Chapter XIX · THE DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT

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By the Parliament Act, 1911, five years is the time fixed for the maximum duration of a Parliament. It ceases to exist after five years from the day on which it is summoned to meet by Royal Proclamation, if it is not brought to an earlier end by the defeat of the Government on a vital question of policy, followed by a dissolution.

Before the Revolution of 1688 the life of a Parliament could be terminated only in one of two ways—by the will of the Sovereign or by his death. In the opinion of the Stuarts the purpose of Parliament was rather to carry out the behests of the King than to advise him in matters relating to the government and well-being of the Realm. Parliament was retained in being as long as it suited the King, or was dismissed summarily and abruptly at any time, if it so pleased his Royal will and pleasure. Furthermore, it was held that as Parliament was summoned to meet by the King, his decease necessarily brought it to an end. The Sovereign, alive or dead, has not for many years exercised so supreme an influence on the existence of Parliament.

By an Act passed in 1694, during the reign of William and Mary, the duration of Parliament was limited to three years. In 1715, at the beginning of the reign of George I, the Septennial Act was passed. It provided that Parliament, if not sooner dissolved by Royal Proclamation, issued on the advice of the Ministers, or by the death of the Sovereign, should expire at the end of seven years. The Parliament which passed the Septennial Act thereby prolonged its life for four years beyond the time for which it was elected. This was done because there was reason to fear that an appeal to the electors in 1717—the year in which the General Election was due—would have resulted in the return of a majority of Members of the House of Commons favourable to the restoration of the Stuarts. Previously, in the reign of Queen Anne, there had been a further change in the law regulating the life of a Parliament. Parliament was no longer to die instanter with the Sovereign. As it was deemed needful that the new Sovereign should have immediately at his disposal a Parliament ready to act in any emergency, the Parliament in existence at the demise of the Crown was to continue to live for six months, if not sooner dissolved by the successor to the Throne. It was next provided by a statute of George III that if a demise of the Crown should take place at a time when there was no Parliament in being—that is after the dissolution of the old Parliament, and before the election of the new was completed—the old Parliament should be revived and continue to exist for six months more at the discretion of the new Sovereign. These laws have been out of date for years. The Reform Act of 1867—Disraeli’s democratic statute which first established the principle of household suffrage—contains a section which makes the duration of Parliament entirely independent of the death of the Sovereign. The Members of the Parliament in being at the demise of the Crown retain their seats, but take a fresh oath of allegiance to the new Sovereign. The first operation of this provision was on the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901. The Parliament then in existence was the first in history which was not brought to an end by the demise of the Crown. Thus the last Parliament of Queen Victoria became the first of King Edward VII. It is important to mention, by the way, that the demise of the Crown in January 1901 vacated the offices of every Minister of the Crown. The then Ministers were formally reappointed by King Edward, and as the acceptance of office, even in these circumstances, might have been held to have vacated their seats, an Indemnity Act was passed to protect them from penalties by declaring that notwithstanding their reappointment to office, they need not seek re-election. But though seven years was the legal life of a Parliament, it did not follow that every Parliament enjoyed fixity of tenure for that period. Indeed, since the passing of the Septennial Act, not a single Parliament died a natural death, or, in other words, did not come to an end simply by the efflux of its statutory term of existence. Parliaments have been suddenly cut short by the fall of the Ministry on an adverse vote of the House of Commons, and Parliaments have been calmly dissolved, their purposes being fulfilled, well within the period of seven years. And so matters remain under the statutory term of five years fixed by the Parliament Act of 1911.

