After James I came to the throne this docile attitude of the Parliament to the execu tive gradually changed. The important point about this change of attitude is not the cause which brought it about, but the form it took, the way in which it expressed itself. That ex pression is focussed for us in the terms of the Great Contract, the failure of which led to the dissolution of James' first Parliament in 1610. In this bargain of the Great Contract James' position was comparatively simple. In the first year of his reign the Parliament had granted him for life the subsidy of tonnage and pound age. That grant practically put him in the same position financially which Elizabeth had been in throughout her reign. His revenue (from Crown lands, royalties, casualties and customs) was his own. He was expected to live on it, and by that phrase was meant that out of his own he should nrovide for the whole government of the country — regal, legal, civil, military and naval. If debts arose or extraor dinary occasions demanded, he would have to ask for extra grants of tenths and fifteenths just as Elizabeth had been obliged to do. These extra grants Parliament never refused to the Virgin Queen nor did James' first Parliament refuse them to him. But James tried for some thing more than this. He tried to get an in crease of °his own," of his life revenue, that standing, permanent ordinary revenue out of which he had to defray the ordinary expendi ture of the State. Nor was the Parliament in disposed to meet him. It accepted the general principle of his demand, and agreed tentatively to increase his life revenue by i100,000 a year on certain conditions. These conditions em bodied the Parliament's demands on the subject of their grievances, the Impositions, such op pressive royalties as purveyance, and certain ecclesiastical complaints.
Stretch or construe these points as we will we shall not find in them anything in the nature of a challenge from the legislative to the execu tive. All the points which the Commons de manded were to be conceded by the Crown,as a matter of bargain. They were to be voluntary sacrifices of prerogative on the part of the king in return for so much cash. When carried out, the executive was still as before to occupy the whole governmental field alone. No part what ever of that field was it for a moment in the Parliament's mind to itself occupy or usurp. It never dreamed of demanding some control over the executive, or even the slightest share in it, either by requesting to be consulted in affairs of state, or by claiming the appointment of any of the Icing's ministers. The executive was the king's, the ministers were the king's, his com pletely and his alone, and Parliament never once thought of challenging such a flower of the pre rogative. Had the Great Contract gone through the only difference would have been that for the future the king's executive would have agreed to avoid certain acts or to cease the exercise of certain rights of prerogative which had been felt as a grievance. For the rest the executive would have been stronger, not weaker, by the compact, for it would have been better able to pay its way, and so to avoid frequent appeals to the Commons.
Equally noticeable with the subject-matter of the Great Contract was its form. The negotia tion was carried on as if it were a treaty be tween two foreign and totally unrelated powers. The want of connection between the two parties to it could not have been more complete if the king had belonged to one country and the Par liament to another. And between these two parties, the executive and the legislative, the Crown and the Parliament, there was not even a regular and recognized channel of communica tion. Practically the only means of intercourse was a direct message or speech from the king on the one hand or a petition from the Com mons on the other. For the rest all was hap hazard. Such members of the executive as sat in the House acted individually each as he thought fit, or as he was bidden, in promoting the Icing's business. On its side the court party or the executive had no more thought of creat ing and working some piece of machinery by which the Icing's business could be piloted smoothly through the House than the House had on its side of ever challenging a share in the executive. There was a gulf between the
two which neither side dreamed of permanently bridging over. On neither side did the slightest conception exist of a Constitution in which the executive and the legislative should be linked together.
It was the problem of the 17th century first of all to perceive the necessity of such a link, and then to invent the mechanism. If this statement is a correct diagnosis of the true bearing of English 17th century history, then the constitutional importance which has hitherto been attributed to that history will be found to be exaggerated. For the simple fact remains that the clear perception of the need was only attained at the close of that century, and the mechanism itself was only gradually elaborated in the 18th century.
Fortunately or unfortunately the Great Con tract broke down, and from that moment com menced that antagonism between Crown and Parliament which was destined to produce the Great Rebellion. The steps by which that an tagonism developed itself until it blazed out in open war need not be detailed here. They are the commonplaces of history. The point to notice is that the moment the antagonism emerged the opposition of Parliament to execu tive, or of nation to Crown became not so much constitutional as political. What is the distinction between these two terms? The dif ference is fundamental, for whilst the one is a matter of orinciple and abiding, the other is a thing of time and place, and may be transitory. Had the nation said to James through Parlia ment as its mouthpiece, represent and wish to perpetuate the Tudor type of govern ment by prerogative; we have outgrown that and claim for ourselves a share of the govern ment') such an attitude would have been con stitutional. But nothing of the kind was either said or thought of. The opposition which de veloped itself was conditioned in its form by the mere force of circumstance. When, after 10 years of rule without a Parliament, James in 1621 summoned his third Parliament, there were reasonable prospects of a complete agreement The House, glowing with Protestant fervor, made not the slightest reference to the old burning question of impositions. It sat down at once to consider supply for the support of a war in defense of the Palatinate. For the first fortnight of the session James could have done anything he pleased with the Commons. Ten months later, in December 1621, after with his own hands tearing out of the journals the Protestation of the Commons, the king dis solved the Parliament in anger and sent three of its members to prison. How could so com plete a change have happened? The answer is simple. The Constitution provided no mech anism by which James could explain to the Parliament his foreign policy. He could not, nor would he if he could, take the whole House into his confidence, and he never thought, any more than did the House itself, of such a de vice as that of taking a select few of the leaders of the Commons into his counsels. Nothing is more remarkable in this Parliament than the scrupulous regard which the House paid to the kings prerogative in the matter of foreign affairs. It was for the king, and the king alone, to make treaties and to decide peace and war, nor could they press him to disclose his policy. Had the Commons felt as certain of the patriotic and Protestant trend of James' foreign policy as the Parliament of Elizabeth's days had been of her foreign policy, not a word of criticism or contention would have been heard. But they were not so certain, and as a conse quence felt that they were being called upon to vote supply for a policy which might even be the very oppOsite of that which the nation yearned for. Then a side issue arose. In his impatience at the slightest doubt being cast upon his foreign policy James was led to assert his view of the prerogative in so dogmatic a way as practically to deny free speech to the House. To this the House of Commons replied by the Protestation, in which they claimed practically nothing but the parliamentary privi lege of freedom of speech, just as it had claimed it in Elizabeth's day. This, and this alone, was the cause of the breach.