[8:3] Professor Dicey argued that the first Home Rule Bill if enacted might have restricted the legal sovereignty of Parliament. "England's Case against Home Rule," 238, _et seq._ This result was denied by the other side. Bryce, "Studies in Hist. and Jur.," 176, note. [9:1] Boutmy in his _Etudes de droit constitutionel_ (1 Ed., 9) adds treaties or quasi-treaties (the Acts of Union), and solemn agreements such as the Bill of Rights. But all these are in legal effect simply statutes. [9:2] Bryce, American Commonwealth, Ch. xxxiv. [10:1] The habit of collecting new or increased duties or excises as soon as the resolution to impose them passes the House of Commons is an apparent exception to this principle, for the taxes are not legally payable until laid by Act of Parliament. The object of the custom is to prevent a large loss of revenue by importations made after it is known that the duty will be levied and before it goes into effect. The act when passed contains, of course, a clause authorising and thereby making legal the collection from the date of the resolution, and if it fails to pass the tax is refunded. [11:1] "Growth of the English Constitution," 107, 112-13, 119. [11:2] "Law of the Constitution," Ch. xv. [12:1] All this is true only of conventions that give effect to the will of the majority of the House of Commons, not of those that secure fair play to the minority, which are in fact not less important. [13:1] "Law of the Constitution," 360, 384. PART I.--CENTRAL GOVERNMENT CHAPTER I THE CROWN Political liberty and romance in English history are both bound up with the shifting fortunes of the throne. The strong hand of the Norman and Angevin kings welded the whole country into a nation, and on that foundation were built the solid structures of a national Common Law, a national Parliament, and a long series of national statutes. When in the fulness of time the Crown had accomplished its work of unification, it came into conflict with Parliament, and after a series of convulsions, in which one king lost his head and another his throne, political evolution resumed its normal course. The House of Commons gradually drew the royal authority under its control. But it did so without seriously curtailing the legal powers of the Crown, and thus the King legally enjoys most of the attributes that belonged to his predecessors, although the exercise of his functions has passed into other hands. If the personal authority of the monarch has become a shadow of its former massiveness, the government is still conducted in his name, and largely by means of the legal rights attached to his office. With a study of the Crown, therefore, a description of English government most fittingly begins. [Sidenote: The Title to the Crown.]