had to obtain the leave of the Speaker and Commons, to be entered of record.

In the 34th and 35th Henry VIII. an Act was passed settling lands, situate in the Manor of Burlewas, at Madingley, in the county of Cambridge, on John Hynde and his heirs for ever, he paying therefor yearly £10 for the charges of the knights of Cambridgeshire for the time being. The present members for Cambridgeshire should look this up. Unless, however, the Act is repealed, the electors of Cambridgeshire cannot be made chargeable with their members' expenses under the old writ.

From the above writs and statutes we see that it was the universal practice for members to claim their wages, and William Prynne writing in 1663 tells us how, "the knights of each county sued forth their writs for their expenses at the end of each Parliament and demanded levied as an ancient unquestioned right which they well deserved, reputing it neither a disparagement, disreputation nor act of baseness, covetousness, dishonour to themselves, nor injury or oppression to the commonalties, which elected them, to demand their full expenses without deductions, yea they grievously complained to the king both in and out of Parliament when sheriffs refused to levy them." I will not recapitulate Prynne's argument in full but it ranges from "the lawes of God, Nature, Nations" to the law of master and servant; lastly—which is more important-he tells us many members still had the good sense to claim their expenses under Charles II.

Nevertheless under the early Stuarts the practice had ceased to be universal and instances of expenses being levied become fewer and fewer whether it was that a seat in the Commons with all its privileges and exemptions from arrest was beginning to be an object of jealous contention rather than an irksome duty, or whether it was not worth the while of well-to-do candidates to demand the payment and so to burden their constituents, at all events the writ was falling out of use. But it had not ceased to be legal; that great authority Lord Coke speaking of members receiving their wages says, "so it hath been time out of mind," which is equivalent to saying it is part of the common law.

It has been stated that Andrew Marvell, the wit and wag who was member for Hull during the reign of Charles II. was the last person to receive wages for sitting in the House of Commons; but his chroniclers have erroneously considered as wages a barrel of herrings which his grateful constituents used to send to him as an annual present. As a matter of fact the last case on the subject that I can find recorded was during the Chancellorship of Lord Nottingham in 1679, a year or two after Marvell's death. In the Register Book (to be seen at the Record Office) for that year I find the following written entry. It is the petition to Chancery of one Thomas King, Esq.,

formerly member for Harwich: he complains that he had sat for the said borough and did give his constant attendance in Parliament; he therefore prays the Chancellor that the corporation may be ordered. to show cause why the writ should not issue according to law. The corporation of Harwich appeared by counsel, and Lord Nottingham after hearing the argument, ordered the writ to issue, thus deciding in 1679 that a member had a claim on his constituents for his expenses. Lord Chancellor Campbell writing in 1846 gives it as his opinion that the writ could not be refused if demanded, and goes on to wonder why no member availed himself of it. Sir W. R. Anson writing in 1892, throws no doubt on the legality of the writ; but thinks there might be difficulty in applying it to constituencies created by the Reform Acts and other later statutes. To this objec

tion we may answer the writ is a common law right, not a creation of statute, and being such, elastic enough to extend to any body of electors who return a representative to Parliament.

On February 18, 1830, the Marquis of Blandford, in introducing his Reform Bill, which contained among other suggested reforms a proposal to pay members, made a speech as polished as it was full of knowledge of our old institutions, and the whole debate which followed, in point of Constitutional learning, makes the debates of March '89 and March '92 on the same subject seem peculiarly weak and insignificant; indeed, the lamentable indifference to historical precedents displayed in the latest of these debates was only compensated for by the wit of the member for Ipswich. In 1830 the noble Marquis, in introducing his Bill, fully recognised the fact that it had been at one time the universal rule for members to draw their wages, and only asked for the re-establishment of the old practice, for which he urged many cogent reasons, that the opposers did not or could not deny. Among the speakers in the House in 1889, only two-Mr. G. Curzon and the member for Fife-seem even to be aware that wages formerly were paid to those who sat in the House of Commons; and even this so far enlightened pair appear to be totally ignorant of the ancient origin and three hundred years' prevalence of the custom, while it never even seems to occur to their minds that this same custom may still have a legal existence. So much for the debate of '89. In 1892 not a single one of our legislators makes any allusion whatever to the historical payment, and Mr. Henry Fowler, in opposing the proposal to give members a salary, exclaims in ignorant indignation: "Has the hon. member (Mr. Fenwick, who proposed the motion) made out a sufficient case for so great a change in our Constitution?" Mr. Fenwick himself is equally badly informed on the subject, and the greater part of his speech is devoted to arguing that payment will not turn the people's representatives into professional politicians, whereas he might, if he had only properly studied the authorities, have pointed to the three hundred years of Parliamentary history when

members were paid, and the House was much purer than during the succeeding centuries. All those in favour of the resolution used their oratory to show that its adoption would not lead to corruption, while those against expended the force of their arguments to show that if the resolution prevailed members of the House of Commons must degenerate into the hirelings of their constituents: how much more convincing it would have been to have followed the example of the Marquis of Blandford, and seek guidance for the future in the annals of the past!

amount.

