[lemma=each | tag=DT | □]
[lemma=each | tag=DT | □=□]
[lemma=each | tag=DT | □ | □]
Nothing worse happens to you , than does to all nations who have extensive empire ; and it happens in all the forms into which empire can be thrown . The inevitable result of thus immensely increasing 46 See generally on this point Muir , Peers and Bureaucrats , especially pp . If , for a moment , one may adopt modern expressions while divesting them of any implied blame or praise , one may say that Conservatism and Liberalism each play their part in promoting the welfare of any country where popular government exists . But the full strength of an anti-suffragist 's reply cannot be shown by any man who does not go a little further into the nature of things . 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 . The dear statement which that work contains of the difference between our so-called " written law " and " our conventional constitution , " originally led me to seek for an answer to the inquiry , what may be the true source whence constitutional understandings , which are not laws , derive their binding power , whilst the equally vigorous statements contained in the same book of the aspect in which the growth of the constitution presents itself to an historian forced upon my attention the essential difference between the historical and the legal way of regarding our institutions , and compelled me to consider whether the habit of looking too exclusively at the steps by which the constitution has been developed does not prevent students from paying sufficient attention to the law of the constitution as it now actually exists . As we all know , the creation of the United States was for the thirteen independent colonies a matter of absolute necessity . The first is appropriate to 1884 , the second is appropriate to 1914 - date did intend to retain for the Imperial Parliament , and the Imperial Government as representing such Parliament , a real and effective control over the action of the ministry and the legislature of each self-governing colony in so far as that control was not palpably inconsistent with independence as regards the management of strictly local affairs . It may be maintained with much plausibility that under the quinquennial Parliament created by the Parliament Act the British electorate will each five years do little else than elect the party or the Premier by whom the country shall be governed for five years . If now it should be again asked , at the end of this long discussion , where the line is to be drawn between these two classes of covenants , the answer is necessarily vague in view of the authorities . The extension given in the England of to-day to the duties and to the authority of state officials , or the growth , of our bureaucracy ,54 to use the expression of an able writer , has , as one would naturally expect , produced in the law governing our bureaucrats some features which faintly recall some of the characteristics which mark the droit administratif of France . The constitution was to them , in the quaint language of George the Third , " the most perfect of human formations " ; 3 it was to them not a mere polity to be compared with the government of any other state , but so to speak a sacred mystery of statesmanship ; it " had ( as we have all heard from our youth up ) not been made but had grown " ; it was the fruit not of abstract theory but of that instinct which ( it is supposed ) has enabled Englishmen , and especially uncivilised Englishmen , to build up sound and lasting institutions , much as bees construct a honeycomb , without undergoing the degradation of understanding the principles on which they raise a fabric more subtlely wrought than any work of conscious art . The referendum , as I have dealt with it , cannot , be it always borne in mind , enforce any law to which at any rate the House of Commons has not consented . This no doubt was the law in the Anglo-Saxon period , but it was manifestly unsatisfactory . Each judge thus selected would serve for a limited term , perhaps a year or two , perhaps only on a part-time basis . Some further of the laws of the constitution , such , for example , as the law regulating the descent of the Crown , which were at one time unwritten or common law , have now become written or This difference will at bottom be found to depend upon the degree of directness with which the violation of a given constitutional maxim brings the wrongdoer into conflict with the law of the land . If it be placed in the hands of judges , who profess and probably desire to practise judicial impartiality , it may be very difficult to ensure general respect for any decision which contradicts the interests and the principles of a dominant party . Yet this power of a Premier conscious of his own popularity , to destroy the House of Commons which put him in office , and to appeal from the House to the nation , has been treated by Bagehot as one of the features in which the constitution of England excels the constitution of the United States . Is it not one example of the perplexities involved in any plan of Imperial federalism , and of the intellectual levity with which they are met , that our Federalists never have given a dear and , so to speak , intelligible idea of what is to be under a federal government the real position not of the United Kingdom but of that small country limited in size , but still of immense power , which is specifically known by the august name of England ? Nor is it easy to doubt that any fair system of proportional representation must increase the number of groups existing in Parliament , for the very object of Proportionalists is to ensure that every opinion which exists among an appreciable number of British electors shall have an amount of votes in Parliament proportionate to the number of votes it obtains among the electors . The well-known words of Burke , however , should always be borne in mind : " The king 's negative to bills , " he says , " is one of the most indisputed of the royal prerogatives ; and it extends to all cases whatsoever . The disseisor would be protected in his possession of the land against all but the rightful owner , and he would equally be protected [ 382 ] in his use of the way . The Dominions cannot for an indefinite period bear the risks of Imperial wars without having a voice in determining if such wars should begin , and when and on what terms they should be brought to an end .