Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. A. V. Dicey
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That this may be the actual effect of the Act does not admit of dispute. That the Home Rule Bill was strenuously opposed by a large number of the electorate is certain. That this Bill was hated by a powerful minority of Irishmen is also certain. That the rejection of a Home Rule Bill has twice within thirty years met with the approval of the electors is an admitted historical fact. But that the widespread demand for an appeal to the people has received no attention from the majority of the House of Commons is also certain. No impartial observer can therefore deny the possibility that a fundamental change in our constitution may be carried out against the will of the nation.
5. The Act may deeply affect the position and the character of the Speaker of the House of Commons. It has hitherto been the special glory of the House of Commons that the Speaker who presides over the debates of the House, though elected by a party, has for at least a century and more tried, and generally tried with success, to be the representative and guide of the whole House and not to be either the leader or the servant of a party. The most eminent of Speakers have always been men who aimed at maintaining something like a judicial and therefore impartial character. In this effort they have obtained a success unattained, it is believed, in any other country except England. The recognition of this moral triumph is seen in the constitutional practice, almost, one may now say, the constitutional rule, that
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a member once placed in the Speaker’s chair shall continue to be re-elected at the commencement of each successive Parliament irrespective of the political character of each successive House of Commons. Thus Speakers elected by a Liberal majority have continued to occupy their office though the House of Commons be elected in which a Conservative majority predominates, whilst, on the other hand, a Speaker elected by a Conservative House of Commons has held the Speakership with public approval when the House of Commons exhibits a Liberal majority and is guided by a Cabinet of Liberals. The Parliament Act greatly increases the authority of the Speaker with respect to Bills to be passed under that Act. No Bill can be so passed unless he shall have time after time certified in writing under his hand, and signed by him that the provisions of the Parliament Act have been strictly followed. This is a matter referred to his own knowledge and conscience. There may clearly arise cases in which a fair difference of opinion may exist on the question whether the Speaker can honestly give the required certificate. Is it not certain that a party which has a majority in the House of Commons will henceforth desire to have a Speaker who may share the opinions of such party? This does not mean that a body of English gentlemen will wish to be presided over by a rogue; what it does mean is that they will come to desire a Speaker who is not a judge but is an honest partisan. The Parliament Act is a menace to the judicial character of the Speaker. In the Congress of the United States the Speaker of the House of Representatives is a man of character and of vigour, but he is an avowed partisan and may almost be called the parliamentary leader of the party which is supported by a majority in the House of Representatives.
SECOND QUESTION
What is the general tendency of these new conventions?
ANSWER
It assuredly is to increase the power of any party which possesses a parliamentary majority, i.e., a majority, however got together, of the House of Commons, and, finally, to place the control of legislation,
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and indeed the whole government of the country, in the hands of the Cabinet which is in England at once the only instrument through which a dominant party can exercise its power, and the only body in the state which can lead and control the parliamentary majority of which the Cabinet is the organ. That the rigidity and the strength of the party system, or (to use an American expression) of the Machine, has continued with every successive generation to increase in England, is the conviction of the men who have most thoroughly analysed English political institutions as they now exist and work.75
Almost everything tends in one and the same direction. The leaders in Parliament each now control their own party mechanism. At any given moment the actual Cabinet consists of the men who lead the party which holds office. The leading members of the Opposition lead the party which wishes to obtain office. Party warfare in England is, in short, conducted by leading parliamentarians who constitute the actual Cabinet or the expected Cabinet. The electors, indeed, are nominally supreme; they can at a general election transfer the government of the country from one party to another. It may be maintained with much plausibility that under the quinquennial Parliament created by the Parliament Act the British electorate will each five years do little else than elect the party or the Premier by whom the country shall be governed for five years. In Parliament a Cabinet which can command a steadfast, even though not a very large majority, finds little check upon its powers. A greater number of M.P.s than fifty years ago deliver speeches in the House of Commons. But in spite of or perhaps because of this facile eloquence, the authority of individual M.P.s who neither sit in the Cabinet nor lead the Opposition, has suffered diminution. During the Palmerstonian era, at any rate, a few of such men each possessed an authority inside and outside the House which is hardly claimed by any member now-a-days who neither has nor is expected to obtain a seat in any Cabinet.
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Any observer whose political recollections stretch back to the time of the Crimean War, that is sixty years ago, will remember occasions on which the words of Roebuck, of Roundell Palmer, of Cobden, and above all, at certain crises of Bright, might be, and indeed were, of a weight which no Government, or for that matter no Opposition, could treat as a trifle. Legislation again is now the business, one might almost say the exclusive business, of the Cabinet. Few if any, as far as an outsider can judge, are the occasions on which a private member not supported by the Ministry of the day, can carry any Bill through Parliament. Any M.P. may address the House, but the Prime Minister can greatly curtail the opportunity for discussing legislation when he deems discussion inopportune. The spectacle of the House of Commons which neither claims nor practices real freedom of discussion, and has no assured means of obtaining from a Ministry in power answers to questions which vitally concern the interest of the nation, is not precisely from a constitutional point of view, edifying or reassuring. But the plain truth is that the power which has fallen into the hands of the Cabinet may be all but necessary for the conduct of popular government in England under our existing constitution. There exists cause for uneasiness. It is at least arguable that important changes in the conventions, if not in the law, of the constitution may be urgently needed; but the reason for alarm is not that the English executive is too strong, for weak government generally means bad administration, but that our English executive is, as a general rule, becoming more and more the representative of a party rather than the guide of the country. No fair-minded man will, especially at this moment, dispute that the passion for national independence may transform a government of partisans into a government bent on securing the honour and the safety of the nation. But this fact, though it is of immense moment, ought not to conceal from us the inherent tendency of the party system to confer upon partisanship authority which ought to be the exclusive property of the nation.76
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THIRD QUESTION
Does the experience of the last thirty years confirm the doctrine laid down in this treatise that the sanction which enforces obedience to the conventions of the constitution is to be found in the close connection between these conventions and the rule of law?77
ANSWER
The doctrine I have maintained may be thus at once illustrated and explained. The reason why every Parliament keeps in force the Mutiny Act or why a year never elapses without a Parliament being summoned to Westminster, is simply that any neglect of these conventional rules would entail upon every person in office the risk, we might say the necessity, of breaking the law of the land. If the law governing the army which is in effect an annual Act, were not passed annually, the discipline of the army would without constant breaches of law become impossible. If a year were to elapse without a Parliament being summoned to Westminster a good number of taxes would cease to be paid, and it would be impossible legally to deal with such parts of the revenue as were paid into the Imperial exchequer. Now