THE LAW AND CUSTOM OF THE CONSTITUTION PART I PARLIAMENT BY SIR WILLIAM R. ANSON, BART., D.C.L. OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW WARDEN OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M DCCC LXXXVI [ All rights reserved] PREFACE. I HAVE endeavoured in this book to state the law relating to existing institutions, with so much of history as is necessary to explain how they have come to be what they are. The student of constitutional law realises at every turn the truth of Dr. Stubbs' saying, that the roots of the present lie deep in the past.' Nevertheless a writer who wishes to describe our present constitution and its relations to the past, finds himself involved in difficulty, if he begins at the beginning. It is impossible to keep our institutions abreast along the course of history, from the Witenagemot to the Redistribution Act, without putting a severe strain upon the attention of the reader, and probably, in the end, sacrificing law to history, the present to the past. The lawyer primarily wants to know what an institution is, and then, the circumstances of its growth. I have tried to satisfy his first requirement, and, as to his second, to put him in the way of obtaining more knowledge than I can pretend to possess. Nor again, have I attempted to delineate the law of our constitution after the manner of Professor Dicey. He has drawn with unerring hand those features which distinguish our constitution from others, and has given us a picture which can hardly fail to impress itself on the mind with a sense of reality. I have tried to map out a portion of its surface and to fill in the details. He has done the work of an artist. I have tried to do the work of a surveyor. I have dealt, in this volume, solely with Parliament, and hope in a subsequent volume to deal with the Executive. Writing for students, I have treated some matters more fully and others less fully than the practical lawyer may think necessary; but where I have been brief I do not pretend to have written with a reserve of knowledge, and I have often said no more because I had no more to say. ALL SOULS COLLEGE, March 1886. W. R. A. |