The Governments of Europe. Frederic Austin OggЧитать онлайн книгу.
the interests of both the sovereign and the nation.[64]
51. Royal Privileges: the Civil List.—The sovereign is capable of owning land and other property, and of disposing of it precisely as may any private citizen. The vast accumulations of property, however, which at one time comprised the principal source of revenue of the crown, have become the possession of the state, and as such are administered entirely under the direction of Parliament. In lieu of the income derived formerly from land and other independent sources the sovereign has been accorded for the support of the royal household a fixed annual subsidy—voted under the designation of the Civil List—the amount of which is determined afresh at the beginning of each reign. The Civil List was instituted by an act of 1689 in which Parliament settled upon the king for the meeting of personal expenses, the payment of civil officers, and other charges, a stipulated sum, thus separating for the first time the private expenditures of the crown from the public outlays of the nation.[65] The sum given William III. was £700,000. George III., in return for a fixed Civil List, surrendered his interest in the hereditary revenues of the crown, and William IV. went further and, in return for a Civil List of £510,000 a year, surrendered not only the hereditary revenues but also a large group of miscellaneous and casual sources of income.[66] At the accession of Queen Victoria the Civil List was fixed at £385,000. The amount was comparatively small, but opportunity was taken at the time finally to transfer to Parliament the making of provision for all charges properly incident to the maintenance of the state. In addition to various annuities payable to the children of the royal family, the Civil List of Edward VII., established by Act of July 2, 1901, amounted to £470,000, of which £110,000 was appropriated to the privy purse of the king and queen, £125,000 to salaries and retiring allowances of the royal household, and £193,000 to household expenses. At the accession of George V., in 1910, the Civil List was continued in the sum of £470,000.[67]
The sovereign enjoys unrestricted immunity from political responsibility and from personal distraint. The theory of the law has long been that the king can do no wrong, which means that for his public acts the sovereign's ministers must bear complete responsibility and for his private conduct he may not be called to account in any court of law or by any legal process. He cannot be arrested, his goods cannot be distrained, and as long as a palace remains a royal residence no sort of judicial proceeding can be executed in it. Strictly, the revenues are the king's, whence it arises that the king is himself exempt from taxation, though lands purchased by the privy purse are taxed. And there are numerous minor privileges, such as the use of special liveries and a right to the royal salute, to which the sovereign, as such, is regularly entitled.
II. The Powers of the Crown
52. Sources: the Prerogative.—Vested in the crown is, in the last analysis, an enormous measure of authority. The sum total of powers, whether or not actually exercised by the sovereign immediately, is of two-fold origin. There are powers, in the first place, which have been defined, or conferred outright, by parliamentary enactment. Others there are, however—more numerous and more important—which rest upon the simple basis of custom or the Common Law. Those powers which belong to the statutory group are, as a rule, specific and easily ascertainable. But those which comprise the ancient customary rights of the crown, i.e., the prerogative, are not always possible of exact delimitation. The prerogative is defined by Dicey as "the residue of discretionary or arbitrary authority which at any time is legally left in the hands of the crown."[68] The elements of it are to be ascertained, not from statutes but from precedents, and the sources of it, as enumerated by Anson, are (1) the residue of the executive power which the king in the early stages of English history possessed in all of the branches of government; (2) survivals of the power once accruing to the king as the feudal chief of the country; and (3) attributes with which the crown has been invested by legal theory, e.g., the attribute of perpetuity popularly expressed in the aphorism "the king never dies," and that of perfection of judgment, similarly expressed in the saying "the king can do no wrong."[69] The most considerable element in the prerogative is that which Anson first mentions, i.e., the power which the king has carried over, in the teeth of the popularization of the governmental system, from days when the royal authority was not hedged about as since the seventeenth century it has been. It is further to be observed that no inconsiderable portion of the royal powers as they exist to-day represent original prerogative worked over and delimited by parliamentary enactment, so that in many instances it becomes difficult to determine whether a given power exists by virtue of a statute, by which it is to be regarded as absolutely defined, or by virtue of an anterior prerogative which may be capable of being stretched or interpreted more or less arbitrarily. Nominally, the sovereign still holds by divine right. At the head of every public writ to-day stand the words "George V., by the Grace of God of Great Britain and Ireland King." But no principle of the working constitution is more clearly established than that in accordance with which the prerogatives of the crown may be defined, restricted, or extended by the supreme legislative power. Among prerogatives once claimed and exercised, but long since rendered obsolete by prohibitive legislation may be mentioned those of imposing taxes without parliamentary consent, suspending or dispensing with laws, erecting tribunals not proceeding according to the ordinary course of justice, declaring forfeit the property of convicted traitors,[70] purveyance, pre-emption, and the alienation of crown lands at pleasure.
53. Powers, Theoretical and Actual.—It is not, however, the origin of the royal power, but rather the manner of its exercise, that fixes the essential character of monarchy in Great Britain to-day. The student of this phase of the subject is confronted at the outset with a paradox which has found convenient expression in the aphorism that the king reigns but does not govern. The meaning of the aphorism is that, while the sovereign is possessed of all of the inherent dignity of royalty, it is left to him actually to exercise in but a very restricted measure the powers which are involved in the business of government. Technically, all laws are made by the crown in parliament; all judicial decisions are rendered by the crown through the courts; all laws are executed and all administrative acts are performed by the crown. But in point of fact laws are enacted by Parliament independently; verdicts are brought in by tribunals whose immunity from royal domination is thoroughly assured; and the executive functions of the state are exercised all but exclusively by the ministers and their subordinates. One who would understand what English monarchy really is must take account continually both of what the king does and may do theoretically and of what he does and may do in actual practice. The matter is complicated further by the fact that powers once possessed have been lost, that others which have never been formally relinquished have so long lain unused that the question may fairly be debated whether they still exist, and that there never has been, nor is likely ever to be, an attempt to enumerate categorically or to define comprehensively the range of powers, either theoretical or actual.
54. Executive Powers.—Disregarding for the moment the means of their actual exercise, the powers of the crown to-day may be said to fall into two principal groups. The first comprises those which are essentially executive in character; the second, those which are shared with the two houses of Parliament, being, therefore chiefly legislative. The first group is distinctly the more important. It includes: (1) the appointment, directly or indirectly, of all national public officers, except some of the officials of the parliamentary chambers and a few unimportant hereditary dignitaries; (2) the removal, upon occasion, of all appointed officers except judges, members of the Council of India, and the Comptroller and Auditor General; (3) the execution of all laws and the supervision of the executive machinery of the state throughout all its branches; (4) the expenditure of public money in accordance with appropriations voted by Parliament; (5) the pardoning of offenders against the criminal law, with some exceptions, either before or after conviction;[71] (6) the granting, in so far as not prohibited by statute, of charters of incorporation; (7) the creating of all peers and the conferring of all titles and honors; (8) the coining of all money; (9) the summoning of Convocation and, by reason of the headship of the Established Church, the virtual appointment of the archbishops, bishops, and most of the deans and canons; (10) the supreme command of the army and navy, involving the raising and control of the armed forces of the nation, subject to such conditions only as Parliament may impose; (11) the representing of the nation in all of its dealings with foreign powers, including the appointment of all diplomatic and consular agents