Dean of St. Asaph's case, 1779. The doctrine held by the Judges in these trials was strongly animadverted upon in both Houses of Parliament; and the rights of Juries in cases of Libel were nobly and eloquently maintained by the advocacy of Erskine in the cases of the Dean of St. Asaph, in 1779. and of Stockdale, 1789, the latter being a prosecution for publishing Stockdale's what was charged as a scandalous and seditious libel' concerning case, 1739 the conduct of the House of Commons in its impeachment of Warren Hastings. At length, in 1792, the ruling of the Judges as to the province of Juries was in effect reversed by Mr. Fox's Libel Act, which declared their right, on any trial or information for Libel, to give a general verdict of guilty or not guilty on the whole matter.' Mr. Fox's Libel Act, 1792. Reactionary period in growth of liberty of opinion, 1792-1832. Freedom of the Press completely established. Lord Camp bell's Libel Act, 1843. But the signal advance made by liberty of opinion during the first thirty years of George III.'s reign was about to receive a decided check. The proceedings of the French revolutionists created a widespread terror of democracy among the great body of the English people, which was aggravated by the extravagance of a small but turbulent body of Social and Political reformers in England itself. With the publication by the Government, in 1792, of a Proclamation warning the people against wicked and seditious writings industriously dispersed among them, and commanding magistrates to discover the authors, printers, and promulgators of such writings, began a reactionary period in the growth of the liberty of opinion which cannot be said to have entirely passed away until after the passing of the Reform Act of 1832. During this period, prosecutions of the press abounded; seditious speaking was severely restrained; and the regulation of newspapers frequently occupied the attention of the Legislature. But from the year 1832, at latest, the Freedom of the Press has been completely established. The utmost latitude of criticism and invective has been allowed it in discussing the actions of the Government and of all public men and measures. By Lord Campbell's Libel Act, passed in 1843, the defendant on an indictment or information for a defamatory libel is allowed to plead its truth, and that its publication was for the public benefit; and the harsh extension of the ruling in Almon's case, as to the criminal liability of a publisher for the unauthorised acts of his servants, has been altered by allowing the defendant in all cases to prove that such publication was made without his authority, consent, or knowledge, and that it did not arise from want of due care or caution on his part.3 State prosecution for libel is now as much a thing of the past as the Censorship itself. The policy of repression has been finally discarded; and rulers have at length recognised in practice the truth and wisdom of Lord Bacon's maxim, that the 'punishing of wits enhances their authority; and a forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the faces of them that seek to tread it out.'' We have now traced the English Constitution from its germ in the. free institutions of our Teutonic forefathers, and have marked the course of Freedom as it slowly "Broadens down from precedent to precedent," and has finally assumed that special form of Parliamentary Government under which it is our privilege to live. Amidst the vicissitudes of its growth and development, during the ten centuries spanned by the several dynasties which have ruled us from Egbert to Victoria, its birth-right of freedom has ever been maintained. Even under Tudor autocracy, the external forms of Constitutional government were observed; and the heritage of liberty was thus handed on to the generations yet to come, who were once more to make it all-powerful in the State. The preservation of that heritage has been mainly due to the combination of sturdy independence, reverence for law and order, and practical common sense, which so pre-eminently distinguish the English people. Actuated by this spirit, they have been enabled, under the guidance of some wise and great Sovereigns, and of a long line of illustrious statesmen, to adapt the English Constitution to the varying needs of successive ages, while preserving its fundamental principles intact. The retrospect of the crises through which our Constitution has safely passed, and of the dangers which it has triumphantly surmounted, may well enable us to look forward with confidence to a happy solution of the difficulties which perhaps yet await its further development in the Future. The close of the nineteenth century is characterised by a restless spirit of change and innovation extending in all directions, and sparing from attack hardly a single part of the constitution. The vehemence of these attacks has, however, been principally directed against property, in whatever form represented; and thus especially against the Church 1 On Liberty of the Press see Hunt, Fourth Estate; Andrews, Hist. of British Journalism; Hallam, Const. Hist. iii. 2-6, 166-168; May, Const. Hist. ii. 238-376; Macaulay, [Hist, Eng. 1861, iv. 542-3, 603-9.] and, what is termed, 'the aristocratic predominance.' At the same time many beneficent and salutary measures have become law, the tendency of which is to ameliorate the social condition of the toiling classes. In this connection it is only necessary to refer to the Allotments Act, 1887 (50 & 51 Vict. c. 48), The Public Health Acts, 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 55), and 1890 (53 & 54 Vict. c. 59), The Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890 (53 & 54 Vict. c. 70), The Small Holdings Act, 1892 (55 & 56 Vict. c. 31), and to The Employers' Liability Bill, 1894. The three Reform Bills, 1832. 1867, and 1884, broke down step by step, through the extension of the franchise, the predominance of the gentry or landed classes in Parliament and the State generally. The middle classes attained the position of an equally privileged factor with the landed classes, and in the province of administration the functions of the old self-government offices were usurped by elected committees of tax-payers; thus forming (so to say) a paid hierarchy of officials. Whilst down to 1884 the tendency was more or less in the direction of centralisation.