The Government of England: Its Structure, and Its Development

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Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1867 - 569 pages
 

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Page 476 - Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests ; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates ; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole ; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.
Page 6 - You will observe, that, from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our Constitution to claim and assert our liberties as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity, — as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right.
Page 74 - With which the King was greatly offended, and said that then he should be under the law, which was treason to affirm, as he said; to which I said that Bracton saith, quod Rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub Deo et lege [that the King ought not to be under man but under God and under the law—BT\.
Page 170 - ... no peace could be safe or honourable to Great Britain or Europe, if Spain and the West Indies should be allotted to any branch of the house of Bourbon.
Page 54 - Crown, shall be void and of no avail or force whatever ; but the matters which are to be established for the estate of our lord the King and of his heirs, and for the estate of the realm and of the people, shall be treated, accorded, and established in Parliaments, by our lord the King, and by the assent of the prelates, earls, and barons, and the commonalty of the realm ; according as it hath been heretofore accustomed.
Page 145 - ... likely to embarrass them. If they forfeit that confidence, if the parliamentary majority is dissatisfied with the way in which patronage is distributed, with the way in which the prerogative of mercy is used, with the conduct of foreign affairs, with the conduct of a war, the remedy is simple. It is not necessary that the Commons should take on themselves the business of administration, that they should request the Crown to make this man a bishop and that man a judge, to pardon one criminal and...
Page 73 - King said, that he thought the law was founded upon reason, and that he and others had reason, as well as the Judges : to which it was answered by me, thai true it was, that God had endowed His Majesty with excellent science, and great endowments of nature; but His Majesty was not learned in the laws of his realm of England, and causes which concern the life, or inheritance, or goods, or fortunes of his subjects...
Page 73 - ... that God had endowed his Majesty with excellent science, and great endowments of nature; but his Majesty was not learned in the laws of his realm of England, and causes which concern the life, or inheritance, or goods or fortunes of his subjects, are not to be decided by natural reason, but by the artificial reason and judgment of the law, which law is an art which requires long study and experience before that a man can attain to the cognizance of it...
Page 229 - That her Majesty's Ministers do not sufficiently possess the confidence of the House of Commons to enable "them to carry through the House measures which they deem of essential importance to the public welfare ; and that their continuance in office under such circumstances is at variance with the spirit of the Constitution.
Page 289 - England, to define the limits of its jurisdiction ; by the first of which it is " accorded and assented, that the admirals and their deputies shall not meddle from henceforth of anything done within the realm, but only of a thing done upon the sea, as it hath been used in the time of the noble prince King Edward, grandfather of our Lord the King that now is

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