309

OUCHING the effect of the death of the Sovereign

Τους

upon the meeting and session of Parliament, and the avoidance of offices held under the Crown, the following comments are submitted. The Sovereign being regarded as the head of Parliament, that failing, says Blackstone, immediately upon the death of the reigning Sovereign, dissolution happened, and the whole body was held to be extinct. But the inconvenience of calling a new Parliament immediately after that event and the dangers of having no Parliament in being in certain contingencies, led to the passing of the Succession to the Crown Act, 1707,1 by which it was enacted that the Parliament in being should continue for six months after the demise of the Crown, and that if at the death of Her Majesty, her heirs or successors, there should be a Parliament in being, but adjourned or prorogued, "such Parliament shall immediately after such demise meet, convene and sit, and shall act notwithstanding such death or demise." Additional provisions dealing with the case of such demise occurring coincidently with the time fixed for the meeting or the assembling of a new Parliament are contained in the Meeting of Parliament Act, 1797;2 while by Stat. 30 & 31 Vict. c. 102, s. 51, notwithstanding anything in the Stat. 6, Ann. c. 41, "the Parliament in being at any future demise of the Crown shall not be determined or dissolved by such demise, but shall continue so long as it would have been continued but for such demise, unless sooner prorogued or dissolved by the Crown."

With regard to the holders of office and commissions under the Crown the Succession to the Crown Act, 1707, provides by section 8 that the Privy Council shall on the 2 € 37 Geo. III., c. 127.

16 Ann. c. 41.

death or demise of Her Majesty not be dissolved, but shall continue to act for six months unless determined by the next successor, nor shall the offices of Lord Chancellor, High Treasurer, President of the Council, Privy Seal, High Admiral, or any of the great offices of the Queen's household, nor any office, place, or employment civil or military within the British Islands or any of Her Majesty's plantations become void by such demise, but the holders of any such offices shall continue to hold the same for six months (eighteen months in the Colonies) after such death or demise unless sooner removed.

In this connection reference may be made to the Demise of the Crown Bill, introduced by the Attorney-General in the present Parliament and which passed the second reading on April 2nd. By this measure, which is retrospective in its operation, it is proposed to render reappointment to any office, civil or military, under the Crown, entirely unnecessary, so that the holders of such offices will continue in them indefinitely as if the demise of the Crown had not occurred, instead of for the limited periods mentioned above. Under section 6 of the same Succession to the Crown Act, 1707, any person already chosen a member of Parliament (not being an officer in the army or navy accepting a commission), who accepts any office of profit from the Crown, is made to vacate his seat thereby. If the demise of the Crown Bill becomes law, and the paid ministers of the Crown, being under no necessity of reappointment to their offices after the demise of the Crown, are not reappointed, there will be no room for the contention recently put forward that by reappointment they have ceased to be members of the House of Commons; nor would there appear to be any necessity for a provision in the recently introduced measure similar to that in the House of Commons (Disqualifications) Act, 1813,2 with 2 54 Geo. 3, c. 16.

11 Will. IV. c. 4. s. 2.

reference to the continuance in or reacceptance of office under successive Lords Lieutenant of Ireland that the seats of such ministers should not be vacated.

An earlier Act1 provides against the determination by "Her Majesty's demise (whom God long preserve) or any of her heirs or successors" of various commissions and writs such as the commission of assize, commission of the peace, or writs of habeas corpus, attachment, etc.

The commissions of the Judges are continued on the demise of the Crown by Stat. 1 Geo. III., c. 23, and although the office of a Justice of the Peace is determinable by the demise of the Crown, under the Justice's Qualification Act, 1760, if the Justice is put in the commission by the succeeding sovereign, he is not obliged to sue out a new dedimus or to swear his qualification afresh.

