functions vested in parliament, was in truth only strengthened, and
rendered more securely despotic:--"But this is entirely lost sight of by
the people, who, even at the present day, imagine that the parliament is
all-powerful, and the sovereign powerless. But I must be allowed to say,
that those ancient monarchs acted wisely, and the result of their policy
has not been sufficiently perceived.... For when parliament was
constituted, the power of retaining armed vassals and servants, which the
barons had enjoyed for so long a period, was abolished, and has never been
resumed even by princes of the blood; so that they could no longer resist
the authority of the king, who alone had the privilege of raising and
maintaining troops--a right never conceded to parliament. Besides this the
powers of life and death, and of declaring war, were identified with the
person of the sovereign; and with respect to the latter, it is never,
until it has been decided upon, even intimated to the parliament, which
possesses _only_ the power of collecting the taxes, from which the
expenses of the war the king may enter into must be paid. The possession,
therefore, of these two rights by the king, is equivalent to the tenure of
absolute power." The possibility of the supplies being refused by a
refractory House of Commons, seems either not to have occurred to the khan,
or to have escaped his recollection at the moment of his penning this
sentence; and though he subsequently alludes to the responsibility of
ministers, he never seems to have comprehended the nature and extent of
the control exercised by parliament over the finances of the nation, so
fully as the Persian princes, who tell us, in their quaint phraseology,
that "if the expenses that were made should be agreeable to the Commons,
well and good--if not, the vizirs must stand the consequences; and every
person who has given ten _tomâns_ of the revenue, has a right to rise up
in the House of Commons, and seize the vizir of the treasury by the collar,
saying, 'What have you done with my money?'"--a mode of _putting to the
question_ which, if now and then practically adopted by some hard-fisted