The Governments of Europe Part 13

[Footnote 226: Mr. Campbell-Bannerman resigned April 5, 1908. His successor was Mr. Asquith, late Chancellor of the Exchequer. Most of the ministers were continued in their respective offices, but Mr.

Lloyd-George became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Winston Churchill President of the Board of Trade, Lord Tweedmouth President of the Council, and the Earl of Crewe Secretary of State for the Colonies.]

*167. The Liberals Versus the Lords: the Elections of January, 1910.*--Four years of conflict with the overpowering Opposition in the upper chamber brought the Liberals to a place from which they neither could nor would go on until certain fundamentals were settled. The first was the a.s.surance of revenues adequate to meet the growing demands upon the treasury. The second was the alteration of the status of the Lords to make certain the predominance of the popular branch of Parliament in finance and legislation. During the two years (1909-1911) while these great issues were pending the nation was stirred to the depths and party conflict was unprecedented in intensity. On the side of finance, Unionists and Liberals were in substantial agreement upon the policies--especially old age pensions and naval aggrandizement--which rendered larger outlays inevitable; they differed, rather, upon the means by which the necessary funds (p. 160) should be obtained. The solution offered in the Lloyd-George budget of 1909 was the imposition of new taxes on land and the increase of liquor license duties and of the taxes on incomes and inheritances.

The new burdens were contrived to fall almost wholly upon the propertied, especially the landholding, cla.s.ses. To this plan the Unionists offered the alternative of Tariff Reform, urging that the needed revenues should be derived from duties laid princ.i.p.ally upon imported foodstuffs, although the free trade members of the party could not with consistency lend this proposal their support. The rejection of the Finance Bill by the Lords, November 30, 1909, sweeping aside as it did three centuries of unbroken precedent, brought to a crisis the question of the mending or ending of the Lords, and although the electoral contest of January, 1910, was fought immediately upon the issue of the Government's finance proposals, the question of the Lords could by no means be kept in the background. The results of this election were disappointing to all parties save the Nationalists. The final returns gave the Liberals 274 seats, the Unionists 273, the Nationalists 82, and the Laborites 41. The Asquith government found itself still in power, but absolutely dependent upon the co-operation of the Labor and Nationalist groups. Upon the great issues involved there was no very clear p.r.o.nouncement, but it was a foregone conclusion that the tax proposals would be enacted, that some reconst.i.tution of the House of Lords would be undertaken, and that free trade would not yet be in any measure abandoned.[227]

[Footnote 227: R. G. Levy, Le budget radical anglais, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Oct. 10, 1909; G. L. Fox, The Lloyd-George Budget, in _Yale Review_ (Feb., 1910); E. Porritt, The Struggle over the Lloyd-George Budget, in _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, Feb., 1910; P.

Hamelle, Les elections anglaises, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, May 15, 1910; S. Brooks, The British Elections, in _North American Review_, March, 1910; W. T. Stead, The General Elections in Great Britain, in _Review of Reviews_, Feb., 1910.

A useful survey is Britannicus, Four Years of British Liberalism, in _North American Review_, Feb., 1910, and a more detailed one is C. T. King, The Asquith Parliament, 1906-1909; a Popular History of its Men and Measures (London, 1910). A valuable article is E. Porritt, British Legislation in 1906, in _Yale Review_, Feb., 1907. A French work of some value is P. Millet, La crise anglaise (Paris, 1910). A useful collection of speeches on the public issues of the period 1906-1909 is W. S.

Churchill, Liberalism and the Social Problem (London, 1909).]

