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But if the Dominions would not tolerate the interference with their own affairs by any Parliament , whatever its title , sitting at Westminster , is there the remotest reason to suppose that the existing Imperial Parliament will consent to become a Parliament of the Empire in which England , or rather the United Kingdom , and each of the five Dominions shall be fairly represented ? If there be any one person in whose single hand the power of the State is placed , that one person is not the King but the chairman of the committee , known as the Prime Minister . The Act itself stands in a position never before occupied by any statute of immense and far-reaching importance . Participation would be mandatory , and while a candidate could choose to deliberately do poorly on the examination if he did n't want to serve as a judge , it would be hoped that the stigma of doing poorly would be a sufficient deterrent to prevent most of them from taking that course . such as Coke served the cause both of justice and of freedom , and served it when it could have been defended by no other weapons . If that had been the notion , there would have been a contract directly binding the first grantor to the assign , as soon as the land was sold , and thus there would have been two warranties arising from the same clause , - - one to the first grantee , a second to the assign . It is probable , if not certain , that any one , who realises the extent to which parliamentary government itself is losing credit from its too close connection with the increasing power of the party machine , will hold with myself that the referendum judiciously used may , at any rate in the case of England , by checking the omnipotence of partisanship , revive faith in that parliamentary government which has been the glory of English constitutional history . The truth of this assertion is proved by actual legislation , by the existence among some classes of a certain distrust both of the law and of the judges , and by a marked tendency towards the use of lawless methods for the attainment of social or political ends . It is at once a duty and a pleasure to mention my special obligation to two friends , who can both be numbered as high authorities among writers , who have investigated the constitution of England from different points of view . 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 . They forbade the existence of a common coinage ; they allowed any one canton to protect the financial interest of its citizens against competition by the inhabitants of every other canton . The recognition of this moral triumph is seen in the constitutional practice , almost , one may now say , the constitutional rule , that a member once placed in the Speaker 's chair shall continue to be re-elected at the commencement of each successive Parliament irrespective of the political character of each successive House of Commons . Introduction , as in the writing of every book which I have published , untold aid from suggestions made to me by a large number both of English and of foreign friends . The Home Rule Bill was introduced into the House of Commons during the first of the three successive sessions on April 11 , 1912 ; it passed its second reading in the House of Commons during that session on May 9 , 1912 ; it was rejected by the House of Lords either actually or constructively19 in each of the three successive sessions . The fact that the same thing is required in the same words as in prescription goes far to show that the same technical thought has governed both . This instance , therefore , comes very near that of a disseisor . Each tendency has obviously some good and some bad effects . Yet , when we turn our attention from the legal existence to the actual exercise of royal authority in England , we see these formidable prerogatives dwindled into mere ceremonies ; and in their stead , a sure and commanding influence , of which the constitution , it seems , is totally ignorant , growing out of that enormous patronage , which the increased extent and opulence of the Empire has placed in the disposal of the executive magistrate . countries which make up the British Empire , if he reflects that they are occupied by different races whose customs and whose civilisation are the product of absolutely different histories , that the different countries of the Empire are in no case contiguous , and in many instances are separated from England and from each other by seas extending over thousands of miles , he will rather wonder at the boldness of the dreams entertained by the votaries of federal Imperialism , than believe that the hopes of federalising the Empire are likely to meet with fulfilment . Still it may be allowable to an author writing in 1914 , though more than half blinded , as must be every critic of the age in which he lives , by the ignorance and the partialities of his own day , to remember that the present has its teaching no less than the past or the future . He supposes , that is to say , as a matter of course , that Englishmen will agree to a radical change in the government of England which no sane English Premier would have thought of pressing upon the Parliaments of the self-governing colonies which now constitute the Dominion of Canada or which now constitute the Commonwealth of Australia .