CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT.

445

UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

I. CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT.

The form of government is of the kind usually styled a limited or constitutional monarchy, in which the supreme power is vested in a compound body consisting of the Sovereign, a House of Lords, and a House of Commons. These estates constitute the Imperial Parliament, and must concur in every enactment before it acquires the force of law. The sovereignty is hereditary in the family of Hanover, now on the throne, and in the person of either male or female. The reigning queen is the sixth in succession who has enjoyed the regal dignity since the foundation of the dynasty by the accession of George I. in 1714. Various prerogatives belong to the crown, as the power of creating peers, making war or peace, commuting punishment, pardoning offenders, dissolving and convening Parliament; but they are only exercised constitutionally, with the advice and through the means of ministers responsible to Parliament. The Sovereign, king or queen, is the directing power in the executive of government, while the legislative function is exercised conjointly by the Lords and Commons.

The House of Lords consists of all the temporal and spiritual peers of England and Wales, though practically a few of the former are always minors, along with sixteen temporal peers of Scotland, and twenty-eight of Ireland. The Scotch peers are representative, being elected by members of the peerage of Scotland at the commencement of every new Parliament to serve during its continuance. The Irish peers are similarly representative, but elected by their compeers to serve for life. The English peers have a place in the legislature by hereditary right, or by royal patent conferring an hereditary peerage, except the lords spiritual, who hold their seats by virtue of office. The peerage embraces five orders-dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and barons-any one of which may be increased by the sovereign at pleasure. Of the existing peerages, the oldest are in order the baronages, De Ros, Hastings, and Audley, which go back to the close of the thirteenth century, with those of Zouch, Dacre, Clinton, and Camoys, which date from the commencement of the fourteenth. The dukedom of Norfolk, the earldoms of Shrewsbury and Derby, with four baronages, were created in the fifteenth century. But about onehalf of the actual constituency of the Upper House has been called into existence since the year 1800, the date when the Imperial Parliament was constituted by the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland.

The House of Commons, or the Lower House, is composed of the representatives of counties, cities, boroughs, and universities, elected by persons in the possession of certain prescribed qualifications, to serve in Parliament for seven years, at the expiration of which a new appeal must be made to the constituencies. But this period may be shortened at the discretion of the sovereign constitutionally exercised under the advice of responsible ministers. In the course of the present century the duration of Parliament has actually varied from under one year to upwards of six years.

All minors are ineligible to be elected members of Parliament; all foreigners, and persons convicted of treason or felony; all excise, custom, stamp, or other revenue officers; all the judges, except the Master of the Rolls in England, and all peers except those of Ireland; all priests and deacons of the Church of England, with ministers of the Church of Scotland, and Roman Catholic clergymen; all government contractors, sheriffs, and returning officers for the localities in which they act. No person is entitled to vote at an election who is under age, or an alien, or of unsound mind, or in receipt of parochial relief, or a convicted felon undergoing a term of imprisonment. The number of members returned to Parliament has widely varied at different periods, but since the union with Ireland it has hovered about the figure 650. In the session of 1871 it stood at 652, returned as follows:-

Though nominally the inferior branch of the legislature, the Commons House is really the most important and influential. It has exclusive control over the taxation of the country, can grant or refuse at pleasure supplies to the crown, and thus commands the entire machinery of the executive government.

II. RELIGION AND EDUCATION.

The United Kingdom is a Protestant state, and contains two Protestant communions established by special Acts of the legislature, of which the sovereign is the head, who is bound by law to belong to the same profession. But all forms of religion, not inimical to public or private morals, may be professed, and their different modes of worship observed, without hindrance from any quarter whatever. In England and Wales the established church is Episcopal in its government, and is superintended by two archbishops and twenty-six bishops, who are appointed by the crown, and are themselves subject in all ecclesiastical affairs to the authority of Parliament. In Scotland, the established church is of the Presbyterian order, governed by presbyteries, synods, and an annual General Assembly, in which a representative of the sovereign is present as Lord High Commissioner. The professed dissidents from the two establishments are perhaps fully equal in number to their adherents, but no religious census of the population in Great Britain has been officially taken. Among the non-established bodies the most numerous are the Roman Catholics, reckoned, on good authority, at 2,000,000, followed by the Wesleyan sections, Independents or Congregationalists, Free Church Presbyterians, and Baptists. But there are not less than 146 denominations, the names of which have

NATIONAL DEBT.

