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This chapter begins the treatment of the English-speaking world, involving the structure of Parliament, the British constitution, and the American Revolution. Of all the constituted bodies of Europe, largely aristocratic in composition, which in some countries came into conflict with kings in the decade before 1775, the most famous and the most powerful was the Parliament of Great Britain, whose misfortune it was to be challenged from both sides at once. Or, at least, the most ardent devotees of the Houses of Parliament found Parliamentary independence being undermined by the King, in the person of George III, while at the same time a growing number of dissatisfied persons, in America, in Ireland, and in England itself, expressed increasing doubts on the independence of Parliament, invoking a higher authority which they called the People.

Whether through benign Whiggery or the tyranny of entrenched élites, the governance of the disparate kingdoms, companies, and colonies of the British Empire was not seriously challenged during the three generations after 1689. Even though the administrative structure remained founded upon the Crown, the increasing political legitimacy of the elected over the anointed and appointed was a major trend of the century after 1689. The rise of the colonial Assemblies was one manifestation of this change; the increasing power of the British Parliament, especially the King-in-Parliament under George III, was another. It is useful to sketch the operation of Imperial and colonial governance in the generation after 1689, then to consider major changes in each of the next three generations. In particular, developments between 1689–1714, 1714–48, 1748–63, and 1763–84 are demonstrated.

This chapter delves into the mock executions and mock funerals the American colonists used as political resistance to the British oppression. In particular it looks into the year of 1764 and 1765 wherein the colonist devised and modified manners and ceremonies of funerals and executions to incorporate political issues into their daily lives. More than injecting the issues of politics, modifications were done as an ironic way to transform a political conflict into the ritual defeat of evil. Both of the mock ceremonies served a purpose; they encouraged stamp distributors to resign and swaddled colonial sensitivities. In 1765, when the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the colonists responded with ritual and ironic measures to air and make known their grievances. They created victims of their own and asserted control on a situation that threatened them. The American colonists controlled and arranged the outcomes they wanted and presented acts they did not want through ceremonies. In the make-believe world of 1764 and 1765, the stamp distributors died, resolving the problem of moral evil through creating surrogate victims which could be mutilated, hanged, and immolated with impunity.

This chapter focuses on the constitutional struggle to ‘patriate’ and amend the constitution of Canada which came to a head in 1980–2. It raised a crucial question of convention for the British Parliament about its role as a Commonwealth legislator. The chapter begins its discussion with a brief introduction of the issue. The roles of precedents in the makings of the conventions are then examined. Several arguments that led to the enactment of the Statute of Westminster are presented. Also, how the British amendment of 1949 gave to the Federal Parliament the power to amend the constitution of Canada except in matters falling within the classes of subjects reserved to the Provinces and certain other matters guaranteed in the British North America Act and the subsequent enactments made after that are also examined.

This chapter examines British justice, English law, and the Canadian legal culture. It clarifies that there is no such thing as British law and it was English law that was introduced in British North America. This chapter analyses the role of the British Parliament, the House of Lords, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the establishment of the Canadian legal institutions and in the directions taken by Canadian law.

This chapter deals with the continuing hopes and frustrations that the established Churches of Britain faced from 1841 to 1846. Sir Robert Peel, who was appointed Prime Minister, believed that there were real abuses that needed reform within the established Churches. His appointment offered hope to the established Churches that they would be able to gain support from Parliament. However, Peel's appointment was accompanied by other problems, including a severe downturn in the economy that resulted from poor harvests. Because of these, Peel was pressured (to increase church accommodation and Parliament support to the established Churches) by not only the church leaders, but also the parliament. Everything led to the resignation of Peel as Prime Minister, the conversion to free trade, and disruption of the established Church of Scotland.

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. It argues that when legislative privilege is functioning properly, it serves to strengthen democracy in the British and American constitutions. It discusses the evolution of the British Constitution and the corresponding shift in the role of parliamentary privilege within the Constitution. It suggests that privilege under the American Constitution is best interpreted as facilitating the people's access to and communication with their elected representatives. But it is also important to keep in mind that popular sovereignty deals first and foremost with the people in their collective capacity.

