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possession to land is an infant, the land is for the purposes of these Acts settled land, and the infant is to be deemed tenant for life thereof; and the powers conferred by these Acts on tenants for life are to be exercised by the trustees (if any) of the settlement, or, if there are none, by such person and in such manner as the court on the application of the infant's guardian or next friend may order (c). As regards the infant's personal estate, a parent or guardian appears to have no power to receive or deal with it (d), except in so far as the court may allow him to do so. Where, however, property is vested in trustees in trust for an infant, the trustees have power to pay to the infant's parent or guardian (if any), or otherwise to apply for or towards the maintenance, education, or benefit of the infant, the whole or any part of the income of such property (e); and wider powers are sometimes inserted in settlements and wills.

Every guardian of the estate (except, possibly, a manorial lord) is bound to give the ward, when he comes of age, an account of all that he has transacted on his behalf; and, upon such account, he must answer for all losses from his own wilful default or negligence. The ordinary method of enforcing this liability of the guardian is by proceedings in equity for that purpose, which may be instituted even during the ward's minority (ƒ); but in taking such account, allowance will be made to the guardian for all his reasonable costs and expenses (g), although he is not permitted in any case to make a profit out of his ward's estate (h).

(c) Settled Land Act, 1882, 83. 59, 60; see also Settled Estates Act, 1877, and Conveyancing Act, 1881, s. 41.

(d) Re Hellman's Will (1866), L. R. 2 Eq. 362; Re Chatard, [1899] 1 Ch. 712; Re Cresswell (1881), 45 L. T. 468.

(e) Conveyancing Act, 1881, ss. 42, 43.

(f) Eyre v. Shaftesbury (1722), 2 P. Wms. 119.

(g) Litt. s. 123. (h) Osborn v. Plowd. 293.

Carden (1565),

BOOK IV.

OF PUBLIC RIGHTS.

PART I.

OF THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT.

HAVING now considered the rights and duties attaching to a man, individually considered, as regards both his person and his property, and having also now examined the rights and duties attaching to him in his private or domestic relations, or as member of a family, we have next to contemplate him as a citizen or member of the community at large, and to treat of the rights and duties which attach to him in the capacity of citizen, which he exercises in common with the rest of the community. And this we propose to do under the head of public rights; for duties being the correlative of rights, it will be unnecessary to refer to duties separately. Public rights, then, concern either the relation subsisting between persons in authority and those subject to such authority; or they concern the social condition in general. And, inasmuch as persons in authority are either of a civil or of an ecclesiastical character, the whole subject of public rights resolves itself into, and may be discussed under, the following three titles the Civil Government, the Church, and the Social Economy. We shall in the first instance devote our attention to the Civil Government.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE PARLIAMENT.

[THE public rights which first claim our attention, are those which concern the relation in which men stand to one another, as governors and governed, or in other words, as magistrates and people; and of magistrates, some are supreme, i.e., are those in whom the sovereign power of the state resides, while others are subordinate, i.e., derive all their authority from the supreme magistrate and are accountable to him for their conduct. So long as states are in an early stage of organisation, the supreme magistracy, or the right as well of making, as of enforcing, and of interpreting the laws, is generally found to be vested in one man or one body of men,-a conjunction which has been considered, not quite rightly (a), by political theorists to be inimical to true public liberty. But in a highly developed community like England, the governing power is usually divided into three branches, viz., the legislature, the executive, and the judicial. It will be the business of this chapter to consider the legislative power, which is vested, by our constitution, in the Parliament.

The first institution of parliament is one of those matters which lie hidden in the dark ages of antiquity; but it is certain that, long before the introduction of the Norman language into England, all matters of importance were debated and settled in the great councils of the realm, a practice which seems to have been universal among the northern, particularly the German, nations (). In England,

(a) See Dicey, Law of the Constitution, ch. 12, pp. 328, 333. (b) "De minoribus rebus prin

cipes consultant, de majoribus, omnes."-Tacitus, De Mor. Germ. ch. 11.

[this general council hath been held immemorially, under the several names of michel-synoth or great council, michelgemote or great meeting, and more frequently witena-gemot or the meeting of wise men ; and we have instances of its meeting to order the affairs of the kingdom, to make new laws, and to mend the old, or, as Fleta expresses it, "novis injuriis emersis, nova constituere remedia,”—so early as the reign of Ina king of the West Saxons, Offa king of the Mercians, and Ethelbert king of Kent, in the several realms of the heptarchy (c). And after the union of the different Saxon kingdoms, as the Mirrour (d) informs us, King Alfred ordained for a perpetual usage, that these councils should meet twice in the year, or oftener if need be, to treat of the government of God's people. The subsequent Saxon and Danish monarchs also held frequent councils of this sort, as appears from their respective codes of laws (e); and there appears to be no doubt, that these great councils were also held under the first princes of the Norman line. For Glanville, who wrote in the reign of Henry the Second, speaking of the particular amount of an amercement in the sheriff's court, says it had never been yet ascertained by the general assize, or assembly, but was left to the custom of particular counties (ƒ); the general assize here spoken of being none other than the witena-gemot or parliament, whose statutes are put in contradistinction to custom. And, in the case of the Abbey of St. Edmund's-bury, in Edward the Third's time, an Act of Parliament, made in the reign of William the Conqueror, was pleaded, and judicially allowed by the court (g).

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[Hence it indisputably appears that parliaments, or general councils, were coeval with the kingdom itself. How those parliaments were constituted is another question (h); but it is generally agreed, that the constitution of parliament, as it now stands, was in the main marked out so long ago as the seventeenth year of King John, A.D. 1215. For, in the great charter granted by that prince, he promises to summon all the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons, personally, and all the other tenants in capite of the Crown, by the sheriffs and bailiffs, to meet at a certain place, with forty days' notice, to assess aids and scutages when necessary. And this constitution has in fact subsisted at least from the year 1264 (49 Hen. III.), there being still extant writs of that date to summon knights and citizens or burgesses to parliament (). We may proceed, therefore, to inquire wherein consists this constitution of parliament, as it now stands, and has stood for the space of over six hundred years. And in the prosecution of this inquiry we shall consider, first, the manner and time of the assembling of parliament; secondly, its constituent parts; thirdly, the laws and customs of the parliament, considered as one aggregate body; fourthly and fifthly, the laws and customs of each house separately; sixthly, the methods of proceeding, and of making statutes, in both houses; and lastly, the manner of the adjournment, prorogation, and dissolution of parliament.

I. As to the manner and time of the assembling of Parliament.-No parliament may be convened of its own

(h) Hallam, Mid. Ages, vol. iii. ch. 8.

(i) "It is well known that the "earliest writs of summons to "cities and boroughs, of which

we can prove the existence, are "those of Simon de Montfort, "Earl of Leicester, bearing date

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"12th December, 1264, in the "forty-ninth year of Henry the "Third. After a long controversy, almost all judicious inquirers seem to have acquiesced in "admitting this origin of popular "representation."-Hallam, Mid. Ages, vol. iii. p. 27 (12th ed.).

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