Each House of Parliament can adjourn its proceedings for days or weeks, solely on its own initiative, and without regard to the other House. The House of Lords can adjourn while the House of Commons is in session, and the House of Commons can adjourn while the House of Lords is in session. This is done by a motion proposed in the usual way by a Minister, then put by the Speaker or the Lord Chancellor, and, after debate, agreed to or carried on a division. By thus adjourning, neither House puts an end to any of its proceedings. When each House meets again, business is resumed at the stage it had reached when the adjournment took place. But there are two other functions which, unlike adjournments, have a determining effect, in the one case on the business of the Parliament, and in the other on the Parliament’s course or career. One is “prorogation,” which brings the sittings of both Houses to a simultaneous close and puts an end to all pending Bills or other matters. The carrying over of uncompleted Bills from one session to another has often been advocated as a saving of time and trouble by relieving Parliament of the necessity of repeating in two successive sessions the same debates upon the same questions. But it has always been consistently rejected by the House of Commons on the ground principally that the power of the Government would be greatly strengthened by any system that would facilitate the rapid progress of business, which is regarded as a thing not at all to be desired. The other is “dissolution,” which terminates the life of the Parliament. A prorogation is but the last of a session, and foretells the coming of another. Parliament may be called back, in an emergency, at six days’ notice. A dissolution is the close of a Parliament, and is followed by a General Election. Neither House, nor the two of them acting conjointly, can prorogue or dissolve. Both these functions are exercised solely by the Sovereign, acting, of course, on the advice of the Prime Minister.

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According to the law of the Constitution, the right of the Sovereign to dissolve Parliament, or to refuse a dissolution—at his own pleasure or discretion, and without the consent of his Ministers—would seem to be unquestionable. Circumstances might conceivably arise in which the King might dissolve Parliament, even against the wishes of his Ministers, in order to obtain the opinion of the electorate. But that would be a course attended with most serious consequences. Supposing the General Election vindicated the Ministers whose advice the King had set aside? The plain truth of the matter is that the Sovereign has no will in parliamentary affairs but that of his Ministers, who are supported by a majority of the House of Commons. The power of dissolution is really vested in the Prime Minister. The personal exercise of the Royal Prerogative has been atrophied by long disuse. The King could not now, constitutionally, force a dissolution against the wishes of his Ministers, nor could he constitutionally refuse a dissolution if his Ministers decided that the time for it had come. It has long been the first principle of the Constitution that the King acts solely on the advice of his Ministers. For the consequences of that advice they and not the King are entirely responsible.

But for a clear understanding of the law and practice of the Constitution we must see the procedure of dissolution at work. If the King were to decide against the wishes of the existing Government that there must be a General Election on the question in dispute, he would first dismiss the Prime Minister and summon the recognized Leader of the Opposition to form a new Administration, and then upon their advice dissolve Parliament. There are only two cases within modern times of Ministers being dismissed by the Sovereign, while they still possessed the confidence of the House of Commons, of fresh Ministers being appointed, and of the new Government appealing to the country for the support which they lacked in Parliament. These cases occurred in 1784 and 1834. In each instance the Sovereign took a step which might have had the serious result of showing a disagreement between him and the majority of his people, of the people forcing him to accept as advisers Ministers whom he did not personally desire. Taking the spirit of our modern political life into account, it is surely very unlikely that any Sovereign would now run so grave a risk—I will not say to the stability of the Throne, but to the esteem and honour in which he as King is held by the Nation—of seeing maintained at the polls the advice given him by the Ministers whom he had dismissed because of that very advice.

In both cases of dismissal the King was out of sympathy with his Ministers. It was the famous Coalition Government formed by North, the Tory, and Fox, the Whig, and in office in 1783, that was affected by the first case. George III treated them with undisguised aversion. Fox he utterly detested, and as he considered he had been betrayed by his old friend and adviser, North, his hatred of him was equally bitter. But apart from these personal feelings, he resented the fact that the Ministers, instead of being his own nominees and agents, were the nominees and agents of the House of Commons. He thwarted them in every way, and finally, in December 1783, dismissed them and sent for William Pitt to form a new Government. But the King refused to dissolve Parliament immediately, as he was doubtful of the feeling in the country. It was not until March 1784 that the General Election took place. The result was a decisive verdict in favour of Pitt. The King was therefore proved to be right in thinking that the majority in the old House of Commons had ceased to represent its constituents. All constitutional writers are, however, agreed that both the diminution in the political power of the Crown and the rise in the authority of the Prime Minister steadily began in 1784, and are traceable to this exercise of the Royal prerogative by George III, in opposition to the spirit of the Constitution. The second case of the dismissal of a Ministry which was supported by a majority in the House of Commons—that by William IV in 1834—affords a warning of the danger to the Crown of the unwarranted use of the prerogative. As the King was personally opposed to the policy of the Whig Ministry of Lord Melbourne, he thought it well to dismiss them and called Sir Robert Peel to office. William had perhaps better warrant for his action than George, having regard to the political situation at the time. The Government, torn by dissensions, was rapidly falling to pieces. Melbourne gave the King more than one hint that he was not unwilling to go, and it would appear from his correspondence that he thought the King was justified in sending for other advisers. Still, Melbourne did not formally send in his resignation to the King. The Ministry were actually dismissed. That was in November 1834. There was an appeal to the country early in 1835, and it had an unexpected result. The Whigs came back with a majority, and in April Peel was forced to resign by an adverse vote of the House of Commons. The verdict of the electorate was decisive against the King.

