House of Lords

44), might have served as a warning to him that there were limits to the devotion even of the House of Lords.

Only an Act of Parliament could do that, and in those days an Act of Parliament was not to be had without the real assent of King, Lords, and Commons.

When the second Parliament of James I met in 1614, the Commons renewed their protests against the Impositions, but the Lords refused to discuss the question, and an early dissolution prevented any further steps from being taken.

After much difference of opinion in the courts below, mainly due to a too literal following of certain previous authorities, the House of Lords unanimously held that, assuming the failure to prevent overcrowding to be negligence on the company’s part, the hurt suffered by the plaintiff was not nearly or certainly enough connected with it to give him a cause of action.

This artificial and unjust extension of a highly artificial rule has fortunately been stopped by the House of Lords.

It was not only adopted by the House of Lords for England, but forced by them upon the reluctant Courts of Scotland to make the jurisprudence of the two countries uniform.

In 1841 Lord Cardigan, when on trial before the peers in respect of a duel, might, it was thought, if he had been found guilty, have escaped punishment by pleading his privilege.

Ideas of progress and improvement do not easily associate themselves with the name of Lord Thurlow, yet to Thurlow is ascribed a most ingenious and beneficial device for securing the property rights of married women, and to his energetic interposition is due the recognition in 1801 by the House of Lords, of the right of a wife when suffering from outrageous ill-usage at the hands of her husband to …

This characteristic of the Reform Act was at the very crisis of the movement for reform—7th October 1831—pressed by Brougham on the House of Lords.

The House of Lords virtually did the same in 1774.

The Lords directed the judges to give their opinions to the House on the following questions, viz.

How many of those lords, who voted for the reversal, did so in the belief that there was no copyright at common law;

If a subordination of the king to the house of lords, or of the lords to the king, would destroy the intention of that division of power;

The judicial power of the house of lords is a remnant of the feudal power of the barons.

” The English lords and commons have avoided much of this retort, by forbearing in a considerable degree to meddle with judicial business.

A few hours later, Laud was committed to custody of Black–Rod, and an official messenger was sent by the House of Lords to seal up his papers.

When competent, it still takes place before a “Court of Peers”—namely, the House of Lords, if Parliament is in session, and the Court of the Lord High Steward, if not.

The House of Lords (except in cases involving the dignity or status of a peer) has never claimed to act as a court of first instance in civil cases to which a peer was a party.

If the judicial power were competent to decide that an act of parliament was void because it was contrary to natural justice, upon an appeal to the House of Lords this inconsistency would be the consequence, that as judges they must declare void, what as legislators they had enacted should be valid.

That difficulty is, the “inconsistency” there would be, if the House of Lords, (which is the highest law court in England, and at the same time one branch of the legislature,) were to declare, in their capacity as judges, that an act was void, which, as legislators, they had declared should be valid.

The two first by being hereditary are independent of the People;

—The remains of Aristocratical tyranny in the persons of the Peers.

Be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows: