Under William Pitt the Younger, George III's prime minister, power shifted from Crown to cabinet.

duced by the Government or by private members, or its support to Ministers."30 Today it is the British cabinet that more properly legislates, for it alone can produce budgets and taxation measures. In the eighteenth century, this legislative function was also performed by the king's cabinet, but the monarch could play a somewhat active role in shaping legislation as well. The Founders, in an effort to avoid conflicts created by overlapping the duties of the different branches of government, more definitively separated these powers in the United States.

The United States, however, did not merely borrow from the British tradition. In some cases, our government was profoundly affected by what the Founding Fathers viewed as "mistakes" in English government. One notable example is the fact that the English Constitution is not composed of a single written document. Instead, it encompasses all acts of Parliament and judicial decisions (common law) as well as a number of unlegislated conventions and customs. These "unwritten laws" can be found in sources that vary from official records of their use to treatises of noted political scholars and the biographies of politicians, civil servants, and monarchs. 31

In the seventeenth century, the English philosopher John Locke developed a theory of natural rights. In accordance with this theory, society must consent to being governed-no person has a divine or natural right to rule another without this consent. Locke never explicitly stated, however, that such a compact should be written. Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, perceiving danger in granting power to a government that was not bound by a physical document, subsequently remarked that "an unwritten constitution is not a constitution at all."32 A government not bound by a contract could easily forget or deny its obligations, opening the way for tyranny. Despite the fear of American patriots, a fear that prompted them to compose first the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution, these "unwritten" rules, for the most part, have been sufficient in Great Britain. The British government, after all, has outlasted many with written constitutions. But even the U.S. government has been shaped by some unwritten policies. While the U.S. Constitution mandated the establishment of the Supreme Court, it did not specifically provide for judicial review. Nor did it provide for political parties or presidential cabinets. These are all elements considered fundamental to the workings of American democracy.

Perhaps as surprising to Americans as the English Constitution's unwritten status is its lack of a formal amendment procedure. That is, no Parliament is bound by the actions of its predecessors. All statutes, however weighty, may be changed simply by an act of Parliament. Further, there is no separate body like the U.S. Supreme Court that may rule on the constitutionality of a piece of legislation. Only Parliament may do so. While some constitutional scholars may debate the phrase "Parliament is sovereign," it is certainly a powerful part of British government. For example, while the judicial system is independent and its decisions are

binding, they are only so until Parliament decides otherwise. This remarkable authority, however, was hard won. Hundreds of years. were necessary to complete the transfer of power from the monarchy and aristocracy to the Parliament, particularly to the House of Commons. As this power was transferred, the English government became more democratic, and the demand for increased suffrage grew.

Many of the United Kingdom's constitutional developments originally applied to only aristocratic or wealthy landowners and to the Church. Beginning in the 1640s, however, there arose a call for governmental reform. Middle-class Puritans, joined by the poorer classes, began to ask for universal suffrage, proportional allocation of parliamentary seats, and more frequent parliaments. Almost two hundred years passed before their requests were answered. The 1832 Reform Act allowed representation of the people, not merely of the counties and boroughs. Before 1832 only 5 percent of the population over twenty-one years of age could vote. While the act increased this number only to 7 percent, it did extend the franchise to the middle class. In the counties, tenants, freeholders, and leaseholders of moderately valued properties joined the electorate. In the boroughs, owners and renters of marginally valued property gained the vote. Landless laborers, industrial workers, and women remained disfranchised. 33

The next few years saw a dramatic expansion in the size and makeup of the electorate. Property qualifications were dropped, allowing large numbers of rural laborers and industrial workers to vote. The secret ballot was established in 1872, replacing a system in which votes were called out in public. While the former method may have worked well for men of equal power and status, many believed granting the vote to laborers and tenants could only be effective if they did not have to announce their votes before employers and landlords. As the electorate changed and coercion of voters became more difficult, political parties were forced to reorganize. Party machines arose to woo the new masses. Truly universal suffrage was granted in 1928. Women over thirty years of age had been enfranchised ten years earlier, but by 1928 all British citizens twenty-one years or older who were neither mentally ill, serving criminal sentences, nor members of the peerage could vote.

