The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886Various
History
The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886
Various
Periodicals
The paramount influence of the agrarian class over the destinies of the
kingdom may be judged by the circumstances that the rural districts are
permanently represented in the Storthing by two-thirds of the total
number of members, limited by the Constitution to 114; and that
practically the suffrage is now universal, the principal conditions of
its possession being, under recent legislation, a qualification of age
(25 years) and a residence of five years in the country. It is well
known that the Parliament thus elected (under a system of double
election), with its _de facto_ single Chamber, subdivided for the more
rapid and effective discharge of certain business into what Mr. Laing
chooses to call an 'Upper House' and a 'House of Commons,' has, within
very recent days, in virtue of the largely predominant rural, radical
vote, exercised its power of impeaching and punishing, by fine and
dismissal from office, an entire Cabinet, for the crime of having
advised the King that his veto was not merely suspensive, but absolute,
in the matter of any Bill affecting the principles of the Constitution,
and that the questions in dispute between the Sovereign and the
Storthing were of a constitutional character, involving indirectly not
only the stability of a monarchical form of government, but also that of
the personal union between the crowns of Norway and Sweden--a stability
pre-eminently essential in both respects to the highest interests of
Scandinavia, and in no small degree also to the maritime and political
interests of this country. It is this form of Parliament that Mr. Laing
extols 'as a working model of a constitutional government on a small
scale, and one which works so well as highly to deserve the
consideration of the people of Great Britain.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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