Abstract:
In 1886, Lord Hartington, in a charge against Gladstone's Home Rule proposals, which had not been made an issue at the preceding general election, took up the cudgels for the mandate and said,
But although no principle of a mandate may exist (in our constitution), there are certain limits which Parliament is morally bound to observe, and beyond which, Parliament has, morally, not the right to go in its relations with the constituents. The constituencies of Great Britain are the source of the power at all events of this branch of Parliament, and I maintain that, in the absence of an emergency that could not be foreseen, the House of Commons has no right to initiate legislation, especially immediately upon its first meeting, or which the constituencies were not informed, and of which the constituencies might have been informed, and of which, if they had been informed, there is, at all events, the greatest doubt as to what their decision might be Quoted in C.S. Emden, The People and the Constitution (1933), pp. 222-3 from 304 Parl. Deb. 3.s., 1241-4
Lord Hartington's argument has remained substantially unchanged for over three centuries. We find the same argument had been propounded at the time of the Union between England and Ireland, against Pitt, and still further back, in 1716, at the time of the Septennial Bill debates. It is still sounded to this day.
Naturally enough the doctrine has been maintained not only in the United Kingdom but also here in New Zealand. It had supporters in our House of Representatives at least twelve years before Lord Hartington enunciated the principle.
