held frequently. All these "they do claim, demand, and insist upon, as their undoubted rights and liberties;" and in consideration of the Prince of Orange's declaration to the same effect (§ II.), they settle the crowns of England, France, and Ireland, (1) on William and Mary during their lives (the sole exercise of regal power to be in William during their joint lives); (2) on the heirs of Mary; (3) on the Princess Anne of Denmark and her heirs; (4) on the heirs of the Prince of Orange. § III. prescribes the Oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration. §§ IV. and V. recite the acceptance of the crown by William and Mary, "according to the resolution and desire of the said Lords and Commons, contained in the said declaration," and their constitution of the Convention as a Parliament. § VI. prays their Majesties to make the Declaration an Enactment. §§ VII., VIII. and IX. confirm the above settlement of the Crown, but to the exclusion of Catholics, or any King or Queen who shall marry a Catholic; declaring that, in such cases, the people of the realm are absolved from their allegiance, and the succession is to pass on as if the person so offending were naturally dead. § X. prescribes the Coronation Oath and the Declaration against the Roman Catholic religion to be made by each new Sovereign. § XI. contains the enacting clause; and § XII. forbids all dispensations to any statute, except such as may be provided for by Statute.

The Act of Settlement (12 and 13 Will. III., c. 2), which was passed towards the close of William's reign (1701), in consequence of the death of Anne's only surviving child, the Duke of Gloucester, further limits the succession to the next heir who was a Protestant, viz., the Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover, granddaughter of James I., and to her heirs, being Protestants. This Act added eight new securities (to take effect from the accession of the House of Hanover), in part dictated by jealousy of a foreign dynasty. (1) The Sovereign must join in communion with the established Church of England. (2) This nation shall not be obliged to go to war for the defence of his Continental dominions, without consent of Parliament. (3) He shall not leave the realm without consent of Parliament (repealed in the first year of George I.). (4) He must act with his Privy Council, and resolutions taken in Council must be signed by the Councillors who advise and consent to them. (This attempt to restore to the whole Council the power which, under Charles II., had gradually been transferred to the Cabinet, was judged to be impracticable before it came into operation; and the clause was repealed in the reign of Anne). (5) No foreigner is to be a Privy Councillor, or a Member of Parliament, or to hold office, or to have grants of land, etc., from the Crown. (6) No person holding a place of

profit under, or a pension from, the Crown, shall be capable of sitting in the House of Commons. (This provision, aimed at the means by which the Crown corrupted the House, was superseded by the Statute of Anne, subjecting Members of the House, who accept office under the Crown, to re-election, and absolutely excluding certain classes of pensioners and placemen. The Statute is held not to apply to such subordinate Ministers as hold office from their chiefs,-as Under-Secretaries of State and others,-and the Reform Act of 1867 permits a transference from one to another of the chief offices, without the seat being vacated). (7) The judges are to hold their commissions quamdiu se bene gesserint, and only to be removeable upon the address of both Houses of Parliament :our best security for judicial independence. (8) No pardon under the Great Seal shall be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons. The Act repeats, and ratifies by the consent of the King, the solemn acknowledgment that the laws of England are the birthright of the people thereof, and binding upon all her Kings and their Ministers.

:

The bearing of the Act on the principle of legitimacy should not be overlooked. In case of the failure of the Hanoverian line, no descendant of any former reigning house could have any right to the throne, except under a new title, to be created by Parliament. It is expressly provided by a further Act of Anne" for securing the Protestant succession” (4 and 5 Ann, c. 20: 1705) that it was treason to maintain in writing that the Queen was not a lawful sovereign, and that the Kings or Queens of England, with and by the authority of Parliament, cannot limit the descent of the Crown; and that preaching or advisedly speaking to the same effect incurs a præmunire.

The clause in the Bill of Rights against a standing army gave an indirect guarantee for the annual meeting of Parliament, in order to pass the annual Mutiny Act, but for the renewal of which the army would dissolve of itself. The long vexed question of the command and discipline of the militia (meaning, at that time, the military force of the kingdom) was brought to an issue in the very first month of William's reign (March, 1689), by the mutiny of two Scotch regiments under orders to embark for Holland. Thereupon, the Convention Parliament passed the first Mutiny Act (1 Will. and Mar., c. 5), which first condemns the keeping up an army in time of peace, without the consent of Parliament, and forbids any subject to be punished except by the established laws of the realm; and then proceeds to declare the present expediency of maintaining an armed force, and authorises their Majesties to grant commissions to general officers for trying and punishing such offences as mutiny and desertion. This was the constitutional origin of our standing army. Another security for the annual meeting of Parliament, and for the power of the Commons, was created by the settlement on the Crown of a revenue of £1,200,000, to be voted annually, half for the Civil List, and the other half for the public defence; and the votes were limited to their specified purposes, under severe penalties, by the annual Appropriation Act. "This," Mr. Hallam remarks, "has given the House of Commons so effectual a control over the executive power,—or, more truly speaking, has rendered it so much a participation in that power, that no administration can possibly subsist without its concurrence; nor can the session of parliament be intermitted for an entire year, without leaving both the military and naval force unprovided for."

