The
respective rights and powers of the sovereign and of the law-making
body, are determined by a collection of rules, written or unwritten,
collectively known as the constitution. The constitution contains the
fundamental law of the land. All acts of the government to be valid,
must be constitutional, that is to say, in conformity with the rules
laid down in the constitution. For this reason limited monarchies are
also known by the name of Constitutional Monarchies.
England is the most conspicuous example of a limited or constitutional
monarchy. In consideration of our former connection with her, and the
extent to which we have derived our ideas of government from her
political institutions, it will be of great assistance to us if we stop
for a moment to consider her government, before proceeding to a study of
our own.
The sovereign of England is termed King or Queen. Originally possessed
of almost absolute power, the English ruler, at the present day
possesses very little actual power and influence, much less in fact than
the people of the United States have entrusted to their President. The
constitutional history of England is largely the narrative of the
successive steps by which the people have wrested from royal hands and
taken under their own control, the powers of government.
The rights of the English people in the participation of their own
government are not contained in the written document, such as we possess
in our constitution, but rest upon established custom and precedent, and
various charters wrested from their kings.
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