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In this case lawyers would gladly surrender a domain to which they can establish no valid title . The blackleg , however , all but invariably keeps within the law of the land , and proposes to do nothing which violates any principle established by common law or any enactment to be found in the Statute Book . In any case he too has approached English institutions from a new point of view , and has looked at them in a fresh light ; he would be universally recognised among us as one of the most distinguished and ingenious exponents of the mysteries of the English constitution , had it not been for the fact that he made his fame as a professor , not in any of the seats of learning in the United Kingdom , but in the University of Melbourne . No one , in the second place , can , I think , with reason dispute that , among the numerous plans for proportional representation thrust upon the attention of the public , some one , and probably several , would tend to make the House of Commons a more complete mirror of what is called the mind of the nation than the House is at present ; and this concession , it may with advantage be noted , does not involve the belief that under any system of popular government whatever , a representative body can be created which at every moment will absolutely and with complete accuracy reflect the opinions held by various classes of the people of England . The importance of this circumstance lies in the working of the law of warranty upon other covenants which took its place . 22 This term means what an English writer on our constitution would generally call simply " Parliament , " that is the Parliament of the United Kingdom . The one limit to this complete independence in regard to local government is that it is confined to really local matters and does not trench upon loyalty to the Empire . 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 . These rules also deal with Ministers , with their responsibility , with their spheres of action , define the territory over which the sovereignty of the state extends and settle who are to be deemed subjects or citizens . This appeal has made its appearance at every crisis in the history of England , and indeed no one has stated so forcibly as my friend Mr. Freeman himself the peculiarity of all English efforts to extend the liberties of the country , namely , that these attempts at innovation have always assumed the form of an appeal to preexisting rights . There is no reason to suppose that Madame Roland ever claimed parliamentary votes for herself or for her sex . And to make this plainer , if need be , it is added , " If a man grants to one estovers to repair his house , it is appurtenant to his house . The constitution was marked by more than one transcendent quality which in the eyes of our fathers raised it far above the imitations , counterfeits , or , parodies , which have been set up during the last hundred years throughout the civilised world ; no precise date could be named as the day of its birth ; no definite body of persons could claim to be its creators , no one could point to the document which contained its clauses ; it was in short a thing by itself , which Englishmen and foreigners alike should " venerate , where they are not able presently to comprehend . Federal government has also turned out to be the form of government suitable for some of the British Dominions . To three of these authors in particular I am so deeply indebted that it is a duty no less than a pleasure to make special acknowledgment of the extent of my obligations . It will be found further that even to the Dominions themselves there is at times some advantage in the admitted authority of the Imperial Parliament to legislate for the whole Empire . It seems to me quite certain that , if for four centuries there had been a very widely extended franchise and a very large electoral body in this country , there would have been no reformation of religion , no change of dynasty , no toleration of Dissent , not even an accurate Calendar . This no doubt was the law in the Anglo-Saxon period , but it was manifestly unsatisfactory . The exercise itself is In these circumstances it is arguable that the Parliament Act has transformed the sovereignty of Parliament into the sovereignty of the King and the House of Commons . the State of New York , has anything like as much of local independence as is possessed by New Zealand or by any other of the five Dominions.97 There is of course a sense , and a very real sense , in which national tradition and national feeling may be cultivated in a state which forms part of a confederacy . No one really supposes that a Government could in ordinary circumstances be formed in which two opposite parties balanced one another . Any observer whose political recollections stretch back to the time of the Crimean War , that is sixty years ago , will remember occasions on which the words of Roebuck , of Roundell Palmer , of Cobden , and above all , at certain crises of Bright , might be , and indeed were , of a weight which no Government , or for that matter no Opposition , could treat as a trifle . As the bailee recovered the whole value of the goods , the old reason , that he was answerable over , has in some cases become a new rule , ( seemingly based on a misunderstanding , ) that the bailee is a trustee for the bailor as to the excess over his own damage . Now observe that if you take any person , whether an Englishman or Englishwoman , he or she will probably hold that in some one or more of these instances the referendum would have worked ill , and that in some one or more of these instances it would have worked well . The usual reaction to proposals to select judges by some sortition process is that it would not result in selecting the most qualified persons for those positions , which require a high level of legal training and ability .