England

Isle of Guernsey

65

Men.

7,776 510

Jersey Man

Brit. Plantations 3,775

The government of England is that of her universal and vast empire:-a mixed monarchy, consisting of the KING, who has the prerogative of convening, proroguing, and dissolving parliament; creating peers; assenting to, or rejecting, all bills that pass the houses of lords and commons; appointing every member of the magistracy and executive government, together with the bishops of the established church; and who has the supreme command of the army and navy: the house of PEERS, consisting of the lords spiritual and temporal, the English temporal peers having an hereditary right to sit in the house (but an election being inade of Scottish and Irish peers), and their number, therefore, being limited by no existing law: and the house of COMMONS, elected by the people under the four denominations of knights, citizens, burgesses, and barons. The English peers amount to about 400; and the members of the house of commons for England, to 489. See ELECTION.

The house of commons is distinguished from that of the peers, by the right of originating or levying the taxes, and the election of its own members, who are the constitutional guardians of the public purse; and who, therefore, never suffer the lords to make any alteration in money bills. The house of commons is also the grand inquest of the kingdom, and has power to impeach, before the house of lords, the most dignified of the peers, or even a member of the royal family.

Bills, which have passed both houses (for they

are so denominated throughout their several stages in each), receive the royal assent, and become Acts of Parliament, constituting the statute law of the land. Bills of a general description may originate in either house, and are transmitted to the other for discussion, where they may either be altered or entirely rejected. When altered, the amendments must be communicated to the house in which the bill originated, for approbation; and having passed both houses, no further alteration can take place. The royal assent must be then given to it in the state in which it is presented, or withheld altogether. See AsSENT. An act of parliament thus made is of the highest earthly authority which this kingdom acknowledges. It has power to bind every subject in the King's dominions, and even the king himself, if particularly named therein. It cannot be altered, amended, dispensed with, suspended, or repealed, but by the same forms, and by the same authority of parliament which gave it existence.' For more minute particulars of the privileges and duties of PARLIAMENT, see that article; for those of the Courts of Law, see COURT and LAW.

The king, by his judges, is not only supposed to be present in aii the courts when they assemble; but for the more perfect conservation of the public peace, he is represented at all times, constitutionally, by his sheriff of each county. the keeper of the king's peace,' says Mr. Justice Blackstone, the sheriff is the first man in the county, and superior in rank to any nobleman

As

therein, during his office. He may apprehend, and commit to prison, all persons who break the peace, or attempt to break it, and may bind any one in a recognizance to keep the king's peace. He may, and is bound ex-officio, to pursue and take all traitors, murderers, felons, and other misdoers, and commit them to gaol for safe custody. He is also to defend his county against any of the king's enemies, when they come into the land; and for this purpose, as well as for keeping the peace and pursuing felons, he may command all the people of his county to attend him, which is called the posse comitatus, or power of the county; which summons every person above fifteen years of age, and under the degree of a peer, is bound to attend upon warning, on pain of fine and imprisonment. Yet he cannot exercise the office of a justice of the peace, for then this inconvenience would arise, that he should command himself to execute his own precepts.'-1 Commentaries, 343.

Juries, justices of the peace, of whom several are put in commission for each county, the coroner, and the constable, complete the general outline of our legal authorities. The duty of the justice of the peace is very general and constant; he is to put the greater part of the statute law in execution, to take charge of highways, the poor, vagrants, treason, felonies, riots, the preservation of game, &c.; and examine and commit to prison all who disturb the peace, or disquiet the king's subjects, removing them to the county gaol for trial at the sessions, held quarterly before the united justices of the county, or at the next county assizes, for trial before the judge of assize, according to the offence. See CORONER and CONSTABLE.

The trial by jury is considered one of the most decided features of the triumph of liberty and intelligence in the executive branch of our constitution. Twelve respectable men of the county, or neighbourhood, where a crime is committed, and who are best qualified for the office, are constituted the judges both of the law in its application, and of the entire facts of every criminal case. When a man is charged with any capital offence, and committed to the county gaol by the magistrates of the district, the charge must first be examined by the GRAND JURY, whose province it is to ascertain if there be sufficient grounds for exposing the person accused to a public trial; for, in the eye of the law, he is considered innocent till it be fully proved to the contrary. Unless a bill of indictment therefore be found against the prisoner, by a majority of this jury, he is immediately discharged, and can never be again indicted for the same offence. In proceeding to a trial, the person accused is furnished with a list of the PETTY JURY, as it is called, who are to be his final judges, and is allowed in open court to object to any against whom he can assign reasons for their not being admitted, until twelve unexceptionable men are found; and, in order to secure all possible impartiality in the trial, if the person indicted be a foreigner, half the jury are also to be foreigners, if the accused person so desire. They are then sworn that they shall well and truly try, and deliverance make between the king and the pri

soner whom they shall have in charge, according to the evidence. On these juries the prisoner rests his cause, and the verdict they pronounce is final. After they have heard the evidence, the prisoner's defence, the comments of the judge on the testimony given, his exposition of the nature of the crime, and the bearings of the law upon it, under every possible aspect, they are confined, without meat, drink, or candle, till the whole are unanimous in acquitting or condemning the prisoner. Trial by jury, as thus constituted, is evidently one of the greatest bulwarks of our freedom. It remains only to be completed by the allowance of counsel to a prisoner in every case. If one of the jury die, while they are locked up, the prisoner is acquitted. This institution has been selected for imitation by all the modern states who have asserted their liberty.

The greatest crime known to the English law is high treason, and it is accordingly punished with peculiar severity. The several offences which come under that denomination were limited, by the statute 25th Edw. III., to seven distinct branches, of which, the compassing and imagining the king's death, and the conspiring to levy war against his authority, were the principal. Other treasons have since been added, relating to papists, falsifying the coin, or other royal signatures, and for the security of the protestant succession in the house of Hanover. Two new treasons were created during the late reign (36 Geo. III. ch. 7), viz. that of compassing and imagining to depose the king, and conspiring to levy war to force the crown to change its measures and its councils. The sentence of the law against this offence is, that the offender shall be hanged, drawn, and quartered; and forfeit his lands and goods to the king. The humanity of modern times, however, has dispensed with the literal application of this punishment. Persons convicted of high treason are first hung till they are dead, they are then taken down and decapitated, and the drawing and quartering are wholly disused.

Petty treason is when a wife murders her husband, a servant his master or mistress, an ecclesiastic a prelate, or one to whom he owes obedience, the punishment for which is, to be drawn on a sledge to the gallows and hanged. Felony includes murder, robbery, forging, maiming, or stabbing with a sharp instrument, &c.; for all which the law awards the sentence of death; a circumstance to which much attention has been of late excited. Some amelioration of these severe enactments are already accomplished; others are said to be intended by the executive. See LAW. Murderers are executed within forty-eight hours from the pas sing of the sentence, and their bodies dissected. The sentence for robbery, unless attended with circumstances of brutality, is frequently commuted for either transportation, or imprisonment on board the hulks. Fines, imprisonment with hard labor, pillory, and whipping, are the chief punishments assigned by the law for minor offences.

We are indebted to Mr. Capper's Topogra phical Account of England and Wales for the following

ing and ability of its members; or for the liberality with which its great power and political influence have been exercised with regard to other sects.

Dissenters are very numerous in England; but there is no accurate mode of estimating their total numbers. Some of their own body have suggested that one-half of the persons who regularly frequent any place of worship dissent from the establishment. They sometimes act in London in a recognised body of the three denominations of Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, whose ministers meet at Red Cross Street library; and are considered in their addresses to the crown, and other communications with the government, as a species of representatives of all the dissenters. But the Presbyterians rank in modern times anong the smallest of the dissenting sects. The most numerous is that of the Wesleyan Methodists; next to these perhaps, including England and Wales, the Calvinistic Methodists; then the Independents, perhaps; and then the Baptists, Particular, or Calvinistic, and Arminian or General. The Friends or Quakers are it is well known not very numerous, nor increasing, the Moravians, Swedenborgians, and Unitarians are other small sects, but include many respectable individuals. For their legal situation see the article DISSENTERS.

In the education of the country, the established church now takes the precedence due to its station. Committees of the house of commons have also contributed in no small degree to enlighten the public mind upon this topic. The first of their Reports, dated June 1816, contains various statements of the proportion of the poor, who were then destitute of the means of instruction. In the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, the proportion was 679 uneducated out of 829. In Southwark, of 12,000 children between the age of five and fourteen, 6000 were unprovided with the means of instruction; but of all ignorant and abandoned districts, St. Giles's was found beyond comparison the worst; containing more than half the Irish in the metropolis, whose children, in number about 3000, were not only uneducated, but after the age of seven or eight trained to begging and thieving almost universally. The whole number of children in the metropolis, unprovided with education, was computed at more than 100,000, while not less than half a million of the population were equally destitute in the country.

