acted that in the case of the metropolis members should be elected to represent certain specified divisions, and that the novel practice of cumulative voting should be employed, that is to say, each voter should have as many votes as there were members to be elected in his division, and might give them all to one candidate or distribute them among the candidates as he should think fit. The Education Department extended cumulative voting to the election of borough school boards, and while in these it prescribed the use of signed voting papers, it introduced into the elections for the London School Board, except in the city of London, the additional novelty of secret voting. The electors were to be in boroughs the burgesses, in the city of London the persons entitled to elect the Common Council, and elsewhere in the metropolis the body of ratepayers. The School Boards for London and for many of the larger towns were elected at the close of 1870. The boards are to erect and maintain sufficient schools; they may accept the transfer (if made to them by the managers) of schools hitherto supported voluntarily, and may pay the fees of children of indigent parents at voluntarily supported schools.2 They may also make bye-laws rendering it compulsory on parents to send their children between 5 and 13 years of age to school, unless prevented by good cause. Their expenses are defrayed by the school fees, and the share of the Parliamentary grant which their schools receive; and the deficiency is made up out of the local rates, upon the security of which the board may borrow money for the erection of school buildings.

2 St. 18 & 19 Vict. c. 34. (Denison's Act) had already authorised guardians to assist persons receiving out-door relief in the education of their children. But this Act had practically remained a dead letter.

Where a school board neglects its duty the Education Department may supersede it by temporarily themselves appointing a new board, or may at once dissolve the board, and direct a new election.

The Act of 1870 provided that the Parliamentary grant should be given in aid of voluntary and board schools alike, but should in no case exceed the amount of the income of the school derived from voluntary contributions, school fees, or other sources. It required that no denominational religious teaching should be given in board schools, and that in them, as well as in other schools receiving the Parliamentary grant, religious observances and instructions should be confined to the beginning or end of school, and no child should be required to attend any religious observance or instruction objected to by the parents; and it at the same time discontinued the examination in religious subjects by the Government Inspectors which had been previously held.

By an Act of 1873, amending the Act of 1870, the granting of out-door relief to poor persons is made conditional upon their sending their children to school; and guardians are required to furnish them with the means of doing so. By the same Act, the method of secret voting, prescribed by the Ballot Act of 1872 (see p. 175), is extended to the elections of all school boards.

PART II.

Constituents of the Central Authority.

CHAPTER IV.

THE KING.

1. Origin of Royalty.-Although the kingly office was not at the time unknown among the Teutonic tribes on the Continent, the various bands of Angles, Jutes, and Saxons appear to have settled in this country under the leadership of a heretoga as chief military commander, and an ealdorman as highest civil magistrate; the same individual in many cases holding both offices. Very soon, however, owing perhaps to the increase of dignity and power which would accrue to the leader from the very act of conquest, we find the heads of the principal tribes assuming the title of king. As the name seems to imply,' the individual holding this position was from the first looked upon as the representative of the whole nation,

1 "Cyning, by contraction king, is probably closely connected with the word cyn or kin. The king is representative of the race [or kin], the embodiment of it in its national being; the child of his people, and not their father." Freeman's "Norman Conquest," i. 82. Others, however, like Carlyle (see "Heroes and Hero-Worship," Lects. i., vi.), connect the word, the German form of which is könig, with can" (Germ. können), and understand it to mean the canning or able man.

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and the process of his elevation to the dignity, and his duties and powers when holding it, were in accordance with this idea.

In Teutonic communities the possession of the highest office of the State in the first instance depended, as did that of property in land, on the will of the community at large, who assigned the office to a particular individual for his life, with the power of revoking the gift at any time for misconduct. But the idea of something more than this seems to have been very early attached to the title and dignity of king.2 The possession of this office was looked upon as conferring a right which was more than merely personal, and did not altogether cease with death; but was transmissible to the king's descendants or nearest of kin, and subsequently even became liable to be disposed of by his testament. The feeling of reverence with which the office was regarded, is shown by the prevalent tradition that the royal family was descended, as among the early Greeks, from the national gods. The same feeling was expressed and perpetuated by the solemnities with which the ceremony of coronation was attended, and particularly the use, in Christian times, of the anointing oil.

Pre-Norman Kings. From the first settlement of the Angles and Saxons in Britain, down to the accession of William the Conqueror, a combination of the elective and hereditary principles regulated the succession to the throne of the most powerful kingdom in the country. The extent to which the hereditary principle grew, is seen from the fact that persons of royal blood received as such the special title of Etheling. And we, in fact, find that from the establishment of the kingdom of Wessex by

2 Tac. Germ. c. 7. Reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt.

Cerdic in 519, until within fifty years of the Norman conquest, the West Saxon crown first, and then the imperial English crown, was always worn by his descendants. After the intrusion of three monarchs of the Danish royal family, it reverted once more to his race, to be transferred for one brief year to a stranger in blood, and then to pass to a successful invader. But during all this time that crown was never placed on the head of any one, whether a descendant of Cerdic, or, like Harold, a claimant under the will of the preceding king, or a Danish or Norman conqueror, unless his accession had been previously sanctioned by the Witenagemot, or general council of the nation. The granting or withholding of this sanction was a vital matter; not a foregone conclusion, as was the second election by the clergy and people, who, during the coronation ceremony, responded by affirmative acclamations to the demand whether they would accept the proposed individual as their king. The exercise of the power of election by the Witenagemot enabled a minority to be averted by the choice of a brother of the deceased king instead of his infant child. It was thus that the great Elfred obtained the throne. In consequence of this, we find only two instances-and those immediately following each other, and owing to the same circumstances-of minors being raised to the English throne before the Conquest. Upon the death of Eadgar, in 975, leaving two sons, aged thirteen and seven years respectively, there was no near male kinsman of full age who could be chosen to succeed, nor any man of commanding pre-eminence in the nation in whose favour the hereditary principle could be

3 In the person of Henry II., through his mother Matilda, the crown was restored to a descendant of Cerdic in the female line, and has ever since been worn by individuals having the blood of the West Saxon king in their veins. This, however, is obviously accidental, and is not due to the hereditary principle in the succession.