It will be noticed that in both cases the exercise of the prerogative on the King’s personal responsibility was confined to the dismissal of the Ministers. For the dissolution of Parliament, which followed in each case, the responsibility really rested upon the succeeding Prime Minister, Pitt or Peel. Nevertheless, the lesson which was thus taught King William IV had its effect on his successor, Queen Victoria. There is a very significant letter written by Queen Victoria in 1846 to the then Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, on the risk which the Crown runs in wrongly estimating public opinion. With the aid of the Whig Opposition, Peel carried the abolition of the Corn Laws against the wishes of a large body of Protectionists among his own Tory followers. The very night the Corn Bill passed the third reading in the House of Lords, Peel was defeated in the House of Commons by a coalition of the Whigs and Protectionists on a measure for the suppression of O’Connell’s agitation for the Repeal of the Union. Lord John Russell, the Whig leader, was then sent for by Queen Victoria and took office as Prime Minister for the first time. The question of an appeal to the country was raised, and the Queen thus sagaciously expressed her opinion on the use of the prerogative of dissolution by the Sovereign:

As Lord John touches in his letter on the possibility of a dissolution, the Queen thinks it right to put Lord John in possession of her views generally. She considers the power of dissolving Parliament a most valuable and powerful instrument in the hands of the Crown, but one which ought not to be used except in extreme cases with a certainty of success. To use this instrument and be defeated is a thing most lowering to the Crown and hurtful to the country.

An interesting point affecting the constitutional position and authority of both the Sovereign and the Prime Minister in relation to the dissolution of Parliament arose again in 1858. The facts are gathered from Queen Victoria’s Letters. Public confidence in the Government of which Lord Derby was Prime Minister was rudely shaken during the Indian Mutiny by the terms of a dispatch to Lord Canning, the Governor-General of India, which were prematurely published. In anticipation of the capture of Lucknow, the Governor-General prepared a proclamation, addressed to the natives, declaring that the proprietory rights of the chiefs in the soil of the Province of Oudh would be confiscated, and a draft of it was sent to the Government at home. Meanwhile Sir James Outram, the Chief Commissioner of Oudh, protested against the severity of the proclamation, and, in consequence, the Governor-General mitigated it to the extent of inserting an exemption from its operation in favour of such chiefs as should actively co-operate in restoring order in the Province. On receiving the draft of the proclamation in its original and unamended form, Lord Ellenborough, President of the Board of Control—as the Minister in charge of Indian affairs was then called—sent a dispatch to Lord Canning severely rebuking him for departing from the historic policy of the British as generous conquerors by inflicting upon the mass of the native population a form of punishment which they would regard as most severe. This dispatch was published in England long before it could possibly have reached India. So great was the outcry at home of indignation against the dispatch, and sympathy with the action of the Governor-General, that Lord Ellenborough was compelled to resign his office. But this propitiatory sacrifice of a victim did not allay the storm of popular wrath. Notice was given in both Houses of Parliament of motions of censure and want of confidence. The debates were to take place on May 14, 1858. Three days previously—according to a memorandum written by Prince Albert—the Prime Minister had an audience of Queen Victoria and asked to be allowed to announce, during the debates, that, in the event of the motions being carried, he had her Majesty’s sanction to dissolve Parliament. Such an announcement, Lord Derby added, would lead either to the withdrawal of the motions or their rejection in the division lobbies. The Queen at once refused her assent to such a course, saying that it would be a very unconstitutional threat to hold over Parliament with her authority, by way of biasing the decision of the two Houses. Her Majesty also sent Sir Charles Phipps to interview Lord Aberdeen—an ex-Prime Minister in whose sagacity she had complete confidence—and obtain his views on this curious constitutional situation. The Queen’s messenger, in his report of the interview, writes:

