English Parliament. The parliament is the assembly and union of the three estates of the realm—that is, the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the commons—who have received an order from the king to assemble, to deliberate over matters related to the public good, and particularly to establish or revoke laws. It is normally in Westminster that the parliament of Great Britain assembles. The author of the Henriade speaks of it in these terms:

Permit me to elaborate on this powerful legislative body, since it is a sovereign senate, the most august of Europe, and in the country that has best known how to take advantage of religion, commerce, and liberty. [2]

The two chambers of parliament compose the great council of the nation and of the monarch. Up to the time of the Conquest, [3] this great council, composed only of the grandees of the realm, was named magnatum conventus et praelatorum procerumque conventus . [4] Spelman also informs us that the members were called magnates regni, nobiles regni, proceres et fideles regni, discretio totius regni, generale consilium regni . [5]5 In their language, the Saxons called it witenagemot —that is, an assembly of the wise. See Witenagemot.

After the Conquest, around the beginning of the reign of Edward I (or, according to others, in the time of Henry I), [6] it was called parliament , perhaps from the French word parler [i.e., “to speak”]. But there is no agreement either on the power and authority of the ancient parliaments of Great Britain, or on the persons who composed it. And there will likely never be agreement on the origin of the House of Commons, given how divided the leading scholars themselves are on this score.

Some claim that parliament was composed only of the nation’s barons or grandees until, under the reign of Henry III, the commons were also called to seats in parliament . Camden, Pryun, Dugdale, Heylin, Bradyd, Filmer, and others are of this opinion. [7] One of their principal arguments is that the first order, or circular letter, for convening in parliament a meeting of all the knight-citizens and bourgeois is not older than the 49th year of Henry III’s reign—that is, the year 1217. [8] To support their opinion, they add that the House of Commons was established during that prince’s reign only after he had defeated the barons, because it is scarcely believable that beforehand, the barons would have allowed any power opposed to their own.

Nonetheless, the celebrated Raleigh, in his prerogatives of the parliaments , supports the idea that the commons were first called in the 17th year of the reign of Henry I. On the other hand, Sir Edward Coke, Duderidge, and other scholars have struggled to prove, by many facts of great weight, that the commons have always had a part in legislation and a seat in the great assemblies of the nation, albeit on a different footing than today. [9] For at present, they make up a distinct house composed of knights, citizens, and bourgeois. One thing is certain: in the reign of Edward I there was one House of Lords and one House of Commons, the latter of which was composed of knights, citizens, and bourgeois.

The parliament is signaled by a summons from the king. And when the parliamentary peerage was established, all the peers were summoned individually, which led Lord Coke to say that all lords spiritual and temporal of the required age should have a writ of summons ex debito instituto . [10] The form of these summonses will be found in Cotton’s records, iii .4. [11]

Formerly, the holding of a fief created the right to a seat, and all who possessed holdings per baroniam [as a baron] were summoned to attend parliament . From this, it came about that the holding of a seat in parliament made one a baron. But this holding was not sufficient for the other degrees of status above baron. For them, other ceremonies were required, unless they were dispensed with by duly registered letters patent.

The first summons of a peer to parliament differs from the summons that follow, in that in the first summons, the peer is called only by his baptismal and family name, since he is to hold the name and title of his distinction only after being seated; only then does the name of his distinction become part of his proper name.

The order of summons must emanate from the chancellery. It states that the king, de avisamento consilii [on the advice of his council] having decided to hold a parliament , desires quod intersitis eum , etc. [12] Each lord of the parliament must have an individual summons, and each summons must be addressed to him at least 40 days before the parliament begins.

As for the manner of summoning the judges, the barons of the exchequer, the barons of the king’s council, the masters in the chancellery who have no vote, and as for the ways these summonses differ from those of a lord member of parliament . See the Reg. 261. F.N.B. 229.4. Inst. 4 . [13]

Every order of summons must be addressed to the sheriff of each county in England and in the principality of Wales for the choice and election of knights, citizens, and bourgeois within the scope of their respective departments. Likewise, the order of summons is addressed to the lord governor of the Cinque Ports [14] for the election of the barons of his district. The form of these summonses must always be the same, without any change whatsoever, unless it has been decreed otherwise by act of parliament .

