*50. Regencies.*--The age of majority of the sovereign is eighteen. The constitutions of most monarchical states contain more or less elaborate stipulations respecting the establishment of a regency in the event of the sovereign's minority or incapacitation. In Great Britain, on the contrary, the practice has been to make provision for each such contingency when it should arise. A regency can be created and a regent designated only by act of Parliament. Parliamentary enactments, however, become operative only upon receiving the assent of the crown, and it has sometimes happened that the sovereign for whom a regent was required to be appointed was incapable of performing any governmental act. In such a case, there has been resort usually to some legal fiction by which the appearance, at least, of regularity has been preserved. A regency act regularly defines the limits of the regent's powers and establishes specific safeguards in respect to the interests of both the sovereign and the nation.[64] [Footnote 64: For the text of the Regency Act of 1811, passed by reason of the incapacitation of George III., see Robertson, Statutes, Cases and Documents, 171-182. For an excellent survey of the general subject see May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, I., Chap. 3.] *51. Royal Privileges: the Civil List.*--The sovereign is capable of owning land and other property, and of disposing of it precisely as may any private citizen. The vast accumulations of property, however, which at one time comprised the principal source of revenue of the crown, have become the possession of the state, and as such are administered entirely under the direction of Parliament. In lieu (p. 051) of the income derived formerly from land and other independent sources the sovereign has been accorded for the support of the royal household a fixed annual subsidy--voted under the designation of the Civil List--the amount of which is determined afresh at the beginning of each reign. The Civil List was instituted by an act of 1689 in which Parliament settled upon the king for the meeting of personal expenses, the payment of civil officers, and other charges, a stipulated sum, thus separating for the first time the private expenditures of the crown from the public outlays of the nation.[65] The sum given William III. was L700,000. George III., in return for a fixed Civil List, surrendered his interest in the hereditary revenues of the crown, and William IV. went further and, in return for a Civil List of L510,000 a year, surrendered not only the hereditary revenues but also a large group of miscellaneous and casual sources of income.[66] At the accession of Queen Victoria the Civil List was fixed at L385,000. The amount was comparatively small, but opportunity was taken at the time finally to transfer to Parliament the making of provision for all