To secure the dependence of the House of Commons on its constituents, the Triennial

Act (6 & 7 Will. & Mar. c. 2) provided that three years should be the maximum duration of a parliament. It was superseded by the Septennial Act of 1716 (1 Geo. I., st. 2, c. 38), to avoid the danger of a Jacobite Parliament.*

One of the first acts of the Convention Parliament was to secure the enjoyment of religious liberty (within the limits then still deemed necessary) by the Toleration Act (1 Will. & Mar. c. 18, 24th May, 1689), which relieves from the penalties against separate conventicles, or absence from the Established Church, all such Dissenters as shall take the oaths of allegiance and subscribe the declaration against the Roman Catholic religion: no conventicles are to be held with closed doors: all such meeting-houses are to be registered, and are protected from insult: but it is provided "that no part of this toleration be extended to Papists, or such as deny the Trinity." The first step to universal freedom of thought, and to its influence upon the government of the country, was made by the concession for which Milton had so eloquently pleaded, when the last act passed to restrain unlicensed printing (4 Will. & Mar. c. 24) was suffered to expire in 1695. There remains one most important statute of William III., the Act "for regulating of trials for Treason or Misprision of Treason" (7 & 8 Will. III. c. 3, 1696). It allows the accused counsel a copy of the indictment, and of the panel of jurors, and process to compel the attendance of witnesses. The prosecution is to be commenced within three years of the alleged treason: two witnesses are necessary, "either both of them to the same overt act, or one of them to one and another of them to another overt act of the same treason:" and no evidence is to be produced on the trial of any overt act not mentioned in the indictment. The further concession of a list of the witnesses was made in the reign of Anne (1709), when the English law of treason was extended to Scotland. By the same Act, torture, disused since James I., was formally abolished, excepting the horrible infliction of the peine forte et dure (or pressing to death) on persons refusing to plead, which was retained till 1772.

The Tory reaction, in the fourth parliament of Anne's reign, was signalised by the imposition of the property qualification for Members of Parliament (9 Ann. c. 5), repealed in the reign of Victoria; as well as by the passage of the Schism Act, requiring all teachers to conform to the Established Church, and of the Act against Occasional Conformity, to put a stop to the practice of persons, who habitually attended dissenting worship, taking the Sacrament in the Established Church to qualify for municipal offices. Both Acts were repealed in 1718, under the government of Stanhope.

But the great measure of Anne's reign was the legislative union of England and Scotland. (The name of Great Britain had already been adopted for England, Wales, and Scotland, after the accession of James I., in 1604). The Act provides for the perpetual union of the two kingdoms, under the name of Great Britain; for the succession of the crown according to the Act of Settlement; for a parliament of the United Kingdom; for the community of commercial and other rights; for the identity of the laws concerning public right, policy, and civil government, and for the preservation to Scotland of her laws of private right and her courts of judicature. Scotland is to be represented in Parliament

• The Triennial Act of William (that each Parliament shall only last three years) was quite different, in its nature and its object, from the Triennial Act of Charles I. (that more than three years should not pass without a Parliament.

by 16 elected peers and 45 commoners: (the latter number was increased to 53 in 1832, and to 60 in 1868). The peers of Scotland are to rank next after the English peers of like degree and the crown is not to create new Scotch peers. The regalia and public records of Scotland are to remain in the country; the Church of Scotland is to retain its Presbyterian government and form of discipline.

COMMERCE AND COLONIZATION.-The cessation of civil war left Great Britain free to resume the progress on which she had entered when the defeat of the Armada dispelled the alarm of foreign invasion. Commerce was even aided by the Dutch wars, which transferred much of the carrying trade of Holland to English ships. The amount of our shipping was computed to have been doubled from the Restoration to the Revolution; and, of the total of about 210,000 tons, one-third belonged to London, whose population was about 530,000. Bristol owed her rank as the second sea-port of the kingdom to her commerce with the American and West Indian colonies and plantations. The beginning of successful Colonization dates from the reign of James I., with the foundation of Jamestown, in Virginia (1604). The settlements of the "Pilgrim Fathers" in New England began in 1620; and, two years later, Scottish colonists gave to Acadia the name of Nova Scotia. The islands of St. Christopher (St. Kitts) and Barbadoes were settled in 1623 and 1624. To the time of Charles I. belong the Puritan settlement of Massachusetts (1627), Connecticut (1630 and 1635), Rhode Island (1635), and the Roman Catholic Maryland (1633). Jamaica was taken from the Spaniards in 1655; and New York (then New Amsterdam) from the Dutch in 1644 (ceded, with New Jersey and Delaware, by the Peace of Breda). To the reign of Charles II. belong, also, the colonies of Carolina (1669), and Pennsylvania (1682). Thus all the thirteen original "States," except Georgia (1732), were settled before the Revolution. In 1670, the IIudson's Bay Company obtained its charter for opening a trade in minerals and furs. The East India Company, after obtaining factories at Madras (1640; erected into a Presidency, 1652), Bombay (ceded to Charles II. as his queen's dowry, 1662), and Calcutta (1698), was finally constituted by a union of the two rival companies in 1702, which received a new charter in 1709.

INSTITUTIONS AND POPULATION. Among the Institutions which we owe to this period (besides the Standing Army already noticed) are the Post Office, established for Great Britain in 1660, and for all the British dominions in 1710; the Bank of England, which originated with a company of merchants, who advanced £1,200,000* to William III., and received a charter 27th July, 1694; the South Sea Company (1710), which became responsible for a Government debt of £8,971,325, in consideration of £568,279 10s. of annual interest and the exclusive trade to the South Sea; and, last not least, the NATIONAL DEBT, of which an account is given in the "Remarks on the Hanoverian Line." The population of England at the Revolution has been ascertained, by three careful computations, to have been at the least 5,200,000, or, at the most, 5,500,000. *This loan to Government, since increased to £14,000,000, forms the fixed capital of the Bank. It was originally lent at 8 per cent., the interest is now 3 per cent.

The exclusive trade was abolished after the crash of the Company in 1720; and the South Sea Stocks were consolidated with the rest of the National Debt by Mr. Gladstone in 1853.