English Constitution Author:WALTER BAGEHOT General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1873 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: No. III. THE MONARCHY, (Continued.) The House of Commons lias inquired into most things, but has never had a committee on " the Queen." There is no authentic blue-book to say what she does. Such an investigation cannot take place; but if it could, it would probably save her much vexatious routine, and many toilsome and unnecessary hours. The popular theory of the English Constitution involves two errors as to the sovereign. First, in its oldest form at least, it considers him as an " Estate of the . Realm," a separate co-ordinate authority with the House of Lords and the House of Commons This and much else the sovereign once was, but this he is no longer. That authority could only be exercised by a monarofiTwith a legislative veto. He should be able to reject bills, if not as the House of Commons rejects them, at least as the House of Peers rejects them. But the Queen has no such veto. She must sign her own death-warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it up to her. It is a fiction of the past to ascribe to her legislative power. She has long ceased to have any. Secondly, the ancient theory holds that the Queen is the executive The American Constitution was made upon a most careful argument, and most of that argument assumes the king to be the administrator of the English Constitution, and an unhereditary substitute for him - -- viz., a president -- to be peremptorily necessary. Living across the Atlantic, and misled by accepted doctrines, the acute framers of the Federal Constitution, even after the keenest attention, did not perceive the Prime Minister to be the principal executive of the Briti...« less