The Mother of Parliaments

Of all the strangers who honour the Palace of Westminster with their presence none are treated with greater consideration than the reporters. This touching regard shown for the...

Parliament, like everything else, must have a beginning. The opening of a session which is also the commencement of a new Parliament is an event which tradition invests with all...

Parliament is not an administrative body. Summoned by the Crown, with its assent it passes laws, gives and takes away rights, authorises and directs taxation and expenditure; bu...

The Witenagemot, as we have already seen, was essentially an aristocratic assembly. The populace sometimes attended its meetings, but, beyond expressing their feelings by shouts...

When Pitt was asked what he considered most to be lamented, the lost books of Livy, or those of Tacitus, he replied that to the recovery of either of these he would prefer that...

Parliament may be summoned to assemble wherever the king pleases. Westminster, the site of that royal palace which has sheltered so many English sovereigns, from King Canute to...

No constitutional principle has been so strongly criticised and so freely abused as the one embodied in the hereditary chamber which forms so important a branch of our legislatu...

The modern system of legislating by Bill and Statute dates from the reign of Henry VI. In earlier days legislation was effected by means of humble petitions presented to the Cro...

In their efforts to grapple successfully with the ever-increasing mass of business brought before them, modern Parliaments show a tendency to prolong their labours to an ever-in...

From the days of Sir Thomas More to the present time the Woolsack has continuously enriched the annals of English history with famous and distinguished names. The well-known bio...

It has been asserted that the different social conditions of various peoples have their origin, not so much in climate or parentage, as in the character of their governments. If...

The position of "First Commoner of the Realm" is, after that of Prime Minister, the most distinguished as well as the most difficult to which it is possible for any man to attai...

One of the chief duties of the Sergeant-at-Arms originally consisted in "taking into custody such strangers who presume to come into the House of Commons."[412] This duty has ho...

"It is true," says Bacon, "that what is settled by custom, though it be not good, at least is fit. It were good, therefore, that men in their innovations would follow the exampl...

Parliament to-day differs in very many respects from the Parliaments of the past; nowhere does that difference express itself more forcibly than in the remarkable improvement in...

In James I.'s reign a certain Sir Giles Mompesson, member of Parliament, was accused of "being a Monopolist." For this crime he was turned out of the House, perpetually outlawed...

Parliament has ever been most tenacious of its historic and traditionary rights and privileges. Of these, freedom of speech and freedom from arrest may be considered the most im...