The question as to the necessity for re-election in the case of Members of Parliament for Ireland, Scotland, and the Universities, upon the demise of the Crown appears to have arisen in this way. By the Reform and Redistribution Act of 1867, s. 51, it is provided that the Parliament in being at any future demise of the Crown shall not be determined or dissolved by such demise, but shall continue so long as it would have continued but for such demise, unless it shall be sooner prorogued or dissolved by the Crown, notwithstanding anything in the Succession to the Crown Act, 1707, contained. But section 2 of the 1867 Act excludes Scotland, Ireland, and the Universities from its operation. If this section 2 has the effect of preventing section 52 being operative in the case of Scotch, Irish and University Members then apparently they continue members under the Act of 1707 for six months after the Crown's demise unless Parliament is sooner prorogued or dissolved. By the Union with Ireland Act, 1800,2 Article 3:"The said United Kingdom be represented in one and the 2 39 & 40 Geo. III., c. 67.

1 I. Ann. c. 2.

same parliament, to be styled the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." Again by the Union with Scotland Act, 1706,1 the United Kingdom is to be represented by one parliament. Hence it was argued that there is but one Imperial Parliament for the United Kingdom although its Members represent different portions of that Kingdom, and that is "the Parliament" referred to in, and governed as to its continuance on the demise of the Crown by section 51 of the Act of 1867 referred to above. Furthermore it was contended by those who assert no election to have been necessitated by the demise of the Crown that there cannot be a dissolution of "the Parliament" partial only as to Scotland or Ireland. W. PERCY PAIN.

IT

VII.-DEBT-SLAVERY IN THE MALAY

PENINSULA.

T is curious to know that, within the last fifteen or twenty years, there has been abolished, by British effort, a system which in many respects closely resembles the nexal debtorship of the antique Roman Law. The system is variously styled debt-slavery, slave-debtorship, bond-debtorship, and bondage; but it will be referred to in the following pages by the first of these names simply; except in quotation. The locale of the practice was the socalled Protected States of the Malay Peninsula. Without finding it necessary to prove the binomial theorem at the outset of our investigations, it will nevertheless be of advantage to point out clearly" where these places are." Let us look for a moment at the map of Malaya.

The Malay Peninsula has at its southern tip the island of Singapore. Near its northern end-at the west sideis the island of Pinang. Both are British territory.

16 Ann, c. II.

Between them, on the same west coast, are spots of British ground-Malacca, the Dindings, Province Wellesley. But these are comparatively small-the greater extent of the western side of the peninsula is occupied by Johor (which covers the whole southern extremity, east and west), Sungei Ujong (with the inland confederacy of Negri Sembilan), Selangor, Pêrak', and Kêdah. The east side (much the less known) contains, besides Johor, the comparatively extensive state of Pahang, with Kelantan (mainly inland) and Tringgalu (seaboard), to the north of it. Of these Pêrak Selângor, the Negri Sembilan (with S. Ujong) Johor and Pahang are so-called "Protected States." All are small countries, especially if the Malay population is alone considered. Pêrak may have as many people as Cumberland, but most are Chinese. Chinese to the number of 100,000 or thereabouts appear among the 160,000 inhabitants of Selangor, and are equally in evidence in Sungei Ujong, if not in the other States of the Negri Sembilan. Pahang's 70,000 or so about as many as Westmoreland's-are alone tolerably free from such admixture, but doubtless, as the country becomes more settled, this feature will rapidly change. Chinese tin-miners pour into the Peninsula literally by the hundred-thousand-or did, until the low price of tin, within the last two or three years, checked the stream; and though they leave in almost as large crowds, the resulting increment has been sufficient to make the Chinese the predominant population, and not the Malay.

The disorder consequent on this irruption of unsettled foreigners into Malay states totally unfitted to deal with. them, was the occasion of British interference with the latter. But it is impossible to avoid the suspicion, reading between the lines of official despatches, that the motive of our action was to open up new fields to British enterprisein less impressive language, to push British trade.

1 The k is silent: