Method of making laws. and corruption in elections (m). At the election the sheriff or other returning officer must take the usual oath against bribery, and for the due execution of his office. The candidates, if required, must swear to their qualification (n), and the electors in counties to theirs, and both in counties and boroughs the electors are compellable to take the oath of abjuration (o), and that against bribery and corruption. The election being closed, the returning officer in boroughs returns his precept to the sheriff with the persons elected by the majority, and the sheriff returns the whole together with the writ for the county, and the knights elected thereon to the clerks of the crown in chancery before the day of meeting, if it be a new parliament or within fourteen days after the election, if it be an occasional vacancy under a penalty of 5001. (p) The sheriff is liable to a penalty of 100%, and the returning officer in cities and boroughs to a penalty of 40%. for a false return, and any person bribing the returning officer to a penalty of 300%. But the members returned are the sitting members until the house of commons upon petition shall adjudge the return to be illegal (q). The Speaker of the house of lords, whose office it is to preside there and manage the formality of business, is the Lord Chancellor or keeper of the king's great seal, or any other appointed by the king's commission; the Speaker of the house of commons is chosen by the house, but must be approved of by the king, and in this respect the usage of the two houses differs, that the Speaker of the house (m) In an action for bribery under the statute the voter is a competent witness. Dover v. Maestaer, 5 Esp. 92. (n) This oath is no longer necessary, but the declaration contained in 1 & 2 Vict. c. 48, which repealed the act of 9 Ann. c. 5. (0) Roman Catholics are relieved from this oath, and another form of oath is substituted for them by 10 Geo. 4, c. 7, s. 5. (p) By 2 Wm. 4, c. 45, s. 76, any sheriff, returning officer, barrister, overseer, or any person wilfully disobeying or contravening the provisions of the act is liable to be sued in an action of debt for 500l., and the jury may find a verdict for the full sum, or for less, with full costs, but such action must be brought by an elector or candidate. (q) By the recent act, 2 Vict. c. 38, at the beginning of every session the Speaker is to appoint a general committee, to whom all election petitions are to be referred, who are empowered to send for and examine persons, papers, and records, and are to decide and report their decision to the house. All questions are to be decided by a majority of the committee. Provisions are made respecting costs, &c. of commons cannot give his opinion or argue any question in To bring a bill into the house, if the relief sought by it is of a private nature, it is first necessary to prefer a petition, which must be presented by a member, and which sets forth the grievance desired to be remedied. This petition (when founded on facts that may be in their nature disputed), is referred to a committee of members who examine the matter alleged, and report it to the house, and then (or otherwise upon the mere petition) leave is given to bring in the bill. In public matters the bill is brought in upon motion made to the house without petition. The persons directed to bring in the bill present it to the house drawn out on paper. In the house of lords if the bill begins there, it is (when of a private nature) referred to two of the judges to examine and report the state of the facts alleged, to see that all necessary parties consent, and to settle all points of technical propriety. It is then read a first time, and at a convenient distance a second time, and after each reading the Speaker opens to the house the substance of the bill, and puts the question whether it shall proceed any farther. The introduction of the bill may be originally opposed as the bill itself may at either of the readings; and if the opposition succeeds the bill must be dropped for that session, as it must also if opposed with success in any of the subsequent stages. After the second reading it is committed, that is, referred to a committee; which is either selected by the house in matters of small importance, or upon a bill of consequence, the house resolves itself into a committee of the whole house. A committee of the whole house is composed of every member, and to form it the Speaker quits the chair (another member being appointed chairman) and may then sit and debate as a private member. In these committees the bill is debated clause by clause, amendments made, the blanks filled up, and sometimes the bill entirely new modelled. After it has gone through the committee the chairman reports it to the house with such amendments as the committee have made; and then the house reconsiders the whole bill again, and the question is repeatedly put upon every clause and amendment. When the house has agreed or disagreed to the amendments of the committee, and sometimes added new amendments of its own, D Noy. 84. Com. Journ., the bill is engrossed and then read a third time. The Speaker then again opens the contents; and puts the question whether the bill shall pass. If this is agreed to, the title to it is then settled, when one of the members carries it up to the bar of the house of peers and delivers it to their Speaker who comes down from his woolsack to receive it. It then passes through the same forms as in the other house, and if rejected it passes in silence to prevent altercations. But if agreed to, the lords send a message by two Masters in Chancery (or upon matters of high importance by two Judges) that they have agreed to the bill, which remains with the lords if they have made no amendment to it. If any amendments are made they are sent down with the bill to receive the concurrence of the commons. If the commons disagree thereto a conference usually follows between members deputed from each house who adjust the difference; but if both houses remain inflexible, the bill is dropped. If the commons agree to the amendments the bill is sent back to the lords with a message to that effect. When both houses have done with any bill it is deposited in the house of peers to wait the royal assent, except in the case of a bill of supply; which after receiving the concurrence of the lords is sent back to the house of commons. The royal assent may be given either in person, when the 24 July, 1660. king comes to the house of peers, or by 33 Henry 8, c. 21, by letters patent under the great seal. And when the bill has received the royal assent in either of these ways, it is then, and not before, a statute or act of parliament. 