*168. The Liberal Triumph: the Elections of December, 1910.*--The developments of the ensuing year and a half have been sketched elsewhere.[228] They comprised, in the main: (1) the re-introduction and the enactment of the Finance Bill of 1909: (2) the bringing forward by Mr. Asquith of the Government's proposals relative to (p. 161) the alteration of relations between the two houses of Parliament; (3) the adoption by the House of Lords of the principle of Lord Rosebery's projected scheme of upper chamber reform; (4) the interruption and postponement of the contest by reason of the death of Edward VII.; (5) the failure of the Const.i.tutional Conference in the summer of 1910; (6) the adoption by the second chamber of the reform resolutions of Lord Lansdowne; (7) the dissolution of Parliament, after an existence of but ten months, to afford an opportunity for a fresh appeal to the country on the specific issue of second chamber reform; (8) the elections of December, 1910, and the a.s.sembling of the new parliament in January, 1911; and (9) the re-introduction and the final enactment, in the summer of 1911, of the Government's momentous Parliament Bill.

At the December elections the contending forces were so solidly entrenched that the party quotas in the House of Commons remained all but unchanged. Following the elections they stood as follows: Liberals, 272; Unionists, 272; Nationalists, 76; Independent Nationalists (followers of William O'Brien), 8; and Laborites, 42. The Unionists gained substantially in Lancashire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, but lost ground in London and in several boroughs throughout the country. Still dependent upon the good-will of the minor parties, the Government addressed itself afresh to the limitation of the veto power of the Lords and to the programme of social amelioration which during the recent months of excitement had been accorded meager attention. Effort in the one direction bore fruit in the Parliament Act, approved by the crown August 18, 1911; while upon the other side substantial results were achieved in the enactment, December 16, 1911, of a far-reaching measure inst.i.tuting a national system of insurance against both sickness and unemployment.[229]

[Footnote 228: See pp. 108-111.]

[Footnote 229: On the elections of December, 1910, see P. Hamelle, La crise anglaise: les elections de decembre 1910, in _Revue des Sciences Politiques_, July-Aug., 1911; E. T. Cook, The Election--Before and After, in _Contemporary Review_, Jan., 1911; Britannicus, The British Elections, in _North American Review_, Jan., 1911; and A. Kann, Les elections anglaises, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, Jan. 16, 1911. The best account of the adoption of the Parliament Bill is A. L. P. Dennis, The Parliament Act of 1911, in _American Political Science Review_, May and Aug., 1912. For other references see p. 115. On the National Insurance Act see E. Porritt The British National Insurance Act, in _Political Science Quarterly_, June, 1912; A. Gigot, La nouvelle loi anglaise sur l'a.s.surance nationale, in _Le Correspondant_, May 10, 1912; O.

Clark, The National Insurance Act of 1911 (London, 1912); and A. S. C. Carr, W. H. Stuart, and J. H.

Taylor, National Insurance (London, 1912). The text of the Insurance Act is printed in _Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor_, No. 102 (Washington, 1912).]