The king convokes, prorogues, and quashes parliament . This august body has the custom of beginning its sessions with the king’s presence or his representation. The representation of the king occurs in two ways, either (1) by the lord guardian of England, the guardian of England , when the king is out of the realm; [15] or (2) by delegating the great seal of England to a certain number of peers of the realm, who represent the person of the king when he is in the realm but cannot attend parliament because of some illness.

In the beginning, new parliaments were convoked every year. Gradually, their terms became longer. Under Charles II, they were held for a long time with large interruptions, but both of these customs were found to be of such dangerous moment that in the reign of King William [16] an act was passed by which the term of all parliaments would be restricted to three sessions, or three years, and for that reason this act was called the triennial act. [17] Since then, because of other considerations, the duration of parliaments has again been prorogued up to seven years, in the 3rd year of George I. [18] Parliaments are convoked by written order or letters of the king addressed to each lord, with the command to appear, and by other orders addressed to the sheriffs of each province, to summon the people to elect two knights for each county, and one or two members for each town, etc.

Formerly, the whole people had a voice in the elections, until it was decreed by Henry VI [19] that only proprietors of franc-fief [20] resident in the province and those who had at least 40 shillings of annual income would be allowed to vote. No one could be elected who was not at least 21 years old.

Every lord spiritual and temporal, knight, citizen, and bourgeois, who was a member of parliament , had to appear on the order of summons, unless he brought forth reasonable excuses for his absence. Otherwise he was condemned to a monetary fine—that is, a lord was condemned by the House of Peers, [21] a member of the commons by the lower chamber. But at the same time, in order to increase attendance at parliament , there was a privilege for them and their domestics that shielded them from all sentences, seizures of property, physical arrest, etc., for debts, offences, etc., during the time of their travel, their stay, and their return. The only exceptions to this privilege were for treason, felony, and breach of the peace.

Although the rights and qualifications for election were generally established by various acts of parliament , it must nonetheless be observed that these rights and qualifications of the members of parliament for the towns, cities, and villages are founded since time immemorial on their charters and their customs. Hobart, 120.126.241 . [22]

The king designates the place where the parliament must be held. Above, I named Westminster because for a long time, parliament has always assembled there. In that palace, lords and commons each have their separate accommodations. In the House of Peers, the princes of the blood are placed on private seats, the great officers of the state, dukes, marquesses, counts, bishops on benches, and the viscounts and barons on other benches from one side of the hall to the other—each one following the order of his creation and his rank.

The commons are higgledy-piggledy. The speaker alone has a distinguished seat at the top end. The secretary and his assistant are placed near him at a table. Before broaching any subject, all members of the House of Commons swear oaths and undersign their opinion against transubstantiation, etc. [23] The lords do not swear oaths, but they are obliged to undersign, like the members of the lower chamber. Every member of this latter house who votes after the speaker has been named, but without having sworn the required oaths beforehand, is declared incapable of any office, and is fined 500 pounds sterling by the statute 30. carol. II. c.j . [24] It is true however that the form of the oath of supremacy has been changed by the stat. 4. an. c.v.

The House of Peers is the sovereign court of justice in the realm, and the judge of last resort. The lower house conducts the great inquests, but it is not a court of justice.

Since the most important object in the affairs of parliament concerns the manner in which bills or legislative acts are proposed and debated, we will linger here for a few moments.

The former method of proceeding with bills was different from that followed today. In the past, the bill was formed in the manner of a demand inscribed on the lords’ register with the consent of the king. Next, at the close of parliament , the act was written up in the form of a statute and put on a register called the register of statutes . This practice lasted until the reign of Henry VI, when, after complaints that the statutes were not being faithfully inscribed as they had been pronounced, it was ordained that future bills, continentes formam actûs parliamenti , [25] would be lodged in the house of parliament . Today, then, as soon as a member desires to have a bill on a certain subject, and his proposition is accepted by the majority, he receives an order to prepare it and bring it forth. A time is fixed to read it out (the reading being done by the secretary), and the president asks if it will be read out a second time or not. After the second reading, the question is debated as to whether the bill will be seen in committee or not. [26] This committee is composed of the entire chamber, or a private committee formed by a certain number of delegates.