1 Wm. & M. st. 2, c. 2. Adjournment of parliament. An act of parliament thus made, cannot be superseded, altered or repealed but by the authority of parliament. An adjournment of parliament is a continuance of the session from one day to another. This is done by the authority of each house separately every day; and some times for a fortnight or more together; as at Christmas or Easter. A A prorogation. prorogation, which is the continuance of the parliament from one session to another, as an adjournment is from day to day, is effected by the royal authority expressed either by the Lord Chancellor in the royal presence, or by commission from the crown, or by proclamation. Both houses are necessarily prorogued at the same time, it not being a prorogation of either the house of lords or commons in particular, but of the parliament. The session is not at an end until a prorogation; though, unless some act be passed or some judgment given it is no session. 4 Inst. 28. Hale of Parl. 38. may A dissolution is the civil death of the parliament, and be effected by the king's will, expressed either in person or by representation, or by demise of the crown, but by 7 & 8 Wm. 3, c. 15, and 6 Ann. c. 7, the parliament continues six months after the death of any king or queen, unless sooner prorogued or dissolved by the successor. every A parliament will expire by length of time at the end of seventh year if not sooner dissolved by the royal prerogative, this being the utmost extent of time that the same parliament is allowed to sit by 1 George 1, st. 2, c. 38. Dissolution of parliament. CHAPTER III. OF THE KING AND HIS TITLE. THE supreme executive power of these kingdoms is vested in The supreme the king or queen. The crown is by common law and constitutional custom hereditary; but in a manner peculiar to itself; and the right The executive power. of inheritance may be changed or limited by parliament. The The royal inparticular mode of inheritance corresponds with the feodal path heritance. of descents, chalked out by the common law, in the succession to landed estates; yet with some exceptions. Like estates, the crown will descend lineally to the issue of the reigning monarch; and the preference of males to females, and the right of primogeniture among the males, are strictly adhered to. crown on failure of the male line, descends to the issue female. But by right of primogeniture, to the eldest daughter only, and her issue; and not as in common inheritances to all the daughters at once; the evident necessity of a sole succession to the throne having occasioned the royal law of descents to depart from the common law in this respect. Again, the doctrine of representation prevails in the descent. of the crown, as it does in other inheritances, the lineal descendants of any person deceased stand in the same place as their ancestor, if living would have done. And on failure of lineal descendants, the crown goes to the next collateral relations of the late king, provided they are lineally descended from the blood royal, that is from that royal stock which originally acquired the crown. But there is no objection (as in the case Settlement of the crown in 1688. of common descents) to the succession of a brother or uncle or other collateral relation of the half blood (a); that is, where the relationship proceeds not from the same couple of ancestors (which constitutes a kinsman of the whole blood) but from a single ancestor only; as when two persons are derived from the same father and not from the same mother, or vice versa : provided only that the one ancestor, from whom both are descended, be that from whose veins the blood royal is communicated to each. The doctrine of hereditary right does not imply an indefeasible right to the throne. It is in the power of parliament to defeat it, to exclude the immediate heir, and vest the inheritance in any one else. But however the crown may be limited or transferred, it still retains its descendible quality, and becomes hereditary in the wearer of it. And hence in our law the king is said never to die in his political capacity; because, immediately upon his natural death, the king survives in his successor. King Egbert, and afterwards William the Conqueror, were successively constituted the ancestors or common stocks of this descent. At the Revolution in 1688, the representative body of the nation selected the next protestant heirs of Charles 1, to fill the vacant throne in the ancient hereditary order of succession; with a temporary exception and preference to Wm. 3. It was towards the end of the reign of Wm. 3, on the impending failure of the protestant line of Charles 1, (whereby the throne might a second time have become vacant) that the king and parliament again exerted their power of Again in 1701. limiting and appointing the succession. They had previously by 1 Wm. & M. st. 2, c. 2, excluded every person who should be a catholic, or should marry a catholic. To act, therefore, consistently with themselves, and at the same time to pay as much regard to the old hereditary line as their former resolutions would admit, they extended the settlement of the crown to the Princess Sophia, the grand-daughter of James 1, and the nearest of the ancient blood royal who was not incapacitated by professing the popish religion. On her, therefore, and the heirs of her body, being protestants, the crown was settled by 12 & 13 Wm. 3, c. 2. The inheritance thus limited descended from the Princess Sophia to her son and heir, Geo. 1, from (a) Altered by 3 & 4 Wm. 4, c. 106, s. 9, the brother, or other relation of the half blood, now succeeds, in the order mentioned in the statute. See post, book 2, cap. 14. |