-viz., the State as the sole and supreme fountain of all law and organisation,-the changes wrought upon the constitution since 1887 have been all towards decentralisation :—. -A splitting up into Units. In the Local Government Act, 1894 (56 & 57 Vict. c. 73), an important stage in this direction-Local autonomy or decentralisation was arrived at. The Local Government Act, 1888, has been continued by this Act, with the difference that whilst the Act of 1888 proposed the District Council as the Unit for the purposes of local government, the Local Government Act, 1894, takes the parish as such Unit.'' The Parish meeting is composed of all such as possess the parliamentary or the Local Government franchise, and is, in its democratic character, a revival of the old parish vestry. The parish council is appointed by the parish meeting. A combination of electoral right, interest and residence in the parish are its chief features. The most important right conferred, however, by the Legislature is that of the compulsory acquisition of land. The extent of its powers as to borrowing money and levying rates are restricted to 6d. in the £. The Act whilst secularising the Parish vestry, does not at present affect it as regards the specific affairs of the Church. The Churchwardens' office is unaffected and the Churchwardens remain, as does also the custody of the Parish Registers of Births, Deaths, and Marriages with them. Ecclesiastical Charities are likewise exempted from the control of the Parish Council. This 1 H. B. Miller, Parish and District Councils, Introd. act severs the union of Church and State at its commencing point, and is therefore referred to first of the more recent constitutional changes. Thus has been attempted, and in great measure carried out, a revival of the old communal system (Mark), working in with the County Councils, as formed by the Local Government Act, 1888 (51 & 52 Vict. c. 41). These newly erected communal bodies must be viewed as an experiment only. The mode of interworking these Councils and their probable success, as a solution of the question of local government, it is premature to conjecture upon. The Report of the Royal Commission on the Unification of London, 1894, should be briefly referred to. The Act of 1888, in creating the London County Council combined in that body two distinct characters, and invested it with two distinct classes of duties and powers. It not merely constituted "London lying outside the city" a separate county, under a County Council, exercising the functions hitherto performed by the Justices in Quarter Sessions, but also ransferred to the Council the powers and duties previously vested in he Metropolitan Board of Works; so that the London County Council stands out among other County Councils both as regards the extent and limit of its authority. Over the County of London-that is, London outside the city-its powers are very extensive. Where it has no power of direct administration itself, it controls in various ways the action of the local authorities, the vestries and district boards. At the city boundary, many, if not most, of these powers are stayed, and we come into the jurisdiction of a separate municipality-the city of London-which also exercises some powers beyond its precincts, and into a new county, the county of the City of London. The Commissioners recommended that the whole administrative county of London, including the city, be a county in itself, and that the present city be styled the 'Old City.' The Irish struggle, or Irish question, is another leading feature of the past two decades, which has passed through an acute stage since the learned author last revised the pages of this work. Of the various legislative enactments dealing with Ireland, between the years 1816-1842, no fewer than 32 were in favour of the landlord, whilst legislation entirely neglected the tenant. The first step towards improving the position of the tenant was taken in 1870. The Act of 1870 brought about a great revolution in the Irish tenants' cause. The Act of 1881 gave the tenants the right to transfer or sell to another their right of tenure, to demand that a corresponding rent should be fixed, and that the lease or tenure should be renewed for a C.H. TT definite period; further concessions in this direction were proposed by the late Gladstonian Government but have not become law. About the middle of September, 1892, the Irish Crimes Act was repealed, an Act by which the Conservative Government of Lord Salisbury had restored comparative tranquillity to Ireland. On 13th February, 1893, Mr. Gladstone brought in his Home Rule Bill, known as the Government of Ireland Bill, the main terms of which were that an Irish Parliament consisting of two Houses sitting in Dublin and an Irish Ministry (to wit, an Executive Committee of the Privy Council in Ireland) should be formed. Through these organs, which were, moreover, deprived of the conduct of naval, military, and foreign affairs, the Government of Ireland was to be separately carried on. The Irish Members were to remain Members of the Imperial Parliament, but should not have the right of deliberating and voting upon matters which exclusively concerned Great Britain (without Ireland). Violent debates were held around this Bill, and the whole time of the House of Commons was long occupied with it. The Bill finally passed the third reading in the House of Commons on the 1st September of that year (1893, by a majority of 34. On the 9th September of the same year, the Bill was rejected by the House of Lords by 419 to 41 votes. The Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, refused to dissolve Parliament on this vote, and, as a result, Reform projects and measures of the wildest character filled up the time of the House of Commons until late in 1894; and eventually the Government had to abandon its comprehensive Reform Programme, including the Welsh Disestablishment Bill. Other measures, such as the introduction of Parish Councils, only became law on the Lords Amendments being accepted. At last the 'Irish Tenants Relief Bill,' which Mr. John Morley, the Secretary for Ireland, believed would be the final solution of the Irish land question,' was rejected by the House of Lords by an overwhelming majority; and the Government resigned. The advent to power of an Unionist Government has for the time being at all events postponed all further legislation in this direction. But agrarian Reform for England is none the less one of the questions of the hour. The abolition of the House of Lords, the Disestablishment of the Church, these and other kindred cries of the radical reformer cannot shake the Constitution as much as a thoroughgoing agrarian reform. The landed gentry have been already severely taxed by the Death Duties Act of Sir William Harcourt of 1894, but nothing has been immediately proposed or carried of a confiscatory The solution of this social-political problem may possibly be found in the creation of a new agricultural middle class, whilst pre nature. |