Once the committee is organized, a president is named who reads the

bill item by item, and makes corrections according to the opinion of the majority. After the bill has been discussed and voted on in this way, the president makes his report to the bar of the chamber, reads all the additions and corrections, and leaves it on the table. Then he asks if the bill is going to be read a second time. If the chamber agrees, he again asks if said bill will be written out in large official form on parchment and read out a third time. Finally, he asks if the bill will pass. When the majority of votes is for the affirmative, the secretary writes on top let it be given to the lords , or if it is in the House of Peers, let it be given to the commons . But if the bill is rejected, it can no longer be proposed during the same session.

When a bill is passed in one house and the other opposes it, then a conference is requested in the Painted Chamber, [27] where each chamber delegates a certain number of members, and there the affair is discussed—the lords being seated with heads covered, and the commons standing bare-headed. If the bill is rejected, the affair is moot. If it is accepted, then the bill, as well as the other bills that have passed in the two chambers, is placed at the feet of the king in the House of Peers. The king arrives, arrayed in his royal mantle and with the crown on his head. Then in his presence, the secretary of parliament reads the title of each bill, and as he reads, the secretary of the crown pronounces the king’s consent or refusal.

If it is a public bill, the king’s consent is expressed in these terms: the king wills it . If it is a private bill, let it be done as it is desired . If the king rejects the bill, the response is , the king will take it under advisement . If it is a tax bill, the secretary responds, the king thanks his loyal subjects, accepts their benevolence, and also wills it .

A bill for a general pardon granted by the king is read only once.

It must also be observed that, for a bill’s passage, the consent of the knights, citizens, and bourgeois must be shown in person, whereas the lords may vote by proxy. The reason for this difference is that the barons are thought to sit in parliament by right, in their status as peers of the king’s court, pares curtis . Since they were allowed to serve in war by proxy, they likewise have a right to establish their proxy in parliament . But since the knights come to parliament only as representing the minor barons , and the citizens and bourgeois as representing the people of their city and town, they could not set up proxies, because they are themselves merely proxies and representatives of others.

Forty members suffice to form the House of Commons, and eight to form a committee. For the public good, each of these numbers ought to be at least quadrupled in a body composed of more than 500 deputies. It would be fitting not to allow more than a few people to absent themselves, even from the private debates, because then cabals would form less easily and the discussion of all public matters would feature a more mature deliberation.

When speaking, a member of the commons stands, head uncovered, and addresses his speech to the speaker alone. If another member responds to his speech, the first is not allowed to reply the same day, unless it concerns him personally. The same person can speak only once on the same day on the same bill.

In the House of Peers, the members give their votes, beginning with the youngest and least-titled baron, [28] and continuing in rank order up to the most elevated. Each responds by rank, either to approve or to disapprove.

In the House of Commons, votes are cast by yes or no, and when there is doubt over which side has the majority, there is a division of the house: if it’s a matter of admitting something into the house, those who are for the affirmative leave; if it is something that the house has already seen, those who are for the negative leave.

In every division, the president names four orators, two for each opinion. In a committee of the whole house, it is divided by changing sides— those who agree take the right side of the rostrum, those who disagree take the left side, and then there are only two orators.

The number of members in the House of Peers is not determined, because it increases according to the good pleasure of His Majesty. The members of the House of Commons, when it is full, number 553—that is, 92 knights or provincial governors; 52 deputies for the 25 cities (London having four); 16 for the Cinque Ports; 2 for each university; 332 for 180 towns and villages; and finally, 12 for the principality of Wales and 45 for Scotland.

Lastly, the two houses must be prorogued together or dissolved together, because one house cannot exist without the other.

To these details, of which foreigners cannot perhaps have full knowledge, it is difficult not to add some reflections.

The House of Peers and the House of Commons are the arbiters of the nation, and the king is the superarbiter. This balance was lacking among the Romans. [29] The government of England is wiser because there is one body that is examining it constantly, and that is examining itself constantly. Its errors are such that they never last long, and by the spirit of watchfulness that they impart to the nation, they are often useful. A free state—that is, a state that is constantly subject to agitation—cannot last if it is not capable of being corrected by its own laws. [30] And such is the advantage of the legislative body that assembles from time to time to establish or revoke laws.

If need be, the kings of England can convoke a parliament at a time when the law does not oblige them to do so. The kings are, so to speak, on sentry duty. With great vigilance, they must observe the movements of the enemy and warn of his approach. But if the sentry sleeps, if he neglects his duty or maliciously tries to betray his city, don’t those who have an interest in its preservation have a right to use any other means to uncover the danger that threatens them and protect themselves from it?

