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But the principles on which an assign could have the benefit of these covenants were derived from those which governed warranty , as any one may see by looking at the earlier decisions . Professor of Jurisprudence , because it is his vocation to deal with the oddities or the outlying portions of legal science , or to my friend the Chichele Professor of International Law , because he being a teacher of law which is not law , and being accustomed to expound those rules of public ethics which are miscalled international law , will find himself at home in expounding political ethics which , on the hypothesis under consideration , are miscalled constitutional law . At the present day students of the constitution wish neither to criticise , nor to venerate , but to understand ; and a professor whose duty it is to lecture on constitutional law , must feel that he is called upon to perform the part neither of a critic nor of an apologist , nor of an eulogist , but simply of an expounder ; his duty is neither to attack nor to defend the constitution , but simply to explain its laws . Looking back to the early [ 376 ] procedure , it will be seen that of course only those in the same chain of title could even mediately get the benefit of a former owner 's warranty . During the Palmerstonian era , at any rate , a few of such men each possessed an authority inside and outside the House which is hardly claimed by any member now-a-days who neither has nor is expected to obtain a seat in any Cabinet . The answer to this suggestion is that students who do not bear in mind the claim of Parliament to absolute sovereignty throughout the whole of the British Empire , will never understand the extent to which this sovereign power is on some occasions actually exerted outside the limits of the United Kingdom , nor , though this statement sounds paradoxical , will they understand the limits which , with the full assent , no less of English than of colonial statesmen , are in fact , as regards at any rate the Dominions , imposed upon the actual exercise of the theoretically limitless authority of Parliament . The period of now more than two centuries which has elapsed since what used to be called the " Glorious Revolution , " filled as those two centuries are with change and with growth , seems hardly to have attracted the attention of a writer whom lack , not of knowledge , but of will has alone prevented from sketching out the annals of our modern constitution . In the first place , the Imperial Parliament still claims in 1914 , as it claimed in 1884 , the possession of absolute sovereignty throughout every part of the British Empire ; and this claim , which certainly extends to every Dominion , would be admitted as sound legal doctrine by any court throughout the Empire which purported to act under not apply with perfect accuracy to every one of the Dominions . For although there is no difference in principle between a devise of a piece of land by will and a conveyance of it by deed , the dramatic resemblance of a devisee to an heir is stronger than that of a grantee . / 4 / Where , then , was the line to be drawn between covenants that devolved only to successors , and those that went with the land ? How comes it , then , that one who has neither title nor possession is so far favored ? Queen Elizabeth at a time when the King or Queen of England was not indeed the absolute sovereign of the country , but was certainly the most important part of the sovereign power , namely Parliament.110 In this Introduction the referendum , or the people 's veto , is considered simply with reference to Bills passed by the Houses of Parliament but which have not received the royal assent . But , when every admission which the most ardent of Imperialists can ask for , is made of the benefits conferred in every quarter of the world upon the inhabitants of different countries , by the existence of England 's Imperial power , it is quite possible for a calm observer to doubt whether the so-called federalisation of the British Empire is an object which ought to be aimed at by the statesmen either of England or of the Dominions . The new convention , which all but compels a Ministry defeated at a general election to resign office , is , on the face of it , an acknowledgment that the electorate constitutes politically the true sovereign power.65 It also tends to convert a general election into a decision that a particular party shall hold office for the duration of the newly-elected Parliament and , in some instances , into the election of a particular statesman as Prime Minister for that period.66 This new convention is the sign of many minor political or constitutional changes , such , for example , as the introduction of the habit , quite unknown not only to statesmen as far removed from us as Pitt , but to Peel , to Lord John Russell , or to Lord Palmerston , of constantly addressing , not only when out of office but also when in office , speeches to some body of electors and hence to the whole country . Nor again is it at all inconceivable that at some other period the cause of woman suffrage 85 Burke , Correspondence , i. pp . This does not mean that a body of English gentlemen will wish to be presided over by a rogue ; what it does mean is that they will come to desire a Speaker who is not a judge but is an honest partisan . But neither parliamentary government nor any form of constitution , either which has been invented or may be discovered , will ever of itself remove all or half the sufferings of human beings . But the possession of theoretically equal political rights does certainly give in England , or rather to be strictly accurate in the United Kingdom , to every British subject an equality which some British subjects do not possess in some of the Dominions . Now , what it is necessary to insist upon is that this legalism which fosters and supports the rule of law is not equally displayed in every country . This refusal to look an obvious fact in the face is facilitated by the use of that most ambiguous phrase , " Home Rule all round . The general object of this Lecture is to discover the theory on which a man is allowed to enjoy a special right when the facts out of which the right arises are not true of him . The first is the reign of Law : wherever the King 's writ runs , it is the symbol and messenger not of an arbitrary authority , but of rights shared by every citizen , and capable of being asserted and made effective by the tribunals of the land . It need not be said that this is absurd , although the rules of law which are based upon it are not so . Neither can it be defended on the same ground as the protection to the occupation of the land itself . Finally , and most important , the requirement that the assign should be in of the first grantee 's estate has remained a requirement from that day to this .