447 been given in to the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. There are a few Mohammedans, but they possess no place of worship. The Jews number nearly 50,000. In Ireland the long-established Protestant Episcopal Church ceased to exist as such on the 1st of January 1871, by virtue of an Act of the Imperial legislature. There is, therefore, now no ecclesiastical body in the sister island connected in any special manner with the State. The Irish census takes cognizance of the religious profession of the people. The return for 1871 gives the following denominations and numbers :—

Those returned under the head of 'Other Christian Persuasions,' are believed to be persons not denominating themselves under any of the foregoing headings, also members of the Moravian Church, and such travellers, temporary lodgers, and mendicants (presumed to be Christians) as to whom the enumerators were unable to obtain the necessary information. The Roman Catholics are under the jurisdiction of four archbishops, respectively of Armagh, Cashel, Dublin, and Tuam, and twenty-three bishops, eight of whom are suffragan to Armagh, six to Cashel, three to Dublin, and four to Tuam.

The three kingdoms are well supplied with educational institutions for the upper and middle classes of society; and during the last quarter of a century the means of elementary instruction have been widely extended to the lower orders by the efforts of the religious bodies, aided by governmental grants. In 1869, in Great Britain, 10,337 primary schools were visited and reported on by government inspectors, attended by an average number of 1,332,786 children; and the Parliamentary grants in aid amounted to £840,711, and to £914,721 in 1870. An important measure passed by Parliament came into operation in 1871, entitled, 'An Act to provide for Public Elementary Education in England and Wales,' which will place within the reach of the poorest of the population the means of securing a good education for their children, and which renders it compulsory upon parents to avail themselves of the advantage. Ireland has an admirable system of National Schools in operation, of which there were 6,707 at the close of 1869, with a tendency to increase, and 991,335 children were on the rolls.

III. NATIONAL DEBT.

The public debt of the United Kingdom, the interest on which is the largest branch of the national expenditure, arose out of the necessity for maintaining a standing army, and has been accumulated by a series of deficits consequent on the enormous cost of war. It originated at the time of the Revolution, but the greater portion of it was incurred in the reign of George III.

One item of the public burdens may be regarded with supreme satisfaction, the advance of £20,000,000, in the year 1834, for the emancipation of the slaves in the colonies. It is also the proud boast of our country, that never under any circumstances of embarrassment has a farthing of the national debt been repudiated, nor any disposition been shown to evade the full amount of obligation to the national creditors. Hence, such is the reliance placed on our good faith in the markets of the world, that the British funds are sought as a secure means of investment by persons of capital in all lands. But enormous as are the pecuniary obligations of the United Kingdom, the load sits lightly upon the people, in comparison with the pressure to which they were subject in former times, or before the French war, when the public indebtedness was not one-third of its present amount, yet thought to be intolerable, and to justify the gloomiest predictions of the speedy ruin of the nation. The cause is to be found in the immense increase of population, and the increase of wealth consequent on the wonderful development of trade and manufactures. Since 1784, the national income has increased from £150,000,000, to £860,000,000; and the population has grown up from an estimated number of about 14,000,000 to the enumerated figure of more than 31,000,000.

England,
Wales,

IV. GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE TOTAL POPULATION, APRIL 2, 1871.

Scotland,

Ireland,

Isle of Man,.

Channel Isles,

Army, Navy, and Merchant Seamen abroad,

United Kingdom,

31,817,108

15,549,271

16,267,837

It is an interesting fact that during the reign of Queen Victoria, 5,900,000 have been added to the number of her subjects, not by the seizure of neighbouring territories, but mainly by the enterprise, industry, and virtue of her people. This is a larger number than the whole population of Portugal, Holland, Belgium, or Bavaria, and closely corrosponds to the entire people of Sweden and Norway. The population of the United Kingdom is still increasing at the natural rate of 1173 per day, of whom 705 swell the population at home, and 468 emigrate.