Lord Aberdeen interrupted me by saying that the Queen had done quite right—that he never heard of such a request being made, or authority for such an announcement being sought—and he could not at all understand Lord Derby making such an application. He knew that the Government had threatened a dissolution, that he thought that they had a perfect right to do so, but that they would be quite wrong in joining the Queen’s name with it.

He said that he had never entertained the slightest doubt that if the Minister advised the Queen to dissolve she would, as a matter of course, do so. The Minister who advised the dissolution took upon himself the heavy responsibility of doing so, but that the Sovereign was bound to suppose that the person whom she had appointed as a Minister was a gentleman and an honest man, and that he would not advise her Majesty to take such a step unless he thought that it was for the good of the country. There was no doubt of the power and prerogative of the Sovereign to refuse a dissolution—it was one of the very few acts which the Queen of England could do without responsible advice at the moment; but even in this case, whoever was sent for to succeed, must, with his appointment, assume the responsibility of this act, and be prepared to defend it in Parliament.

Lord Aberdeen added that he could not remember a single instance in which the undoubted power of the Sovereign had been exercised upon this point, and the advice of the Minister to dissolve Parliament had been rejected, and then proceeded to say:

The Queen had during her reign, and throughout the numerous changes of Government, maintained an unassailable position of constitutional impartiality; and he had no hesitation in saying that he thought it would be more right, and certainly more safe, for her to follow the usual course, than to take this dangerous time for exercising an unusual and, he believed he might say, an unprecedented course, though the power to exercise the authority was undoubted.

The vote of censure failed in both Houses. In the Lords it was rejected by a majority of nine. It was withdrawn, after debate, in the Commons. The Prime Minister, in the customary parliamentary letter to the Queen, drew a moral which, in view of her Majesty’s desire to avert a General Election, was somewhat audacious. He attributed the collapse of the Opposition to the conviction, which gradually spread in their ranks, that in the event of the Government’s defeat her Majesty would sanction a dissolution.

This conflict between legal theory and constitutional practice is puzzling to unsophisticated minds. George III, a plain, blunt, and rather narrow-minded man, could never be made to understand the subtleties of a Constitution which invested him as Sovereign with the powers of an absolute ruler, and declared he could do no wrong, and yet insisted by its unwritten customs that he must do nothing on his own responsibility, but everything he is bid by his Ministers. In 1799 he told one of his Ministers, Henry Dundas, a Scotsman, how pleased he was to learn that a Union between Great Britain and Ireland was in contemplation. “But,” he added, “I hope it is not true that the Government is pledged to emancipate the Roman Catholics?” “No,” replied Dundas, “that will be a matter for future consideration.” The King pointed out that his Coronation Oath bound him to uphold the Protestant supremacy, and protested that he would never violate it by consenting to Catholic emancipation. Dundas endeavoured to explain that the oath bound the King in his executive capacity, but left the King as head of the Legislature free and untrammelled. “None of your Scotch metaphysics, Mr. Dundas!” cried the Monarch angrily. “None of your damned Scotch metaphysics!” But so it is. According to constitutional practice, the King must be guided by the advice of his Ministers. Walter Bagehot, who is universally acknowledged to be one of the acutest commentators on the Constitution, enumerates three rights possessed by the King in his relations with Ministers: “The right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.” He adds: “A King with great sense and sagacity would want no other.” It will be noticed that Bagehot does not recognize in the King the right to oppose his advisers.