The Governments of Europe

The Governments of Europe.

by Frederic Austin Ogg.

PREFACE

It is a matter of common observation that during the opening years of the twentieth century there has been, in many portions of the civilized world, a substantial quickening of interest in the principles and problems of human government. The United States is happily among those countries in which the phenomenon can be observed, and we have witnessed in recent times not only the organization of societies and the establishment of journals designed to foster research within the field, but also a notable multiplication and strengthening of courses in political science open to students in our colleges and universities, as well as the development of clubs, forums, extension courses, and other facilities for the increasing of political information and the stimulation of political thinking on the part of the people at large. It is the object of this book to promote the intelligent study of government by supplying working descriptions of the governmental systems of the various countries of western and central Europe as they have taken form and as they operate at the present day. Conceived and prepared primarily as a text for use in college courses, it is hoped none the less that the volume may prove of service to persons everywhere whose interest in the subject leads them to seek the sort of information which is here presented.

The content of the book has been determined, in the main, by three considerations. In the first place, it has been deemed desirable to afford a wide opportunity for the _comparative_ study of political inst.i.tutions, especially by reason of the familiar fact that the governmental system of a minor country may, and frequently does, exhibit elements of novelty and of importance not inferior to those to be observed in the political organization of a greater state. Hence there are included descriptions of the governments of the minor as well as of the major nations of western and central Europe; and the original purpose to attempt some treatment of the governments of the eastern nations has been abandoned, somewhat reluctantly, only because of the demands of s.p.a.ce, and because it was felt that this portion of the projected work would perhaps meet no very serious need in the usual college courses. In the second place, it is believed that the intelligent study of present-day governments must involve at all (p. viii) stages the taking into careful account of the historical origins and growth of these governments. Hence a considerable amount of s.p.a.ce has been devoted to sketches of const.i.tutional history, which, however, are in all instances so arranged that they may readily be omitted if their omission is deemed desirable. In the case of countries whose political system underwent a general reconst.i.tution during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era it has been thought not feasible to allude, even briefly, to historical developments prior to the later eighteenth century. In the third place, it has been considered desirable to include in the book some treatment of political parties and of the inst.i.tutions of local administration.

Within a field so expansive it has been possible to undertake but an introduction to a majority of the subjects touched upon. In the foot-notes will be found references to books, doc.u.ments, and periodical materials of widely varying types, and it is hoped that some of these may serve to guide student and reader to more intensive information.

The preparation of the book has been facilitated by the encouragement and the expert advice accorded me by a number of teachers of government in colleges and universities in various portions of the country. And I have had at all times the patient and discriminating a.s.sistance of my wife. For neither the plan nor the details of the work, however, can responsibility be attached to anyone save myself. I can only hope that amidst the mult.i.tude of facts, some elusive and many subject to constant change, which I have attempted here to set down, not many seriously vitiating errors may have escaped detection.

Frederic Austin OGG.

Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, January 10, 1913.

PART I.--GREAT BRITAIN

CHAPTER I

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONSt.i.tUTION

I. THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

*1. Political Pre-eminence of Great Britain.*--George III. is reported to have p.r.o.nounced the English const.i.tution the most perfect of human formations. One need hardly concur unreservedly in this dictum to be impressed with the propriety of beginning a survey of the governmental systems of modern Europe with an examination of the political principles, rules, and practices of contemporary Britain. The history of no other European nation, in the first place, exhibits a development of inst.i.tutions so prolonged, so continuous, and so orderly. The governmental forms and agencies of no other state have been studied with larger interest or imitated with clearer effect. The public policy of no other organized body of men has been more influential in shaping the progress, social and economic as well as political, of the civilized world. For the American student, furthermore, the approach to the inst.i.tutions of the European continent is likely to be rendered easier and more inviting if made by way of a body of inst.i.tutions which lies at the root of much that is both American and continental. There are, it is true, not a few respects in which the governmental system of the United States to-day bears closer resemblance to that of France, Germany, Switzerland, or even Italy than to that of Great Britain. The relation, however, between the British and the American is one, in the main, of historical continuity, while that between the French or German and the American is one which arises largely from mere imitation or from accidental resemblance.