This chapter explores the MacCormick case, a Scottish constitutional landmark inquest. John MacCormick, an accomplished solicitor and partner of a law firm based in Glasgow, claimed that the British Parliament breached the basic law of the Treaty of Union of 1707 when they passed the Royal Titles Act 1953. He argued that the passage of the Act demonstrated the excessive power of the Parliament. The Court of Session however still dismissed the case based on the jury's ruling that parliamentary sovereignty was a basic principle of the Scottish constitutional law. The case gained considerable attention not only due to its commitment to the Scottish indigeneity, but also due to the controversial dissenting opinion of Lord Cooper, the Lord President of the Court of Session.

This chapter describes the events surrounding the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. On this day, Bostonians and representatives from surrounding communities gathered at the Old South Meeting House in Boston in order to decide the fate of the tea that arrived on three ships at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston Harbor a few weeks earlier. This tea had previously been taxed by the British Parliament. Although the tax was negligible, the colonists were unwilling to pay it. For the colonists, as well as for the British Parliament, the tax was a matter of principle. Later that evening, fifteen to twenty men simultaneously boarded ships that carried tea and threw the tea chests into the harbor. This simple act of defiance set in motion events that culminated sixteen months later with the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

Franklin’s decades in negotiation with Great Britain preoccupy this chapter. It takes up Franklin’s activities during the years 1757–69, examining Franklin’s life in London and the social and political complexities of his mission for Pennsylvania, the outcome of his negotiations, his brief return to Pennsylvania, and then his return to London amid the controversy caused by several oppressive measures designed to tax colonial American Britons. Franklin argued for political representation and for economic and trade policies that would assist the colonies and bind them in a collaborative with Great Britain. In the 1760s, when Franklin made public in his “Canada pamphlet” his view of the advantages of retaining Canada in the peace treaty with France and then when he republished his letters to William Shirley, Franklin had already turned away from the idea of keeping together an empire that seemed to privilege some Britons above those in British colonies.

This chapter examines the interactions between politics inside and outside of the British Parliament as well as the issue of Church reform. Attempts by Parliament to improve the Church of England's performance of its pastoral functions ceased following the Hanoverian accession, but resumed in the later eighteenth century. During the intervening period, Parliament passed increasing numbers of acts relating to individual parishes or churches along with various acts adjusting or revising rules relating to merely tolerated religious sects, but by contrast left the established church in charge of its own pastoral operations. In the opening years of the eighteenth century, Convocation provided a forum for clerics to promote their own ideas about how to improve pastoral efficacy. The chapter establishes the complex route by which challenges to and changes within the Church of England translated into a concern to act among parliamentary elites.

Hopes for a reconciliation between France and Britain did not last long. Although the British Parliament pledged to uphold the peace settlement, it censured the terms that had been agreed. The earl of Shelburne lost office in February 1783, and Charles James Fox, returning as foreign secretary, immediately reversed his policies, and in favour of the much more traditional anti-Bourbon standpoint. Charles Gravier Vergennes, the French foreign minister, continued to suggest joint action over the Crimea, but Fox responded by revealing Vergennes's overtures to Russia and his pursuit of the mirage of a continental alliance between Russia and Prussia. This chapter examines the peace negotiations of 1782–1784 that ended the War of American Independence in the context of British domestic politics. It first considers British political opinion regarding the negotiations before turning to the support provided by King George III and British foreign secretary Thomas Robinson Grantham to the earl of Shelburne concerning a rapprochement with France. The chapter then discusses the Cabinet opposition to Shelburne's way of thinking.

This chapter examines how the post-Culloden acts of the British Parliament, intended to ‘assimilate’ the Scottish Highlands to Whig and British norms, was appropriated and adapted by local political actors. In the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745–1746, Parliament passed a series of measures designed to end forever the Jacobite threat to the Hanoverian state. The accepted association of the Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlands with Jacobitism made the Gàidhealtachd the explicit target of these measures. Drawing on H. T. Dickinson’s work on the political ideologies of eighteenth-century Britain, the chapter investigates how Gaels negotiated the application of state authority. It considers the Act of Proscription (1746), the second of four major parliamentary acts passed in conjunction with the suppression of the Jacobite rebellions.

As soon as Fraser recovered from his illness in England he resumed his struggle against the bawi system as practised in the Lushai Hills. Here great support came from a lady named Mary Innes Howie who turned out to be the little girl kidnapped by the Lushais in 1871, Mary Winchester. Together they moved the Anti-Slavery Society, through which the issue was raised in the British Parliament; this development shook the establishment both in England and the Lushai Hills.

