Suchergebnisse

In that revolutionary movement by which slowly and unobtrusively the government of England has been made over in the last twenty years, no institution has changed more perceptibly than the Church of England. Church and State: The Report of the Archbishops' Commission on the Relations between Church and State, dated 1935 but withheld from the public by the Commission until after the general election of that year, sets forth the latest stage in a notable constitutional development.

On November 29, 1934, the youngest surviving son of George V was married, to the accompaniment of national excitement greater than that caused by any similar event since Queen Victoria's jubilee of 1897. On May 6 of the present year, the nation and the Empire celebrated George V's jubilee, the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession to the throne, and popular enthusiasm was even greater than in November. The stability and popularity of the British monarchy is impressive in a Europe which less than twenty years ago saw most ruling monarchs dethroned, and has since witnessed the deposition of Alfonso XIII in Spain and (more recently still) the assassination of the most successful Balkan king. Except for Italy, where the development of Fascism has greatly weakened the position of the king, monarchs exist in Europe only in three Balkan countries and in those regions of northwestern Europe where democratic government has been long established—Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and the British Isles. It is a common assumption that the limited monarch has been found not only compatible with but a support to the democratic capitalistic state.

The present confusion in British parliamentary life results from three irreconcilable elements. In the first place, the House of Commons resembles the typical Continental legislative chamber in its division into groups, with an only provisional coalition of some of them into what might be called indifferently a union sacree, or a "government of concentration." In the second place, the active political life of the electorate, being based on the traditional political parties, seems to have very little relation to parliamentary groupings. In the third place, the government shows a tendency to borrow its policies from the program of the opposition. Examination in turn of each of the three elements may reveal whatever coherence exists.