writ, and that body may be dissolved at any
moment by her Majesty. When so dissolved,
the law only requires that a new House be
summoned within three years. But, as the House of
Commons keeps the public purse, the state has
need of its annual assistance. It is only by
votes of the House of Commons annually passed,
that money necessary for the use of government
—and covering no more than a year's wants—can
be obtained.

Lords spiritual and temporal sit together in a
House of their own; but the Commons—the
whole people of Great Britain not being peers or
spiritual lords—are, as everybody knows, the
last and chief estate which forms the British
Parliament; and they are there represented by
the knights, citizens, and burgesses whom they
elect.

The first knights of the shire probably are to
be found among the lesser barons, who, forbearing
to attend in mass, elected some rich
members of their own body to represent them. King
John asked, by a writ to the sheriff of each
county, to send four discreet knights to confer
with him concerning the affairs of his kingdom.
This very likely means that, in each county, the
sheriff was at that time sole elector. Even in
Magna Charta, the great charter of King John,
there is nothing to show how the people had
been represented. But of the main constitution
of our Parliament, that charter, six hundred and
forty-four years old, exhibits the earliest outline.
This we find in the promise of the king, "to
summon all archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls,
and greater barons personally, and all other
tenants-in-chief under the Crown, by the sheriff
and bailiffs, to meet at a certain place, with
forty days' notice, to assess aids and scutages
when necessary." It is difficult to say how far
the more essential part of this promise was kept.
The first absolutely clear evidence of the
recognition of the Commons as an estate of the realm
was supplied not quite six hundred years ago,
in the reign of Henry the Third, when Simon
de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, issued writs to
the sheriffs, directing them to return two knights
for each county, and two citizens or burgesses
for every city and borough. It was Edward the
First who, in a memorable statute, admitted to
the Commons their sole right to tax themselves.
Such was the beginning of health in our strong
constitution.

The number of the members of the House of
Commons used to be variable. Fresh privileges
were from time to time granted by charter;
returns were omitted or suppressed by negligence
or corruption of sheriffs, or at the wish of poor
communities unwilling to furnish the day's wages
to which representatives were formerly entitled.
Such wages were, in the reign of Edward III.,
four shillings for a county and two shillings for
a borough member; which would be equal,
perhaps, to two guineas and one guinea of present
money. The House of Commons, in that reign,
contained about two hundred representatives.
In the reign of Henry the Sixth there were three
hundred. Between the reigns of Henry the
Eighth and Charles the Second one hundred and
eighty new members were added. Forty-five
Scotch members came in at the union with
Scotland, and a hundred Irish at the union with
Ireland. The number of the members was
raised to six hundred and fifty-eight, and was
not altered by the Reform Acts of 1832. But
the disfranchisements of Sudbury and St. Albans
afterwards caused a deduction of four from the
list.

Parliament has imperial authority, extending
over all her Majesty's dominions. It is a ruling
power, bound by no charter, and pledged to no
basis of a constitution. It has in itself sole
right to make and alter British law. Queen,
Lords, and Commons might consent to destroy
the whole existing order of things, and to create
a crossing-sweeper out of Seven-dials the sole
irresponsible Emperor of Great Britain and her
dependencies. Such a proceeding is impossible,
but if it were possible, it would not be illegal.
The only check upon extravagance in the
Imperial Parliament, beyond its own inherent
wisdom, is the power of the nation to assert itself
on fit occasion; the determination of the English
people to maintain rational freedom.

As it is the prerogative of the Crown to
dissolve and summon Parliaments, so it is the duty
of the Crown, by a royal speech, to give a
starting-point to the business of a new session by
making known the causes of the summons.
This being done, each House asserts its dignity,
by reading, for the first time, some bill of its
own before it takes the royal speech into
consideration.

It is only upon the death of a sovereign that
Parliament can meet without a summons. In
that event it is bound to meet and sit immediately.
It so met on a Sunday, on the death of
William the Third, and it has happened that the
deaths of Queen Anne, of George the Second,
and of George the Third, also made Sunday
sittings necessary.

The Lords have a peculiar position as a court
of justice, constituting the supreme court of
appeal from other law courts. This right they
trace back to their ancient rank as the king's
council, which heard causes, assisted by the
judges.

In case of impeachment, the Commons, as the
inquest of the nation, find the crime; and then,
as prosecutors, put the impeached man upon his
trial, and the Lords are at once jurymen and
judges in the matter. In the sixty or seventy
years before our Revolution there were forty
cases of impeachment. For the last hundred
years there have been only two.

Ail important right maintained by the
Commons—next in importance, perhaps, as a
safeguard, to the right of free speech and the voting
supplies—is the right of determining the fitness
of elections. But the House cannot coerce a
constituency which is exercising any of its rights
within the bounds of law. It may expel a member;
but, if he be in other respects legally eligible, his
constituency is at liberty to re-elect him. A contest
of that kind occurred in the case of John Wilkes,