It will naturally be objected that, assuming the writ De expensis can still issue, the amount to be recovered thereby will only be 4s. or 2s. for each day during the continuance of the session; and of course the Act 16 Ed. II. De levandis expensis would be quoted in support of this view. But it seems to me the old common law writ which always contained the words "reasonable expenses" would allow the Chancellor to use a wide discretion as to what at the present day might be reasonable, and we know that in a writ issued subsequently to the statute just cited, the Crown directed inquiry to be made as to what were the reasonable expenses in that particular case, that expenses were allowed at a higher rate, and that this exercise of its power by the Crown through the Chancellor passed unchallenged. Assuming that £1 represents at the present day the 2s. paid to borough members, and that Parliament sits for some six months, a borough member who was regular in his attendance might obtain under the writ £180 and a first-class return fare from his constituency to Westminster, while county members might demand double that The Marquis of Blandford proposed to abolish the difference between county and borough members, and pay both alike at the higher rate of £2 for each day's attendance during the Session. Mr. Fenwick suggested £365 per annum as a suitable honorarium; but apparently from his speech attendance in the House was not to be necessary to the obtaining of this salary. These proposals assume that the payment will be made from the Imperial Treasury, and Mr. John Morley, speaking in 1889, says that the payment of members can never be a local burden. For myself I fail to see why this should be so. When each member under the old writ recovered his expenses. from his constituents, they had a direct interest in seeing they got some return for their money; and every community which sends a representative should bear the cost itself on the principle, "Qui sentit commodum sentire debet et onus." If it is objected that local payments might throw a burden on a poor constituency, it may be answered that many constituencies even now make a voluntary contribution to their member's expenses. I have above pointed out how local payment at one time indirectly tended to preserve equal electoral districts, and how the expense incurred by boroughs in sending a member to Westminster effectually prevented their becoming "rotten."

There is in existence a curious document which pretends to have been submitted to and to have received the approval of Oliver Cromwell; it is entitled a "scheme for better governing of the nation,' and contains the following proposed reforms :

1. Abolition of the House of Peers.

2. The nomination of all members of Parliament by the Protector.

3. That each member upon election should deposit £1000 with the Treasury.

4. Thereout to receive £350 per annum wages.

5. Each member voting against the Protector to forfeit for the first vote £5, for the second £10, for the third £20, and so on. 6. Each member speaking against the Protector to forfeit £1. It is to be noted that under the above scheme Parliament would have to continue at least three years before a member would get any return for his outlay; also that a dissolution before the three years would cause a dead loss, while an opposition member might forfeit incalculable sums by voting against the Lord Protector. There is,

however, little or no evidence to show that this scheme was ever seriously entertained.

The question that now has to be answered is this: Can a member who has attended the sittings of the House demand payment of his constituents at the present day? The universal practice that existed from 1265 for more than three centuries points to the answer that he can by the common law; no less than four Acts of Parliament recognise the validity of the payment, so that both common and statute law are in its favour. Lord Coke, the greatest of legal text-writers, briefly dismisses the subject as being beyond a legal doubt, while Lord Nottingham in 1679, by his decision in the case of the corporation of Harwich, placed the validity of the payment beyond all question. Nothing but an Act of Parliament can override the common law and statutes previously enacted, and, as far as I am aware, no Act of Parliament has ever been passed abolishing the payment of members' wages; lastly, we have the opinion of Lord Chancellor Campbell in 1846 that this writ could not be refused if demanded.

If any member is desirous of giving his name to a leading case, let him announce to his constituents that he means to demand his wages; at the end of the session let him obtain a certificate of his attendance, and then go before the Lord Chancellor and petition for a writ to issue for his reasonable expenses; if he be successful in obtaining the writ in due course he will receive from the sheriff or other officer that ancient and honourable payment that our authorities call "Members' Wages."

W. R. ELLISTON.

MR. HERBERT SPENCER ON "NATURAL

SELECTION."

S the first evolutionist who seems to have questioned the belief in "Use-inheritance," and has closely followed all subsequent literature upon the subject, I should like to say a few words on the most recent contribution to this discussion by Mr. Herbert Spencer. First of all it is desirable to furnish a brief sketch of the history of the issue "Natural Selection “Lamarckian Factors," as this will be the shortest way of gaining a clear view of the sundry principles which that issue now involves.

versus

In Darwin's judgment there were three distinct lines of evidence in favour of the Lamarckian Factors, namely, evidence furnished by (A) the apparently inherited effects of use and disuse; (B) by certain general considerations; and (C) by certain special experiments. As it is only with (A) and (B) that Mr. Spencer's essay is concerned, I will not occupy space by considering (C).

A. INHERITED EFFECTS OF USE AND DISUSE.

There is no doubt that Darwin everywhere attaches great weight to this line of evidence. Nevertheless, in my opinion, there is equally little doubt that, taken by itself, it is of much less weight than Darwin supposed and Spencer still supposes. Indeed, I quite agree with Weismann that the whole of this line of evidence is practically worthless, for the following reasons.

The main evidence on which Darwin relied to prove the inherited effects of use and disuse, was derived from his careful measurements of the increase or decrease which certain bones of our domesticated animals have undergone, as compared with the corresponding bones. of ancestral stocks in a state of nature. He chose domesticated