*2. The Continuity of Inst.i.tutional History.*--No government can be studied adequately apart from the historical development which has (p. 002) made it what it is; and this ordinarily means the tracing of origins and of changes which stretch through a prolonged period of time. Men have sometimes imagined that they were creating a governmental system _de novo_, and it occasionally happens, as in France in 1791 and in Portugal in 1911, that a regime is inst.i.tuted which has little apparent connection with the past. History demonstrates, however, in the first place, that such a regime is apt to perpetuate more of the old than is at the time supposed and, in the second place, that unless it is connected vitally with the old, the chances of its achieving stability or permanence are inconsiderable. In Germany, for example, if the inst.i.tutions of the Empire were essentially new in 1871, the governmental systems of the several federated states, and of the towns and local districts, exhibited numerous elements which in origin were mediaeval. In France, if central inst.i.tutions, and even the political arrangements of the department and of the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, do not antedate the Revolution, the commune, in which the everyday political activity of the average citizen runs its course, stands essentially as it was in the age of Louis XIV.

If the element of continuity is thus important in the political system of Germany, France, or Switzerland, in that of England it is fundamental. It is not too much to say that the most striking aspect of English const.i.tutional history is the continual preservation, in the teeth of inevitable changes, of a preponderating proportion of inst.i.tutions that reach far into the past. "The great difficulty which presses on the student of the English const.i.tution, regarded as a set of legal rules," observes a learned commentator, "is that he can never dissociate himself from history. There is hardly a rule which has not a long past, or which can be understood without some consideration of the circ.u.mstances under which it first came into being."[1] It is the purpose of the present volume to describe European governments as they to-day exist and operate. It will be necessary in all cases, however, to accord some consideration to the origins and growth of the political organs and practices which may be described. In respect to Great Britain this can mean nothing less than a survey, brief as may be, of a thousand years of history.

[Footnote 1: W. R. Anson, The Law and Custom of the Const.i.tution (3d ed., Oxford, 1897), I., 13.]

II. ANGLO-SAXON BEGINNINGS

The earliest form of the English const.i.tution was that which existed during the centuries prior to the Norman Conquest. Political organization among the Germanic invaders of Britain was of the (p. 003) most rudimentary sort, but the circ.u.mstances of the conquest and settlement of the island were such as to stimulate a considerable elaboration of governmental machinery and powers. From the point of view of subsequent inst.i.tutional history the most important features of the Anglo-Saxon governmental system were kingship, the witenagemot, and the units of local administration--shire, hundred, borough, and township.[2]

[Footnote 2: See G. B. Adams, The Origin of the English Const.i.tution (New Haven, 1912), Chap. 1.

That the essentials of the English const.i.tution of modern times, in respect to forms and machinery, are products of the feudalization of England which resulted from the Norman Conquest, and not survivals of Anglo-Saxon governmental arrangements, is the well-sustained thesis of this able study.

That many important elements, however, were contributed by Anglo-Saxon statecraft is beyond dispute.]

*3. Kingship.*--The origins of Anglo-Saxon kingship are shrouded in obscurity, but it is certain that the king of later days was originally nothing more than the chieftain of a victorious war-band.

During the course of the occupation of the conquered island many chieftains attained the dignity of kingship, but with the progress of political consolidation one after another of the royal lines was blotted out, old tribal kingdoms became mere administrative districts of larger kingdoms, and, eventually, in the ninth century, the whole of the occupied portions of the country were brought under the control of a single sovereign. Saxon kingship was elective, patriarchal, and, in respect to power, limited. Kings were elected by the important men sitting in council, and while the dignity was hereditary in a family supposedly descended from the G.o.ds, an immediate heir was not unlikely to be pa.s.sed over in favor of a relative who was remoter but abler.[3]

In both pagan and Christian times the royal office was invested with a p.r.o.nouncedly sacred character. As early as 690 Ine was king "by G.o.d"s grace." But the actual authority of the king was such as arose princ.i.p.ally from the dignity of his office and from the personal influence of the individual monarch.[4] The king was primarily a war-leader. He was a law-giver, but his "dooms" were likely to be framed only in consultation with the wise men, and they pertained to little else than the preservation of the peace. He was supreme (p. 004) judge, and all crimes and breaches of the peace came to be looked upon as offenses against him; but he held no court and he had in practice little to do with the administration of justice. Over local affairs he had no direct control whatever.