VII. THE PARTIES OF TO-DAY (p. 162)

*169. Significance of "Liberal" and "Conservative."*--Of the four political parties of Great Britain to-day one, the Irish Nationalist, is localized in Ireland and has for its essential purpose the attainment of the single end of Irish Home Rule;[230] another, the Labor party, is composed all but exclusively of workingmen, mainly members of trade-unions, and exists to promote the interests of the laboring ma.s.ses; while the two older and more powerful ones, the Liberal and the Conservative or Unionist, are broadly national in their const.i.tuencies and well-nigh universal in the range of their principles and policies. It is essential to observe, however, that while the programme of the Nationalists is, at least to a certain point, perfectly precise, and that of the Laborites is hardly less so, there is no longer, despite the heat of recurring electoral and parliamentary combats, much that is fundamental or permanent in the demarcation which sets off the two major parties the one against the other. Even the names "Liberal" and "Conservative" denote in reality much less than might be supposed. During the generation which began with the Reform Act of 1832 the Liberals, indeed, extended the franchise to the middle cla.s.ses, reformed the poor law, overhauled the criminal law, introduced a new and more satisfactory scheme of munic.i.p.al administration, inst.i.tuted public provision for elementary education, enacted statutes to safeguard the public health, removed the disabilities of dissenters, and a.s.sisted in the overthrow of the protective system. But if the Conservatives of the period 1830-1870 played, in general, the role implied by their party designation, their att.i.tude none the less was by no means always that of obstructionists, and in the days of the Disraelian leadership they became scarcely less a party of reform than were their opponents. Beginning with the Reform Act of 1867, a long list of progressive and even revolutionizing measures must be credited to them, and in late years they and the Liberals have vied in advocating old age pensions, factory legislation, accident insurance, housing laws, and other sorts of advanced and remedial governmental action. The differences which separate the two parties are not so much those of principle or of (p. 163) political dogma as those of policy respecting immediate and particular measures, and especially those of att.i.tude toward certain important organizations and interests. The Liberals a.s.sert themselves to be more trustful of the people and more concerned about the popular welfare, but the Conservatives enter a denial which possesses plausibility. It is probably true that the Liberals have fostered peace and economy with more resoluteness than have their rivals, yet so far as expenditures go the Liberal administration to-day is laying out more money than was ever laid out by a Conservative government in time of peace. The Liberals are seemingly more regardful of the interests of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, but the difference is not so large as is sometimes supposed.

[Footnote 230: A recent and important work on party history is F. H. O'Donnell, A History of the Irish Parliamentary Party, 2 vols. (London, 1910). See Earl of Crewe, Ireland and the Liberal Party, in _New Liberal Review_, June, 1901; E. Porritt, Ireland's Representation in Parliament, in _North American Review_, Aug., 1905; J. E. Barker, The Parliamentary Position of the Irish Party, in _Nineteenth Century_, Feb., 1910; and P. Sheehan, William O'Brien and the Irish Centre Party, in _Fortnightly Review_, Dec, 1910.]

*170. Present-day Issues.*--Aside from the tariff question (and the Conservatives are far from united upon the Chamberlain programme), the princ.i.p.al issues which separate the two leading parties to-day are those which arise from the Conservative att.i.tude of friendliness toward the House of Lords, the Established Church, the landowners, and the publicans. Most of the political contests of recent years have been waged upon questions pertaining to the const.i.tution of the upper chamber, denominational control of education, disestablishment, the taxation of land, and the regulation of the liquor traffic, and in all of these matters the Liberals have been insisting upon changes which their opponents either disapprove entirely or desire to confine within narrower bounds than those proposed. In the carrying through of the Parliament Bill of 1911, providing a means by which measures may be enacted into law over the protest of the Conservative majority in the Lords, the Liberals achieved their greatest triumph since 1832. The party stands committed to-day to a large number of far-reaching projects, including the extension of social insurance, the revision of the electoral system, the establishment of Home Rule, and, ultimately, a reconst.i.tution of the second chamber as promised in the preamble of the Parliament Act. At the date of writing (October, 1912) there are pending in Parliament a momentous measure for the granting of Home Rule to Ireland[231] and another for the overhauling of the electoral system,[232] an important bill for the disestablishment of the Church in Wales, a measure virtually annulling the principle involved in the Osborne Decision,[233] and several minor Government proposals. The recent victories of the Liberals have been won with the aid of Labor and Irish Nationalist votes, and the concessions which have been, (p. 164) and are being, made to the interests of these auxiliary parties may be expected to affect profoundly the course of legislation during the continuance of the Liberal ascendancy.[234] There are, it may be said, indications that the Liberals possess less strength throughout the country than they exhibited during the critical years 1910-1911. At thirty-eight by-elections contested by the Unionists since December, 1910, the Liberals have suffered a net loss of eight seats; and one of the contests lost was that in Midlothian, long the const.i.tuency represented by Gladstone, which returned, in September, 1912, a Conservative member for the first time in thirty-eight years. There is a tradition that when a Liberal government is defeated in Midlothian the end of that government is not far distant. Prophecy in such matters, however, is futile. Meanwhile the Unionists continue to be divided upon the tariff, but in the main they are united in opposition to the overturning of the ancient const.i.tutional system, although they no longer generally oppose a moderate reform of the House of Lords. In a speech delivered at Leeds, November 16, 1911, the new parliamentary leader of the party, Mr. Bonar Law,[235] enumerated as the immediate Unionist purposes (1) to oppose the Government's Welsh Disestablishment scheme, (2) to resist Home Rule, (3) to labor for tariff reform as the only practicable means of solving the problem of unemployment, and (4) to defend at all costs the unity of the Empire.