The National Society at the period of the second Report of the committee had established but one great school, that of Baldwin's Gardens, in Gray's Inn Lane: it had contributed to the erection or enlargement of more than 200 schools, by pecuniary grants, varying from £15 to £100, and amounting in particular cases to £200, and even £300. Above 500 teachers, male and female, are trained on Dr. Bell's plan; and distributed over from 1000 to 1500 schools, containing nearly 200,000 children receiving education on this system. The majority of these have adopted Dr. Bell's plan without receiving any other aid than a supply of elementary books; the conditions on which the society furnished them being that the liturgy and catechism of the church of England should be fol

lowed, and that no religious tracts, except those sanctioned by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, should be admitted into the schools. The practice of the society, however, is by no means illiberal. In regard to expense, nothing can be more gratifying than to find that, even at the highest, it does not exceed (Evidence, p. 268) 12s. per head per annum.

The British and Foreign School Society was found equally active and liberal according to its means, It had expended, on the laudable object of promoting instruction for the poor universally, the sum of £20,000 previously to the year 1816; of which one individual alone (who conceals his name from all parties but the treasurer) subscribed no less than £3000. Its annual expense in training male and female teachers is from £2000 to £3000 a year, and it is connected with from 400 to 500 schools whom it supplies with them throughout the kingdom. About 400,000 children are supposed, according to these reports, to receive instruction by Sunday Schools, in London.

The labors of the education committee were closed with its third Report in June 1818. They here observe that the discussion excited by the enquiry had greatly improved the administration of institutions for the education of the poor; but that much remained to be done; the efforts of private benevolence being almost entirely confined to towns, and the aid of government being wanted in the thinly peopled districts, to the extent, at least, of the purchase or erection of a school-house, leaving the annual expense to be defrayed by private subscriptions. The committee further recommend a connexion between such schools and the established church; observing that the anxiety of the poor for the education of their children, was not only unabated, but daily increasing.

A superior education is to be obtained in England by the public or grammar schools, or at the numerous and very respectable private Academies every where established. The great public schools are Eton, Harrow, Westminster, and Winchester; to which are to be added, in London, St. Paul's, Merchant Taylors' School, and the Charter-House. Here the classics are a prominent object of instruction, and while provision is made by the founders for a certain number of boys to be educated on the foundation, as it is called, youths of the first rank join them, and pay liberally for participating the advantages of these establishments. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which are entirely restricted to the members of the established church, complete the course of instruction of which the gentry and nobility of England avail themselves. A new University designed to embrace all the religious denominations of the country has been recently projected in London.

The general charities and charitable institutions of England are also numerous and unrivalled. Amongst these, religious and moral institutions seem to claim the pre-eminence. But we cannot undertake to particularize the half of them. The most celebrated are

The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

The British and Foreign Bible Society

1,062,020

Total armed Force of the British
Empire
The peace, however, has of course reduced
these establishments.

The entire amount of the regular troops, provided for by parliament in 1819, was 91,823, including 11,340 men then added, in consequence of a disturbed state of the country; but exclusive of the regiments employed in the territorial possessions of the East India Company. The whole number of seamen and marines employed at one period of the late war was taken at 184,000 men. They do not now exceed 50,000.

The revenue of Great Britain, whether we regard its past and existing resources, its encumbrances, or its future stability, is a very extensive and momentous topic of consideration. We can only advert briefly to its history and present state.

The average revenue of Great Britain, under king William III. was about £4,000,000. This was a period of difficulties and of a disputed succession, it will be remembered: under queen Anne an augmentation to £5,000,000 took place, and eventually to £6,000,000. During the reign of George I. the revenue rather exceeded £7,000,000, and a gradual increase is to be observed towards the middle of the century. The revenue during the reign of George III. is thus exhibited.

In 1761 it was £8,800,000

Ladies' Charity School.

Masonic Charity.

Raines's Charities.

There are also three colleges or alms-houses on an enlarged scale, under a master and incorporated officers, in the neighbourhood of London, viz. Bromley, Morden, and Dulwich Colleges. We can only add, that the example of these numerous and splendid establishments of the metropolis is nobly followed up in the various county and other local hospitals, dispensaries, and public charities of every kind throughout the country. Many of the most flourishing religious institutions are aided materially by the Auxiliary Societies and associations of the provinces. The army and navy of England at the close of the late war are thus exhibited by Dr. Colquhoun. Land forces, or men in arms in the`

British Empire, including the Regular Army and Foreign Corps, the British and Irish Militias, the Local Militia and Volunteers of Great Britain; with the Militia and Fencibles in the Colonies and Dependencies

721,187