The British Parliament Between King and People

This chapter begins the treatment of the English-speaking world, involving the structure of Parliament, the British constitution, and the American Revolution. Of all the constituted bodies of Europe, largely aristocratic in composition, which in some countries came into conflict with kings in the decade before 1775, the most famous and the most powerful was the Parliament of Great Britain, whose misfortune it was to be challenged from both sides at once. Or, at least, the most ardent devotees of the Houses of Parliament found Parliamentary independence being undermined by the King, in the person of George III, while at the same time a growing number of dissatisfied persons, in America, in Ireland, and in England itself, expressed increasing doubts on the independence of Parliament, invoking a higher authority which they called the People.