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They are each concerned with the constitution , but from a different aspect . Some means must , many Englishmen believe , be found for the diminution of evils which are under a large electorate the natural , if not the necessary , outcome of our party system . 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 . 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 . It has already been observed that an easement of fencing may be annexed to land , and it was then asked what was the difference in kind between a right to have another person build such structures , and a right to have him repair structures already built . It has been an undoubted success in the Canadian Dominion . Is it credible that , for instance , the peoples of India will see with indifference this trusteeship pass from the hands of an Imperial Parliament ( which has more or less learned to think imperially , and in England has maintained the equal political rights of all British subjects ) into the hands of a new-made Imperial Congress which will 99 Sir Joseph Ward is an eminent colonial statesman ; he is also an ardent Imperialist of the colonial type . In 1868 a Conservative Ministry in office suffered an undoubted defeat at a general election . 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 . Thus to say that the King appoints the Ministry is untrue ; it is also , of course , untrue to say that he creates courts of justice ; but these two untrue statements each bear a very different relation to actual facts . The referendum is also an institution which in England promises some considerable diminution in the most patent defects of party government . From each class he may learn much , but for reasons which I am about to lay before you for consideration , he is liable to be led by each class of authors somewhat astray in his attempt to ascertain the field of his labours and the mode of working it ; he will find , unless he can obtain some clue to guide his steps , that the whole province of so-called " constitutional law " is a sort of maze in which the wanderer is perplexed by unreality , by antiquarianism , and by conventionalism . So far as we have gone , we have found that , wherever [ 381 ] one party steps into the rights or obligations of another , without in turn filling the situation of fact of which those rights or obligations are the legal consequences , the substitution is explained by a fictitious identification of the two individuals , which is derived from the analogy of the inheritance . Take as countries which exhibit this state of feeling the United States , the English federated colonies , the Swiss Confederation , and the German Empire , and contrast with this special condition of opinion the deliberate rejection by all Italian patriots of federalism , which in the case of Italy presented many apparent advantages , and the failure of union between Sweden and Norway to produce any desire for unity or even for a continued political connection , though these Scandinavian lands differ little from each other in race , in religion , in language , or in their common interest to maintain their independence against neighbouring and powerful countries . One who buys land of another gets the very same estate which his seller had . 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 . The 670 members of the House of Commons together with the 600 and odd members of the House of Lords112 contain a far greater proportion of educated men endowed with marked intellectual power and trained in the exercise of some high political virtues than would generally be found among , say , 1270 electors collected merely by chance from an electorate of more man 8,000,000 . But there was another ancient obligation which had a different history . It may not come into operation for an indefinite period . These possible results are undoubtedly repulsive to men who see nothing to censure in our party system . My object in publishing the work is to provide students with a manual which may impress these leading principles on their minds , and thus may enable them to study with benefit in Blackstone 's Commentaries and other treatises of the like nature those legal topics which , taken together , make up the constitutional law of England . Of constitutional conventions or practices some are as important as any laws , though some may be trivial , as may also be the case with a genuine law . 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 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 .