Although the bawi issue rocked the British Parliament, the local administration steadfastly stuck to its old position. It defended the official position that bawi was not slavery and that the administration, though not abolishing the system, imposed on it and its practices several restrictions. The local administration was still against its abolition, saying that it would cripple the tribal economy and provoke an uprising of the tribals. Fraser too was steadfast in his position. He offered a critique and rebuttal of all the points posited by the administration and accused them of abetting the institution of slavery. Meanwhile the controversy rocked the Parliament again. The outbreak of the First World War pushed the controversy into the background. But it was decided that a head count of the bawis was to be taken to see if they were too big a group to be liberated by the administration. The chapter discusses the details of the census of the bawis and how the administration still did not risk the abolition of the practice.

James Mill (1773-1836) never visited India, adhered to Jeremy Bentham’s rational, utilitarian philosophy and in his History of British India (1817), attributed India’s “low” and “rude” state of civilisation in the 1800s to an absence of reliable, historical records and to a too great submission to superstition and despotism. James Tod, on the other hand, spent 22 years in India, respected the non-European uniqueness of Rajput historical chronicles, and spent much energy in establishing a coherent narrative of the past exploits of the various Rajput clans, in order to secure policies that would ensure Rajput support for the British Government in India. In 1831-32, in their recommendations to the British Parliament in the context of the renewal of the East India Company’s Charter, the respective views of Mill and Tod, while seeming to be poles apart at first, reveal, in fact, similar high ideals for a British Government in India beneficial to all concerned, while undergoing similar bureaucratic pressures. In reality, James Mill actually supported innovative reforms and liberating change for India, while Tod combined an ethos of Romanticism with an agenda of down-to-earth improvements.

This chapter discusses the efforts of the Commission to obtain further securities for the Presbyterian Church in the event of a union. It reports behind-the-scenes lobbying of members of parliament; instructions to Thomas Linning, Robert Wodrow, and William Thomson to speak to the Earls of Glencairn, Hopetoun and Islay, Lords Cranston, Semple, Torpichen, and Viscount Duplin; and instructions to lobby the shire and burgh representatives from their respective presbyteries and any other representative with whom they were acquainted. It examines the four addresses presented to the British Parliament that urged members to grant the church, as articles in the treaty, the concessions it sought for its further security. It observes that the political neutrality and ecclesiastical self-interest of the Commission were evident in the four addresses it presented to parliament.

The issue of constitutional reforms seemed to have receded to the background in the wake of the controversy generated by the deportation of Lajpat Rai and the Moderate–Extremist conflict. But it was soon to dominate the political scene again. This chapter describes the Madras Congress in December 1908. The inner tensions which had brought the confrontation between the Moderates and Extremists to a head a year earlier were absent. There seemed to be a conscious effort not to do anything that would antagonize the government, embarrass Morley, or cast doubts on the loyalty of the educated classes, while the reforms were on the anvil of the British Parliament. A resolution on swadeshi was passed, but ‘boycott’ was not even mentioned.

This introductory chapter discusses the role the British Parliament played during the drafting of the Indian Constitution starting from 1895. It looks at the British rule in India and how this affected the political activities of the country during the time. It also notes how lawyers predominated in the leadership of the freedom movement. British rule in India was studded with historic state trials. Constitutional milestones marked the route to independence. Two of the most important people in this quest are Eardley Norton, a firm champion for the independence of India, and Jawaharlal Nehru, the founder of the Indian Civil Liberties. The chapter suggests that India still lacks a powerful and united national civil liberties organization. In addition, it notes that this volume deals with citizen's rights, the judiciary, the political process, the election machinery, the people's right to know, and the state's accountability to the people.

This book is a collection of essays that explore themes relating to liberty, property and popular politics in England and Scotland during the period 1688–1815 in honour of H. T. Dickinson. The first section deals with politics both inside and outside of the British Parliament and offers insights on the central theme of ‘the way in which elite politics and popular politics inform, influence and interact with each other’. The second section examines ‘the ideas, principles and assumptions of those engaged in the struggle to defend, amend or radically alter the political and social order’, including Edmund Burke, William Ogilvie, Thomas Spence and James Harrington. The third and final section focuses on ‘The Long and Wide 1790s’ and covers topics ranging from sedition and sedition trials in Scotland to naval networking, William Winterbotham's imprisonment for seditious libel, and three ‘citizens of the world’: Horatio Nelson, Thomas Paine and Thomas Muir.