[Footnote 231: W. J. Laprade, The Present Status of the Home Rule Question, in _American Political Science Review_, Nov., 1912.]

[Footnote 232: See p. 90.]

[Footnote 233: See p. 127.]

[Footnote 234: H. Seton-Karr, The Radical Party and Social Reform, in _Nineteenth Century_, Dec, 1910.]

[Footnote 235: Mr. Law was chosen Opposition leader in the Commons November 13, 1911, upon the unexpected retirement of Mr. Balfour from that position.]

*171. Party Composition.*--Both of the great parties as const.i.tuted to-day possess substantial strength in all portions of the kingdom save Ireland, the Liberals being in the preponderance in Scotland, Wales, and northern England, and the Conservatives in the south and southwest. Within the Conservative ranks are found much the greater portion of the people of t.i.tle, wealth, and social position; nearly all of the clergy of the Established Church, and some of the Dissenters; a majority of the graduates of the universities[236] and of members of the bar; most of the prosperous merchants, manufacturers, and financiers; a majority of clerks and approximately half of the tradesmen and shopkeepers; and a very considerable ma.s.s, though not in these days half, of the workingmen. During the second half of the nineteenth century the well-to-do and aristocratic (p. 165) Whig element in the Liberal party was drawn over, in the main, to the ranks of the Conservatives,[237] and to this day the Liberal party contains but a small proportion of the rank and wealth of the kingdom.

It is pre-eminently an organization of the middle and popular cla.s.ses.

[Footnote 236: At the election of 1906, 21,505 of the 25,771 votes recorded in the university const.i.tuencies were cast for Unionist candidates.

Since 1885 not a Liberal member has been returned from any one of the universities.]

[Footnote 237: The defection was largest at the time of the Liberal Unionist secession in 1886.]

*172. The Independent Labor Party.*--The Labor party of the present day is the product largely of the twin agencies of socialism and trade-unionism. As early as 1868 two persons sought seats in Parliament as representatives of labor, and at the elections of 1874 there were no fewer than thirteen labor candidates, two of whom were successful. Great industrial upheavals of succeeding years, notably the strike of the London dock laborers in 1889, together with the rise of new organizations composed of unskilled labor and p.r.o.nouncedly infected with socialism, created demand for the interference of the state for the improvement of labor conditions and led eventually to the organization of the Independent Labor Party in 1893. The aim of this party as set forth in its const.i.tution and rules is essentially socialistic, namely, "the establishment of collective ownership and control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange"; and the working programme as originally announced includes (1) a universal eight-hour day, (2) the abolition of over-time, piece-work, and the employment of children under fourteen, (3) state provision for the ill, the invalid, and the aged, (4) free, non-sectarian education of all grades, (5) the extinction by taxation of unearned incomes, and (6) universal disarmament. To this programme has been added woman's suffrage, a second ballot in parliamentary elections, munic.i.p.al control of the liquor traffic and of hospitals, and a number of other proposed innovations. At the elections of 1895 the party named twenty-eight candidates, but no one of them was successful and Keir Hardie, founder and president, lost the seat which he had occupied since 1892. In 1900 it attained, in the re-election of Hardie, its first parliamentary victory, and in 1906 when the tide of radicalism was running high seven of its candidates and sixteen of its members were elected to the House of Commons.