It was certainly up to the consuls or other principal magistrates of Rome to assemble and dismiss the senate. But when Hannibal was at the gates of the city, or when the Romans found themselves in some other pressing danger that threatened them with nothing less than complete destruction, if those magistrates had been drunk or insane, or if they had been captured by the enemy, no reasonable person could imagine being obliged in that case to adhere to the ordinary formalities.

On such an occasion, each individual is a magistrate, and whoever is first to perceive the danger and who knows the means of preventing it has a right to convoke the assembly of the senate or the people. The people would always be disposed to follow such a man, and would unfailingly follow him, just as the Romans followed Brutus and Valerius against Tarquin, or Horatius and Valerius against the decemvirs. [31] And whoever does otherwise would without contradiction be as foolish as the courtiers of Kings Philip III and Philip IV of Spain. [32] As the former was one day shaking with a fever, a furnace was brought into his room and placed so close to him that he was cruelly burned by it. One of the nobles cried out, “the king is burned!” Another nobleman responded, “that’s very true.” But since the person charged with removing the furnace had been absent, before he arrived the king’s legs came to be in a pitiful state. When Philip IV was overtaken on the hunt by a storm of mixed hail and rain, he was attacked by a bad cold and a very dangerous fever because none of the courtiers in his retinue dared take the liberty of lending him a coat to protect him during the storm. [33]

It is thus in vain for the parliaments to assemble if they are not permitted to continue their sessions until they have completed the business for which they assembled. And it would be ridiculous to give them power to assemble if they have not been permitted to remain in assembly until the dispatch of business. The sole reason for which parliaments assemble is to work for the advancement of the public good, and it is by virtue of the law that they assemble for this end. Thus, they should not be dissolved before they have terminated the items for which they assembled.

The history of the kings of England, and especially those who in the last century worked ceaselessly to seize despotic power, amply justifies Sidney’s observations. [34] Indeed, it was mainly by refusing to hold parliaments , or by dissolving those that were assembled, that those princes attempted to establish their power. But these means, which they put in practice, were more harmful than helpful to them. In 1628, Charles I quashed the third parliament he had convoked, because he did not want to submit to its will— which Clarendon says demonstrates the strength of parliament . For unable to limit its power, the sovereign authority was inclined toward the harsh idea of abolishing it in practice. It thus belongs to parliament to repress the attacks of politics on liberty and to manage the authority of the prince by moderating it.

“It is true,” says M. de Voltaire, in his mélanges de littérature et de philosophie , “that the idol of arbitrary power has been drowned in seas of blood; nevertheless, the English do not think they have purchased their laws and their privileges at too high a price. Other nations have shed as much blood; but then the blood they spilled in defense of their liberty served only to enslave them the more. A city in Barbary or in Turkey takes up arms in defense of its privileges, when immediately it is stormed by mercenary troops; it is punished by executioners, and the rest of the nation kiss their chains. The French think that the government of England is more tempestuous than the seas which surround it; in which, indeed, they are not mistaken: but then this happens only when the king raises the storm by attempting to seize the ship, of which he is only the pilot. The civil wars of France lasted longer, were more cruel, and productive of greater evils, than those of England: but none of these civil wars had a wise and becoming liberty for their object.” [35]

1. This passage comes from the first canto of Voltaire’s epic poem La Henriade , which he first published in London in 1728.

2. This last statement is an echo of Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws , 20.7.

3. The Norman conquest of Anglo-Saxon Britain in 1066.

4. “Assembly of great men and of prelates, and an assembly of peers.”

5. “Magnates of the realm, nobles of the realm, peers and faithful men of the realm, the distinguished of the whole realm, general council of the realm.” The allusion is probably to the antiquary Sir Henry Spelman (1564–1641), Two Discourses : i. Of the Ancient Government of England, ii. Of Parliaments; The Original of the Four Terms of the Year (London, 1684). These texts can be found in the 1723 edition of The English Works of Sir Henry Spelman.

6. Edward I (r. 1272–1307) and Henry I (r. 1100–1135).

7. William Camden (1551–1623), whose Britannia (1586) and Annals (in Latin) of the reign of Elizabeth cast a long shadow; William Prynne (1600–1669), Puritan writer imprisoned and divested of his ears in the 1630s, parliamentarian supporter during the civil war of the 1640s; Sir William Dugdale (1605–1686), antiquary and author of Baronage of England (1675–76); Peter Heylin (1600–1662), English church writer, supporter of the Crown in the civil war, and author of a History of the Reformation and a life of William Laud; Robert Filmer (1588–1653), whose Patriarcha argued for absolute monarchy and prompted Locke to write his Two Treatises on Government when it appeared in 1680; Robert Brady (1627?–1700), physician, prolific historian, and member of Parliament who was a royalist during the civil war and a Tory later.

8. Henry III (r. 1216–72); the event Jaucourt seems to refer to occurred in 1264, which would indeed have been the forty-ninth year of Henry’s reign.

9. Sir Walter Raleigh, poet, adventurer, and author, among other works, of The Prerogative of Parliaments in England Proved in a Dialogue between a Councellour of State and a Justice of Peace (Midelburge, 1628); Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), leading theorist and practitioner of the common law during the constitutional struggles with Charles I, author of Institutes of the laws of England and other works; and Sir John Doddridge (1555–1628), jurist and author of The Antiquity and Power of Parliaments in England (1679; of doubtful authenticity).

10. Coke uses “ex debito justitiae,” “established as a matter of right.” See “The Fourth Part of the Institutes, ” chap. 1, p. 1, found in The Selected Writings of Sir Edward Coke , ed. Steve Sheppard, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), 2:1062.

11. Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631), English antiquary; the reference may be to Cottoni posthuma: divers choice pieces of that renowned antiquary Sir Robert Cotton (London, 1679, and many other editions).

12. “That you present yourself to him.”

13. Coke, “Fourth Part,” p. 4, in Selected Writings, 2:1069, also cites “Regist. 261. F. N. B. 229,” meaning Register or Register Brevium, the oldest book of common law writs, and Fitzherbert’s Natura Brevium , an early sixteenth-century legal reference book frequently reprinted.

14. Pronounced in English “sink” ports, these were five (cinq) seaports in southeastern England (originally Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover, and Sandwich, but also coming to include Rye and Winchelsea) that provided mutual support on maritime and defense matters starting in the eleventh century.

15. Jaucourt puts the italicized phrase in English.

16. William III (r. 1689–1702).

17. Jaucourt refers to the Triennial Act of 1694 and not to the original act of 1641.

18. The Septennial Act was passed in 1716; some historians estimate that its effect was to reduce the number of contested elections and scale back the adult male electorate by roughly a fourth. See James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 22.

19. Henry VI (r. 1422–61).

20. Fiefs owned by commoners by special permission of the king (since only nobles could generally own fiefs), subject to a special tax.

21. The term “House of Lords” may be more familiar, but “House of Peers” was used for ceremonial purposes; it is Jaucourt’s preferred term in this article.

22. The reference may be to Henry Hobart (1560–1625), The reports of that reverend and learned judge, the right honorable Sr. Henry Hobart (London: More, 1641, and many later editions).

23. The reference is to the Roman Catholic doctrine, anathema in Protestant England, that the Eucharistic host is transformed from bread into the body of Christ at its elevation during Mass.

24. The reference is to the Test Act of 1678.

25. “Keeping the form of an act of Parliament.”

26. The French is comité , a new term in the late seventeenth century borrowed from the English, which itself had developed this new word in the early seventeenth century mainly out of parliamentary practice. Committees would be an important and conspicuous feature of the French Revolution; the twelve men led by Robespierre who presided over the Reign of Terror were called the Committee of Public Safety.

27. The Painted Chamber was a part of the royal palace at Westminster, where state ceremonies were held.

28. Qualifié, “titled”; by the mid-eighteenth century, however, the term is also being used to mean “qualified,” in more like the modern meritocratic sense.

29. These lines are adapted from Voltaire, “On the Parliament,” in his Philosophical Letters; see Voltaire, Works, 39:7.

30. This sentence comes from Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, trans. David Lowenthal (New York: Free Press, 1965; repr. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), VIII, 88. Here is a nineteenth-century translation.

31. Lucius Valerius Potitus and Marcus Horatius Barbatus were consuls; the event was alleged to have occurred in 449 b.c.e.

32. Philip III (r. 1598–1621) and Philip IV (r. 1621–64).

33. This whole paragraph is taken nearly verbatim from Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government , 3:38, second paragraph.

34. Here, the reference is to Sidney, Discourses, perhaps chap. 2, sec. 27.

35. Voltaire, “On the Parliament,” in Letters on England.