Federal State, because the Central Government was a State and not an elected body of men. The powers of Great Britain as the Imperial State and Central Government of the Federal Empire were essentially conditional,— the condition being that it should adjudicate the limits of its own jurisdiction, and act only within the limits so adjudicated. It occupied a position of trust of the highest nature, as does every Imperial State in its Federal Empire.

It cannot be said that the existence of the Federal Empire was ever admitted. It could not have been, since the Federal Empire and the Federal State had not yet been recognized and named. Writers on the general public law had not advanced beyond calling such political organisms "Systems of States." It can be said, however, that the Federal Empire existed in fact and that the Constitution above described was, in fact, its fundamental law. That there were acts of the English and British State and its Government during this period which were inconsistent with this Constitution is undeniable, but they were few in comparison with the great body of acts which were explicable only on the theory of the existence of such a Constitution.

The Constitution as it existed in 1750 continued in force unchanged until the close of the French War in 1763. In all the negotiations between the Colonies and Great Britain preceding the Revolution, when a claim was made by or in behalf of the Colonies that they be restored to their constitutional situation, it was invariably the situation as it existed at the close of the war in 1763 that was intended. In speaking of the harmony and good feeling which it was hoped might be restored as the result of the negotiations, it was the harmony and good feeling which existed at the close of the war in 1763 to which the words referred. It would seem, therefore, on first glance, that the pre-Revolutionary Constitution

of the British Empire in America ought to be called the Constitution of 1763, and not the Constitution of 1750. Inasmuch, however, as the acts on both sides which were regarded, in the time of the Revolution, by each of the contending parties, as attempted infractions of its constitutional rights, began in the year 1750, it seems more proper to describe the Constitution as of the last year before any alleged infractions of it took place.

In the year 1750, the Constitution of the British Empire in America reached its greatest efficiency. During the period from 1735 to 1750, the relations of the Colonies with Great Britain were better than they had been at any previous time; and, though seeds of discord were sown between 1750 and 1763, yet the close fellowship and the pursuit of a common end during the war with France drew tighter the bonds of friendship. The Colonies were devoted to the connection with Great Britain, which was, to all intents and purposes, a connection with England, and no one appears to have dreamed that there was anything which was not dignified, just, and proper in their relationship to that State.

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CHAPTER VIII

REALM OR EMPIRE, 1750-1765

FTER the passage of the Act of Settlement of 1689, the King, as a part of the Parliament, consisting of King, Lords, and Commons, was still looked up to by the people as the leader of political thought and action. It was equally repugnant to the ideas of William III. and of the people that the power of the King over legislation should be reduced to a mere power to veto bills that had passed both Houses. It was agreed by all parties that the King ought not only to have a part in the enactment of legislation, both constitutional and ordinary, but that he ought, as the expert part of the Government, to have the power of initiation and an equal voice with each of the two Houses in the framing of enactments. In the actual working of the system established by the Act of Settlement, it was necessary to the maintenance of the King's leadership that he should succeed in persuading the House of Commons to adopt any new measures of legislation initiated by him the House of Lords acting usually with the King, but also checking both the King and the Commons. He could no longer ignore the Commons, or force them to act as a mere deliberative and registering body.

Legislation, therefore, had to be a matter of agreement between the three parties,- King, Lords, and Commons, and, in order to consummate the agreement, there was need of the services of a body of persons, skilled in government and in party politics, whose

function it was to devise measures on which all the three parties might unite, and to carry the measures through to agreement, by argument and persuasion. There was at first no open recognition of this body, and it was called the Cabinet Council,-that is, the inner and confidential Council which met in the Cabinet, or private apartment of the King, to devise measures of legislation and arrange for carrying them through both Houses, as distinguished from the Privy Council, which met in the Council Chamber, and deliberated concerning the purely executive acts of the King. The members of the Cabinet Council were called the King's Ministers,that is, the King's Servants. Later on, when it was realized that this body was an absolutely necessary means to consummate the necessary agreements concerning legislation between the King, Lords, and Commons, it came to be recognized as an institution, and received the abbreviated name of "The Cabinet." Though the members of the Cabinet were always Privy Councillors, the functions of the two bodies were so different-the Cabinet being organized to actually take part in and control legislation, while the Privy Council existed only to advise the King in his purely executive acts-that the two bodies were entirely distinct and separate from one another. As the functions of the Cabinet were expert and confidential to all the three parties,-King, Lords, and Commons,-it followed that unless it could devise measures on which an agreement could be reached, the only way was for the parties to discharge it and appoint another. If, however, one of the parties. could dictate when it should be discharged, that party, in effect, could dictate legislation.

Shortly prior to 1750, the House of Commons had claimed that it had the right to discharge the Cabinet when the measures advanced by it did not meet the approval of a majority of the House, and the Cabinet had

begun the practice of resigning under such circumstances. It was thus on the way to become simply the consultative Council of the House of Commons, to prepare measures agreeable to that House and to carry them through with the King and the House of Lords by persuasion and argument. As things stood in 1750, the signs of the times pointed to a complete revolution of exactly this sort, which, when accomplished, would substitute for government by King, Lords, and Commons, the government of the House of Commons in Council, checked by the King and the House of Lords, who would, however, have little more than deliberative and registering functions.

Up to the time of the death of George II., in 1760, no definite trial of strength had occurred between the King and the Commons. George III., however, determined to bring the question to an issue, and undertook to oppose the threatened attachment of the Cabinet to the House of Commons by fair means or foul, and to establish a government by King in Cabinet, not like that of the King in Council either in the traditional sense or in the sense of the Stuarts, who honestly believed that they had the right to legislate as well as to execute the statute and the unwritten law, but by rewarding his allies and ostracizing his opponents. No doubt he and the whole Tory party were alarmed to see the reins of government slipping out of the hands of the Crown, as the expert part of the English and British Government, and being caught up by the House of Commons, the popular and non-expert part. Perhaps his and their position may best be described as one which they considered to be necessitated by the fact that the House of Commons, in claiming the right to discharge the Ministry when it disapproved any measure proposed by them, was in a state of revolution against the Government, that there hence existed a state of political warfare between the King and that House, and that all was fair in war.