*173. The Labor Party To-day.*--The Independent Labor Party has been throughout its history avowedly socialistic. It has sought and obtained the adherence of thousands of laboring men, some of whom are, and some of whom are not, socialists. But its character is too radical to attract the ma.s.s of trade-union members and alongside it there has grown up a larger and broader organization known simply as the Labor Party. A trade-union congress held at London in September, 1899, (p. 166) caused to be brought together an a.s.semblage of representatives of all co-operative, trade-union, socialist, and working-cla.s.s organizations which were willing to share in an effort to increase the representation of labor in Parliament. This body held its first meeting at London in February, 1900, and an organization was formed in which the ruling forces were the politically inclined but non-socialistic trade-unions.

The object of the affiliation was a.s.serted to be "to establish a distinct labor group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their own policy, which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interest of labor." The growth of the organization was rapid, and in 1906 the name which had been employed, i.e., Labor Representation Committee, gave place to that of Labor Party. At the elections of 1906 twenty-nine of the fifty-one candidates of this party were chosen to the House of Commons. Taking into account eleven members connected with miners' organizations and fourteen others who were Independent Laborites or Liberal Laborites ("Lib.-Labs."), the parliament chosen in 1906 contained a labor contingent aggregating fifty-four members. Since 1908 there has been in progress a consolidation of the labor forces represented at Westminster and, although at the elections of 1910 some seats were lost, there are in the House of Commons to-day forty-two labor representatives. The entire group is independent of, but friendly toward, the Liberal Government; and since the Liberals stand in constant need of Labor support, its power in legislation is altogether disproportioned to its numbers.[238]

[Footnote 238: Two satisfactory volumes on the political activities of labor in the United Kingdom are C. Noel, The Labour Party, What it is, and What it wants (London, 1906) and A. W. Humphrey, A History of Labor Representation (London, 1912). See E. Porritt, The British Socialist Labor Party, in _Political Science Quarterly_, Sept., 1908, and The British Labor Party in 1910, ibid., June, 1910; M.

Alfa.s.sa, Le parti ouvrier au parlement anglais, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Jan. 15, 1908; H. W. Horwill, The Payment of Labor Representatives in Parliament, in _Political Science Quarterly_, June, 1910; J. K. Hardie, The Labor Movement, in _Nineteenth Century_, Dec, 1906; and M. Hewlett, The Labor Party of the Future, in _Fortnightly Review_, Feb., 1910. Two books of value on English socialism are J. E. Barker, British Socialism; an Examination of its Doctrines, Policy, Aims, and Practical Proposals (London, 1908) and H. O.

Arnold-Foster, English Socialism of To-day (London, 1908).]

CHAPTER VIII (p. 167)

JUSTICE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

I. ENGLISH LAW

The preponderating principle in the governmental system of Great Britain to-day is the rule of law, which means, in effect, two things: first, that no man may be deprived of liberty or property save on account of a breach of the law proved in one of the ordinary courts and, second, that no man stands above the law and that for every violation of the law some reparation may be obtained, whatever the station or character of the offender.[239] Upon these fundamental guarantees has been erected through the centuries a fabric of personal liberty which lends the British nation one of its princ.i.p.al distinctions. The influence of English concepts and forms of law has counted for much, furthermore, in the shaping of continental legal systems; and outside of Europe, and especially in the English-speaking countries of both hemispheres, the law of England has been, within modern times, much the most universal and decisive formative agency in legal development.

[Footnote 239: The only exception to this general proposition is afforded by the fact that the sovereign may not be sued or prosecuted in the ordinary courts; but this immunity, as matters now stand, is of no practical consequence.]

*174. Statute Law and Common Law.*--From at least the seventeenth century law has been conceived of in England as exclusively the body of rules, of whatsoever origin or nature, which can be enforced in the regular courts. As it has taken form, it falls into two princ.i.p.al categories. The one is statute law, the other is the Common Law.