At the time of the Revolutionary War, only a limited number of American colonists held the right to vote-primarily white, male freeholders. While a few unmarried or widowed women who owned property could vote, this right was soon restricted. New Jersey's first state consti

Women's contributions to the war effort led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

tution allowed limited female suffrage, but by 1807 the state legislature disfranchised even these few women voters. Most delegates at the Constitutional Convention agreed that some restrictions must be placed on voters, and many wished to copy the restrictions enacted by the British common law. In eighteenth-century England, suffrage was, by law, the exclusive right of male property owners. As Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania pointed out, nine-tenths of Americans in 1787 were freeholders (who, with few exceptions, were white males). But any property-based restriction would disfranchise men who, although lacking property, were already permitted by their respective states to vote. 34 But Morris continued that merchants and other nonfreeholders "if they have wealth and value the right they can acquire it. If not they don't deserve it."35 George Mason countered, however, that men who did not own

property but who could presently vote would be dissatisfied with disfranchisement. Further, these men would be expected to pay taxes, and it would be difficult to justify taxing them if they did not have the right to vote. The dissatisfaction that could be created by the obvious inequity could quickly lead to problems. While all agreed that some restrictions must be set (none, for example, wished to extend the vote to women, American Indians, slaves, or freedmen), they simply could not agree to the parameters of such restrictions. In the end, they decided to leave the establishment of restrictions to the respective state legislatures, but reserved the right to alter them as they saw fit.

By 1860, most states had dropped or lessened property, religious, or tax qualifications. The nation had almost achieved universal white, male suffrage. In 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment, which extended suffrage to black men, was ratified. However, it was not until the 1960s, when the Voting Rights Act and the Twenty-fourth Amendment were passed, that the government outlawed unfair voting procedures and ensured that African Americans would not be denied the right to vote.

While the U.S. Constitution never directly denied women suffrage, the Founders simply took for granted the ineligibility of their female counterparts. As voter restrictions were lessened and more men became eligible for franchise, state governments, in whose power it was to establish voter restriction, found ways to continue to bar women from the polls. American women first began to call for suffrage at the Woman's Rights Convention of 1848, held in Seneca Falls,

New York. In the meantime, women began to become better educated and to work outside the home. Attitude changes occurred more frequently in the expanding West, where the demands of frontier life created a greater egalitarianism between the sexes. By 1900, in fact, four new western states-Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho-allowed women to participate in elections. Proponents of female suffrage began to realize that despite the inroads made in the West, universal franchise for American women would not be granted without a constitutional amendment. First introduced in 1870, the proposed amendment did not receive enough support until World War I, when the contributions women made to the war effort prompted a shift in opinion. On August 26, 1920, women were granted universal suffrage by the Nineteenth Amendment.

Just as the American people represent a conglomeration of races and cultures, so too does our government represent a blend of ideas. Whether we have borrowed, reworked, dismissed, or created, these ideas have become our own. A British historian once wrote that "Each country follows its own way, in conformity with its own history and genius."36 While we share with England a common past, from before the Magna Carta to the declaration of our independence, we have created a democracy that, while related, is as uniquely American as England's democratic tradition is British. As the United States continues its progression toward ever greater democracy, it has become not only its own model but one for the rest of the world as well.

NOTES

'Clayton Roberts and David Roberts, A History of England: Prehistory to 1714, vol. I (1980), p. 43.

2Unable to maintain control of Parliament, which was attempting to impeach his favorite, but incompetent, courtier, Charles I dissolved the assembly. From 1629 to 1640 he managed to create a nonparliamentary government primarily because of his ruthless enforcement of the ancient privileges of the royal prerogative. In the late 1630s, however, he found himself at war with the Scots. Financial necessity compelled him to summon Parliament in 1640.

Radicals in Parliament called for the replacement of the Book of Common Prayer; the body subsequently broke into two factions, the parliamentarians and the royalists. Tensions between the two began to mount, and by August, civil war was declared.

