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Errors of Modern Diplomacy.

treat of peace on the king's behalf with the said parties, or any other."

Under the Tudors, who would not easily concede anything that concerned their prerogative, the authority of Parliament in state affairs was never disputed. Under Henry VII. a Parliament was called, A.D. 1488, to which the Lord Chancellor addressed a long statement of the position of affairs abroad, concluding thus :-"Therefore by this narrative you now understand the state of the question, whereupon the king prayeth your advice, which is no other than whether he shall enter into an auxiliary defensive war for the Britons against France." The proposed policy was approved of, and a supply granted. Four years afterwards the same king when meditating a war with France on his own account, summoned a Parliament, which he addressed in person, for the reasons stated by him. "My Lords, and you the Commons," he said "when I proposed to make a war in Brittany by my lieutenant, I made a declaration thereof to you by my Chancellor, but now that I mean to make war upon France in person I will declare it to you myself," ending with, "Go together in God's name, and lose no time, for I have called this Parliament wholly for this cause." After which, we are told, "the Parliament with great alacrity advised the king to undertake the war." In the fourth year of Henry VIII., William of Waring, Archbishop of Canterbury, having addressed the Parliament upon the injustice threatened against the king in withholding from him his dominions, "it was concluded

by the whole body of the realm in the High Court of Parliament assembled that war should be made on the French king and his dominions, and an act was thereupon made."

Queen Mary during her brief and inglorious reign did not get on very pleasantly with her faithful Commons. She married Philip of Spain, in despite of their address to the contrary, and kept herself as much as possible aloof from the representatives of England's nobility and wealth. Nevertheless,

So un

"when dangers came to press from abroad" after the loss of Calais, she consented to resort to the advice and assistance of Parliament, but in a disrespectful and unconstitutional manner. Instead of coming down to Parliament, or even sending her lieutenant, as her grandfather Henry VII. had done, she sent for the Speaker of the House of Commons to attend her, and ordered him "to open to them the ill condition the nation was in," and the necessity for putting it into a state of defence. This "gracious message graciously communicated, met with but little favour at the hands of the sturdy Commons of those genuine unmixed English days, for, as we are told, "the Commons were now so dissatisfied that they would come to no resolution." A week afterwards Her Majesty consented to a more conciliatory, but still a very unusual and unconstitutional mode of proceeding, and sent down to the Commons a deputation consisting of the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, the Duke of Norfolk, and several other peers, who, however, met with but a sorry reception.

"The Speaker left his chair, and he with the privy councillors that were of the House, came and sate on the low benches before them. The Chancellor shewed the necessity of granting a subsidy to defend the nation both from the French and the Scots when he had done, the Lords withdrew; but though the Commons entered both that and the two following days into debate, they came to no issue in their consultation." The Queens death-" Calais " engraved on her heart-put an end to this lame proceeding.

A considerable amount of disagreement of opinion exists as to the extent to which Queen Elizabeth recognised or repudiated the deliberative authority of Parliament in matters of state policy. Davenant says, "She had such an absolute control over the hearts of her people that she did what she pleased with both Houses of Parliament. It being notorious that she drove at no interest distinct from the Commonwealth, she was suffered to pursue the measures tending to the public good in her own method." So far good as a generality; but when he adds-"No wonder, then, if we find her making peace and war, and entering into foreign leagues and alliances, without advising with the great council of the kingdom," he perhaps speaks a little in excess of the truth, whilst the very remark implies that such conduct, if it had been carried out to the extent suggested, was considered by the writer as exceptional and repugnant to that of general usage. It is true that in the first year of her reign she concluded a treaty of peace with France, which she

found under negociation at her accession, and that she afterwards entered into one or two treaties of alliance and mutual defence with France and the Netherlands, which did not come to much except in respect of any moral effect they may have had,without consulting Parliament. True, she rather snubbed the assembled wisdom of the nation when it ventured to offer advice upon the subject of marriage. But when, in 1587, the country was threatened with invasion by the Spanish Armada, she addressed herself to Parliament for advice and assistance; and again on the opening of Parliament in the year following. Sir C. Hatton, in the presence of the Queen, recited the circumstances of the defeat of the Armada, and suggested the spirit of revenge it would arouse in Spain, adding, "this is the great cause of summoning this Parliament, that in this most full assembly of the wisest and most prudent persons, called together from all parts of this kingdom, as far as human counsel may advise, a diligent preparation may be made, that arms and forces and money may be in readiness, etc." Parry in his

book of learned research, 'On the Parliaments and Councils of England,' states that on the 29th March, 1589," the two Houses determined on a war with Spain." Again, in the Parliament of 1592-3, as we read in the parliamentary rolls, Lord Burleigh made a long address on the perils of the nation and of France, consequent upon the ambition of Spain, concluding by "referring the consideration thereof to the whole three estates, whereof two are in this

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18 Errors of Modern Diplomacy.

place, how the same danger may be withstood " and especially inviting the Commons "to treat with Her Majesty, and with the prelates and other great men of the realm, and to give your counsels so as it is convenient for us all-first, to consider the perils, and then to give the counsel."

It must have been in ignorance of such facts as those which we have above cited, that Hume, in a History of England which, for a century or more, has been accepted as a text-book, when writing of Elizabeth's reign, asserts, "As to other great points of Government, alliances, peace, and war, or foreign associations, no Parliament in that age," (a large and indefinite term), "ever presumed to take them under consideration." But, that in her own time, Elizabeth was not considered as being invested with sole arbitrary authority in these matters, regardless of the constitutional practice under her predecessors, may be gathered from the observations of the Rev. John Aylmer, published in answer to a book by John Knox, against female sovereignty, or as he was pleased to describe it, "The Monstrous Regiment of Women." "If," writes Aylmer, "the regiment were such as all hanged on the king's or queen's will, and not upon the laws written; if she might decree and make laws alone without her senate; if she judged offences according to her wisdom, and not by limitations of statutes and laws; if she might dispose alone of war and peace; if, to be short, she were a mere monarch, and not a mixed ruler, you might peradventure make me to fear the matter the more, and the less to defend the cause." John