Statute law consists of specific acts of Parliament, supplemented by by-laws, rules, and regulations made under parliamentary sanction by public officials and bodies. Chronologically, it begins in 1235, in the reign of Henry III.; and inasmuch as it is amended and amplified at substantially every parliamentary session, the bulk of it has come to be enormous. The more comprehensive and fundamental part of English law, however, is, and has always been, the Common Law. The Common Law is a product of growth rather than of legislation. No definite time can be a.s.signed for its beginning, for at as early a period as (p. 168) there are reports of judicial decisions the existence of a body of law not emanating from law-makers was taken for granted. Long before the close of the Middle Ages the essentials of the Common Law had acquired not only unquestioned sanction but also thoroughgoing coherence and uniformity. Despite the greatly increased legislative activity of modern times, it still may be said that the rules of the Common Law are fundamental, the laws of Parliament but incidental.

Statutes regularly a.s.sume the principles of the Common Law, and are largely, as one writer has put it, "the addenda and errata" of this law, incomplete and meaningless save in co-ordination with the legal order by which they are supported and enveloped.[240] Thus no act of Parliament enjoins in general terms that a man shall pay his debts, or fulfill his contracts, or pay damages for trespa.s.s or slander.

Statutes define the _modes_ in accordance with which these obligations shall be met, but the obligations themselves are derived entirely from the Common Law. It is, however, a fixed rule that where statutes fall in conflict with the Common Law it is the statutes that prevail. The limitless competence of Parliament involves the power to set aside or to modify at any time any Common Law principle or practice, while, on the other hand, no development of the Common Law can repeal an act of Parliament.

[Footnote 240: W. M. Geldart, Elements of English Law (London and New York, 1912), 9. As this author further remarks, "if all the statutes of the realm were repealed, we should have a system of law, though, it may be, an unworkable one; if we could imagine the Common Law swept away and the Statute Law preserved, we should have only disjointed rules torn from their context, and no provision at all for many of the most important relations of life."]

*175. The Form of the Law.*--Statute law takes invariably, of course, written form. The acts of Parliament are to be found in imposing printed collections, to which a substantial volume is added every year. Of the Common Law, however, there is no single or authoritative text. The Common Law grew up originally as unwritten law, and in a large measure it preserves still that character. The sources, however, from which knowledge of it must be drawn are mainly in writing or in print. The most important are (1) the decisions of the judges of the English courts (reported anonymously in Year Books from the reign of Edward I. to that of Henry VIII., and thereafter by lawyers reporting under their own names) which from at least the sixteenth century acquired weight as precedents and are nowadays all but absolutely decisive in a.n.a.logous cases; (2) the decisions of courts of other countries in which there is administered a law derived from the English, such decisions being, of course, not binding, yet highly influential; and (3) certain "books of authority" written by learned lawyers (p. 169) of earlier times, such as c.o.ke's seventeenth-century Commentary on Littleton's Tenures and Foster's eighteenth-century treatise on Crown Law. Some small branches of the Common Law have, indeed, been codified in the form of statutes, among them the law of partnership, that of sales, and that of bills of exchange.

*176. The Rules of Equity.*--There is one other body of English law which requires mention, namely, the rules of equity. These rules had their origin in the administration of an extraordinary sort of justice by the king's chancellor in mediaeval times, a practice which arose from the sheer necessity of redressing grievances occasioned by the omissions or commissions of the regularly const.i.tuted tribunals.

Interference on the part of the chancellor, which started as a matter of special favor in unusual cases, became gradually an established practice, and, contrary to the original intention, there was brought into existence a body of definite and separate rules of equity which by the seventeenth century acquired systematic character, and likewise a court of chancery in which these rules were at all times enforceable. Reports of equity cases became continuous, and lawyers of eminence began to specialize in equity procedure. The rules of equity thus developed partake largely of the nature of the Common Law, of which, indeed, they are to be considered, in effect, a supplement or appendix; and practically, though not theoretically, they prevail as against any provisions of the ordinary Common Law with which they may be inconsistent. Their general purpose is to afford means of safeguarding rights which exist in morals, but which the Common Law courts cannot or will not protect. Until 1875 they were administered by tribunals separate from the ordinary courts. Nowadays they are not separately administered, but they preserve, none the less, their highly distinctive character.[241]

[Footnote 241: Two monumental works dealing with the earlier portions of English legal development are F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law to the Time of Edward I., 2 vols.

(Cambridge, 1898) and W. S. Holdsworth, History of English Law, 3 vols. (London, 1903-1909). The first volume of Holdsworth contains a history of English courts from the Norman Conquest to the present day; the other volumes deal exhaustively with the growth of the law itself. Books of value include H.

Brunner, The Sources of the Law of England, trans.

by W. Hastie (Edinburgh, 1888); R. K. Wilson, History of Modern English Law (London, 1875). J. F.

Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, 3 vols. (London, 1883); Ibid., Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (London, 1908); O. W.

Holmes, The Common Law (Boston, 1881); and H. Broom and E. A. Hadley, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (London, 1869). A recent treatise by a German authority is J. Hatschek, Englisches Staatsrecht mit Berucksichtigung der fur Schottland und Irland geltenden Sonderheiten (Tubingen, 1905).

An incisive work is A. V. Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in England in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1905). A good single volume history of the law is E. Jenks, Short History of the English Law (Boston, 1912). A satisfactory introduction to both the history and the character of the law is W. M.

Geldart, Elements of English Law (London and New York, 1912). Another is F. W. Maitland, Outlines of English Legal History, in Collected Papers (Cambridge, 1911), II., 417-496. Other excellent introductory treatises are Maitland, Lectures on Equity (Cambridge, 1909), and C. S. Kenny, Outlines of Criminal Law (New York, 1907). Maitland's article on English Law in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, IX., 600-607, is valuable for its brevity and its clearness. On the English conception of law and the effects thereof see Lowell, Government of England, II., Chaps. 61-62.

The character and forms of the statute law are sketched to advantage in C. P. Ilbert, Legislative Methods and Forms (Oxford, 1901), 1-76.]

II. THE INFERIOR COURTS (p. 170)

*177. The Hierarchy of Tribunals.*--In the majority of continental countries a distinction is drawn between ordinary law and what is known as administrative law, i.e., the body of rules governing the conduct of public officials and, more particularly, the adjudication of disputes between these officials, in their public capacity, and private citizens. This differentiation of law entails customarily the maintenance of administrative courts, separate from the ordinary tribunals, in which administrative cases are heard and decided. In Great Britain, however, there is no such thing as administrative law, and in consequence there is no need of administrative courts. Public officials, from the ministers downwards, are amenable to the processes of the ordinary tribunals precisely as are all other cla.s.ses of people. Simpler, therefore, at this point than the continental systems of courts, the English system is none the less one of the most elaborate and complicated in the world. There are features of it which in origin are mediaeval, others which owe their existence to the reforming enterprises of the earlier nineteenth century, and still others which have a history covering hardly more than a generation.

Reduced to its simplest aspect, the system comprises, at the bottom, three princ.i.p.al varieties of tribunals--the county courts for civil cases and the courts of the justices of the peace and the borough criminal courts for criminal cases--and, at the top, a Supreme Court of Judicature in two branches, i.e., the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal, in addition to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the House of Lords, and a number of other occasional or special central tribunals.[242]

[Footnote 242: It should be noted that the judicial system herein to be described is that of England alone. The systems existing in Scotland and Ireland are at many points unlike it. In Scotland the distinction between law and equity is virtually unknown and the Common Law of England does not prevail. In Ireland, on the other hand, the Common Law is operative and judicial organization and procedure are roughly similar to the English.]