Parliament continued to split over the religious issue, but in December 1648, the army, under Oliver Cromwell,

purged the assembly. Only a "rump" of some fifty MPs (Members of Parliament) remained. The Rump Parliament, which merely served as a disguise for military rule, established a Commonwealth and found Charles guilty of treason and having obtained him from the Scots, executed the king in 1649. In 1653, the Rump Parliament also broke with Cromwell and was eventually replaced by England's first and only written constitution, the Instrument of Government. The Instrument provided for a Lord Protector (Cromwell), a Council of State, and a Parliament. For many English, however it proved too much like a monarchy. In reality, it was a military dictatorship. The Protectorate disintegrated after Cromwell's death. Richard Cromwell succeeded his father as Lord Protector and soon thereafter summoned a Parliament. Parliament immediately began to challenge the power of the army and was summarily dissolved. Angered by the actions of the English army, George Monck,

commander of the English army in Scotland, marched on London and summoned all members of Parliament (not merely those who belonged to the Rump). After elections, this Parliament met in April 1660 and restored Charles II to the throne usurped from his father. Roberts and Roberts, History of England, pp. 357-358, 362-367, 374-379.

3W. L. Warren, King John (1961), p. 237. The 1217 charter, however, inspired the title by which we know the document, Magna Carta. John's charter had contained a clause on the customs and laws of the forest. Henry's regents removed this clause, expanded it, and created a separate document. The principal document was henceforward distinguished from this "little charter" with the title "Magna Carta," or great charter.

Ibid., p. 25.

10 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Feb. 17, 1826, in The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (1944), p. 726. It is not surprising that the American revolutionists would be inspired by Coke, especially men like Thomas Jefferson, who indicted George III in the Declaration of Independence. Once James I's attorney general, Coke broke with the king over the issue of judicial independence. Although removed from his post, Coke was soon elected to the House of Commons, where as an advocate of prerogative limits, he became a leader of the opposition to James I and Charles II. Coke was instrumental in the

drafting of the Petition of Rights. Notes for his Institutes were confiscated by the king, but Parliament ordered them returned, and the second volume was published in

15 Bowen, The Lion, p. 315.

16Ibid., p. 316.

17 Robert A. Rutland, "Well Acquainted with Books": The Founding Framers of 1787 (1987), pp. 16, 18-19.

18De Montfort was one of the leading members of the council of fifteen, which had been established by the Provisions of Oxford in June 1258. Forced on Henry III, the Provisions provided for the establishment of a primarily baronial council of fifteen, which would name the king's chief ministers and whose advice on affairs of state the king would be compelled to follow. The Provisions also decreed that a meeting of the Great Council, a parliament, must be called at least three times a year. The reforms of the Provisions of Oxford, however, only lasted two years, during which time de Montfort lost the support of the baronage.

Henry had the pope release him from the Provisions, and de Montfort was sent into exile. Henry, oblivious to the threat that still surrounded him, left for France. De Montfort was recalled, and with those barons whose support he retained, he created a council of nine. The council, however, was not intended to govern without Parliament, which is why the Parliaments of 1264 and 1265 were summoned. Still lacking the support of the majority of the baronage, however, de Montfort was defeated by a royal force in August 1256 and executed. Roberts and Roberts, History of England, pp. 249-250.

19Franz Neumann, introduction to The Spirit of the Laws, by Baron de Montesquieu (reprinted 1949), p. lix. 20James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison (1966, reprinted 1987), p. 470.

21Ibid., p. 46. 22 Ibid.

23Ibid., p. 357.

24 Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787 (1966, reprinted 1986), p. 189.

25Ibid., p. 191.

26Ibid., pp. 188-189.

27 Ibid., p. 188.

28 Richard Allen Baker, "The Senate of the United States: 'Supreme Executive Council of the Nation,' 17871800," Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives 21 (Winter 1989): 300.

29 Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia, p. 77.

30L. S. Amery, "The Essential Nature of the Constitution" (1953), in European Political Institutions: A Comparative Government Reader, ed. William G. Andrews (1966), P. 25.

31 Herman Finer, The Major Governments of Modern Europe (1960), p. 62.

32Quoted in Walter Berns, Taking the Constitution Seriously (1987), p. 70.

33 Finer, The Major Governments, p. 67. 34Madison, Notes, p. 403.

35Ibid.

36Ernest Barker, Essays of Government (1960), p. 22.