[Footnote 3: Thus, in 871, the minor children of Ethelred I. were pa.s.sed over in favor of Alfred, younger brother of the late king.]

[Footnote 4: The Anglo-Saxon king was "not the supreme law-giver of Roman ideas, nor the fountain of justice, nor the irresponsible leader, nor the sole and supreme politician, nor the one primary landowner; but the head of the race, the chosen representative of its ident.i.ty, the successful leader of its enterprises, the guardian of its peace, the president of its a.s.semblies; created by it, and, although empowered with a higher sanction in crowning and anointing, answerable to his people." W. Stubbs, Select Charters Ill.u.s.trative of English Const.i.tutional History (8th ed., Oxford, 1895), 12.]

*4. The Witenagemot.*--a.s.sociated with the king in the conduct of public business was the council of wise men, or witenagemot. The composition of this body, being determined in the main by the will of the individual monarch, varied widely from time to time. The persons most likely to be summoned were the members of the royal family, the greater ecclesiastics, the king"s gesiths or thegns, the ealdormen who administered the shires, other leading officers of state and of the household, and the princ.i.p.al men who held land directly of the king.

There were included no popularly elected representatives. As a rule, the witan was called together three or four times a year. Acting with the king, it made laws, imposed taxes, concluded treaties, appointed ealdormen and bishops, and occasionally heard cases not disposed of in the courts of the shire and hundred. It was the witan, furthermore, that elected the king; and since it could depose him, he was obliged to recognize a certain responsibility to it. "It has been a marked and important feature in our const.i.tutional history," it is pointed out by Anson, "that the king has never, in theory, acted in matters of state without the counsel and consent of a body of advisers."[5]

[Footnote 5: Law and Custom of the Const.i.tution, II., Pt. 1., 7. Cf. W. Stubbs, Const.i.tutional History of England, I., 127.]

*5. Township, Borough, and Hundred.*--By reason of their persistence, and their comparative changelessness from earliest times to the later nineteenth century, the utmost importance attaches to Anglo-Saxon arrangements respecting local government and administration. The smallest governmental unit was the township, comprising normally a village surrounded by arable lands, meadows, and woodland. The town-moot was a primary a.s.sembly of the freemen of the village, by which, under the presidency of a reeve, the affairs of the township were administered. A variation of the township was the burgh, or borough, whose population was apt to be larger and whose political independence was greater; but its arrangements for government approximated closely those of the ordinary township. A group of townships comprised a hundred. At the head of the hundred was a hundred-man, ordinarily elected, but not infrequently appointed by a great landowner or prelate to whom the lands of the hundred belonged.

a.s.sisting him was a council of twelve or more freemen. In the (p. 005) hundred-moot was introduced the principle of representation, for to the meetings of that body came regularly the reeve, the parish priest, and four "best men" from each of the townships and boroughs comprised within the hundred. The hundred-moot met as often as once a month, and it had as its princ.i.p.al function the adjudication of disputes and the decision of cases, civil, criminal, and ecclesiastical.

*6. The Shire.*--Above the hundred was the shire. Originally, as a rule, the shires were regions occupied by small but independent tribes; eventually they became administrative districts of the united kingdom. At the head of the shire was an ealdorman, appointed by the king and witan, generally from the prominent men of the shire.

Subordinate to him at first, but in time overshadowing him, was the shire-reeve, or sheriff, who was essentially a representative of the crown, sent to a.s.sume charge of the royal lands in the shire, to collect the king"s revenue, and to receive the king"s share of the fines imposed in the courts. Each shire had its moot, and by reason of the fact that the shires and bishoprics were usually coterminous, the bishop sat with the ealdorman as joint president of this a.s.semblage.

In theory, at least, the shire-moot was a gathering of the freemen of the shire. It met, as a rule, twice a year, and to it were ent.i.tled to come all freemen, in person or by representation. It was within the competence of those who did not desire to attend to send as spokesmen their reeves or stewards; so that the body was likely to a.s.sume the character of a mixed primary and representative a.s.sembly. The shire-moot decided disputes pertaining to the ownership of land, tried suits for which a hearing could not be obtained in the court of the hundred, and exercised an incidental ecclesiastical jurisdiction.[6]

[Footnote 6: The cla.s.sic description of Anglo-Saxon political inst.i.tutions is W. Stubbs, Const.i.tutional History of England in its Origin and Development, 3 vols. (6th ed., Oxford, 1897), especially I., 74-182; but recent scholarship has supplemented and modified at many points the facts and views therein set forth. A useful account (though likewise subject to correction) is H. Taylor, The Origins and Growth of the English Const.i.tution, 2 vols.

(new ed., Boston, 1900), I., Bk. 1., Chaps. 3-5; and a repository of information is J. Ramsay, The Foundations of England, 2 vols. (London, 1898). A valuable sketch is A. B. White, The Making of the English Const.i.tution, 449-1485 (New York, 1908), 16-62. A brilliant book is E. A. Freeman, The Growth of the English Const.i.tution (4th ed., London, 1884); but by reason of Professor Freeman"s over-emphasis of the perpetuation of Anglo-Saxon inst.i.tutions in later times this work is to be used with caution. Political and inst.i.tutional history is well set forth in T. Hodgkin, History of England to the Norman Conquest (London, 1906), and C. W. C.

Oman, England before the Norman Conquest (London, 1910). A useful manual is H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Inst.i.tutions (Cambridge, 1905); and an admirable bibliography is C. Gross, The Sources and Literature of English History (London, 1900).]

III. THE NORMAN-PLANTAGENET PERIOD (p. 006)

At the coming of William the Conqueror, in 1066, two fundamental principles may be said to have been firmly fixed in the English political system. The first was that of thoroughgoing local self-government. The second was that of the obligation of the king, in all matters of first-rate importance, such as the laying of taxes and the making of laws, to seek the counsel and consent of some portion of his subjects. In the period which was inaugurated by the Conquest neither of these principles was entirely subverted, yet the Norman era stands out distinctly as one in which the powers of government were gathered in the hands of the king and of his immediate agents in a measure unknown at any earlier time. Building in so far as was possible upon foundations already laid, William was able so to manoeuver the consequences of the Conquest as to throw the advantages all but wholly upon the side of the crown. Feudalism, land-tenure, military service, taxation, the church--to all was imparted, by force or by craft, such a bent that the will of the sovereign acquired the practical effect of law, and monarchy in England, traditionally weak, was brought to the verge of sheer absolutism.

*7. Extension of Centralized Control.*--In respect to the actual mechanism of government the princ.i.p.al achievement of the Norman-Plantagenet period was the overhauling and consolidation of the agencies of administration. Despite the fact that local inst.i.tutions of Saxon origin were largely respected, so that they have continued to this day the most substantial Anglo-Saxon contribution to English polity, there was a notable linking-up of these hitherto largely disa.s.sociated inst.i.tutions with the inst.i.tutions of the central government. This was accomplished in part by the dissolution of the earldoms by which the monarchy had been menaced in later Saxon days, and in part by a tremendous increase of the power and importance of the sheriffs. It was accomplished still more largely, however, by the organization of two great departments of government--those of justice and finance--presided over by dignitaries of the royal household and manned by permanent staffs of expert officials. The department of justice comprised the Curia; that of finance, the Exchequer. At the head of the one was the Chancellor; at the head of the other, the Treasurer. The princ.i.p.al officials within the two comprised a single body of men, sitting now as _just.i.tiarii_, or justices, and now as _barones_ of the Exchequer. The profits and costs of a.s.serting and administering justice and the incomings and outgoings of the Exchequer were but different aspects of the same fundamental concerns of (p. 007) state.[7] The justices of the Curia who held court on circuit throughout the realm and the sheriffs who came up twice a year to render to the barons of the Exchequer an account of the sums due from the shires served as the real and tangible agencies through which the central and local governments were knit together. As will appear, it was from the Norman Curia that, in the course of time, there sprang immediately those diversified departments of administration whose heads comprise the actual executive of the British nation to-day.

[Footnote 7: Anson, Law and Custom of the Const.i.tution, II., Pt. I., II.]

*8. King and Great Council.*--Untrammelled by const.i.tutional restrictions, the Conqueror and his earlier successors recognized such limitations only upon the royal authority as were imposed by powerful and turbulent subjects. a.s.sociated with the king, however, was from the first a body known as the _Commune Concilium_, the Common, or Great, Council. "Thrice a year," the Saxon Chronicle tells us, "King William wore his crown every year he was in England; at Easter he wore it at Winchester; at Pentecost, at Westminster; and at Christmas, at Gloucester; and at these times all the men of England were with him--archbishops, bishops and abbots, earls, thegns and knights." By the phrase "all the men of England" is to be understood only the great ecclesiastics, the princ.i.p.al officers of state, and the king"s tenants-in-chief--in truth, only such of the more important of these as were summoned individually to the sovereign"s presence. At least in theory, however, the Norman kings were accustomed to consult this gathering of magnates, very much as their predecessors had been accustomed to consult the witenagemot, upon all important questions of legislation, finance, and public policy. It may, indeed, be said that it is the development of this Council that comprises the central subject of English const.i.tutional history; for, "out of it, directly or indirectly, by one process or another, have been evolved Parliament, the Cabinet, and the courts of law."[8]

[Footnote 8: W. Wilson, The State (rev. ed., Boston, 1903), 369.]

*9. The Plantagenet Monarchy.*--During the century and a half following the death of the Conqueror the vigor of the monarchy varied enormously, but not until the days of King John can there be said to have been any loss of power or independence which amounted to more than a pa.s.sing circ.u.mstance. In a charter granted at the beginning of his reign, in 1100, Henry I. confirmed the liberties of his subjects and promised to respect the laws of Edward the Confessor; but the new sovereign did not propose, and no one imagined that he intended to propose, to relax any of the essential and legitimate power which had been transmitted to him by his father and brother. The reign of (p. 008) Stephen (1135-1154) was an epoch of anarchy happily unparalleled in the history of the nation. During the course of it the royal authority sank to its lowest ebb since the days of the Danish incursions. But the able and wonderfully energetic Henry II. (1154-1189) recovered all that had been lost and added not a little of his own account. "Henry II.," it has been said, "found a nation wearied out with the miseries of anarchy, and the nation found in Henry II. a king with a pa.s.sion for administration."[9] With the fundamental purpose of reducing all of his subjects to equality before an identical system of law, the great Plantagenet sovereign waged determined warfare upon both the rebellious n.o.bility and the independent clergy. He was not entirely successful, especially in his conflict with the clergy; but he effectually prevented a reversion of the nation to feudal chaos, and he invested the king"s law with a sanction which it had known hardly even in the days of the Conqueror. The reign of Henry II. has been declared, indeed, to "initiate the rule of law."[10] By reviving and placing upon a permanent basis the provincial visitations of the royal justices, for both judicial and fiscal purposes, and by extending in the local administration of justice and finance the principle of the jury, Henry contributed fundamentally to the development of the English Common Law, the jury, and the modern hierarchy of courts. By appointing as sheriffs lawyers or soldiers, rather than great barons, he fostered the influence of the central government in local affairs.

By commuting military service for a money payment (_scutage_), and by a revival of the ancient militia system (the _fyrd_), he brought the control of the armed forces of the nation effectually under royal control. By the frequent summons of the Great Council and the systematic reference to it of business of moment he contributed to the importance of an inst.i.tution through whose amplification a century later Parliament was destined to be brought into existence.

[Footnote 9: Anson, Law and Custom of the Const.i.tution, II., Pt. I., 13.]

[Footnote 10: Stubbs, Select Charters, 21.]

*10. The Great Charter, 1215.*--The period of Richard I. (1189-1199) was, in const.i.tutional matters, a continuation of that of Henry II.

Richard was absent from the kingdom throughout almost the whole of the reign, but under the guidance of officials trained by Henry the machinery of government operated substantially as before. Under John (1199-1216) came a breakdown, occasioned princ.i.p.ally by the sovereign"s persistence in evading certain limitations upon the royal authority which already had a.s.sumed the character of established rules of the const.i.tution. One of these forbade that the king should impose fresh taxation except with the advice and consent of the Great Council. (p. 009) Another enjoined that a man should not be fined or otherwise despoiled of his property except in virtue of judicial sentence. These and other principles John habitually disregarded, with the consequence that in time he found himself without a party and driven to the alternative of deposition or acceptance of the guarantee of liberties which the barons, the Church, and the people were united in demanding of him.

The upshot was the promulgation, June 15, 1215, of Magna Carta.

No instrument in the annals of any nation exceeds in importance the Great Charter. The whole of English const.i.tutional history, once remarked Bishop Stubbs, is but one long commentary upon it. The significance of the Charter arises not simply from the fact that it was wrested from an unwilling sovereign by concerted action of the various orders of society (action such as in France and other continental countries never, in mediaeval times, became possible), but princ.i.p.ally from the remarkable summary which it embodies of the fundamental principles of English government in so far as those principles had ripened by the thirteenth century. The Charter contained little or nothing that was new. Its authors, the barons, sought merely to gather up within a reasonably brief doc.u.ment those principles and customs which the better kings of England had been wont to observe, but which in the evil days of Richard and John had been persistently evaded. There was no thought of a new form of government, or of a new code of laws, but rather of the redress of present and practical grievances. Not a new const.i.tution, but good government in conformity with the old one, was the essential object. Naturally enough, therefore, the instrument was based, in most of its important provisions, upon the charter granted by Henry I. in 1100, even as that instrument was based, in the main, upon the righteous laws of Edward the Confessor. After like manner, the Charter of 1215 became, in its turn, the foundation to which rea.s.sertions of const.i.tutional liberty in subsequent times were apt to return; and, under greater or lesser pressure, the Charter itself was "confirmed" by numerous sovereigns who proved themselves none too much disposed to observe its principles.

In effect the Charter was a treaty between the king and his dissatisfied subjects. It was essentially a feudal doc.u.ment, and the majority of its provisions relate primarily to the privileges and rights of the barons. None the less, it contains clauses that affected all cla.s.ses of society, and it is especially noteworthy that the barons and clergy pledged themselves in it to extend to their dependents the same customs and liberties which they were themselves demanding of the crown. Taking the Charter as a whole, it guaranteed the freedom of the Church, defined afresh and in precise terms surviving feudal (p. 010) incidents and customs, placed safeguards about the liberties of the boroughs, pledged security of property and of trade, and stipulated important regulations respecting government and law, notably that whenever the king should propose the a.s.sessment of scutages or of unusual aids he should take the advice of the General Council, composed of the tenants-in-chief summoned individually in the case of the greater ones and through the sheriffs in the case of those of lesser importance. Certain general clauses, e.g., that pledging that justice should neither be bought nor sold, and that prescribing that a freeman might not be imprisoned, outlawed, or dispossessed of his property save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land, meant in effect considerably less than they sometimes have been interpreted to mean.[11] Yet even they served to emphasize the fundamental principle upon which the political and legal structure was intended to be grounded, that, namely, of impartial and unvarying justice.[12]

[Footnote 11: The term "peers," as here employed, means only equals in rank. The clause cited does not imply trial by jury. It comprises a guarantee simply that the barons should not be judged by persons whose feudal rank was inferior to their own. Jury trial was increasingly common in the thirteenth century, but it was not guaranteed in the Great Charter.]