seven-and-twenty years more elapsed before the final volumes came out in 1892. Nowhere can we find a better illustration of the French critic's definition of a great life-a thought conceived in youth, and realized in later years. After the Pioneers the sequence is The Jesuits in North America, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, The Old Régime in Canada, Frontenac and New France and Louis XIV., Montcalm and Wolfe, A Half Century of Conflict. As one obstacle after another was surmounted, as one grand division of the work after another became an accomplished fact, the effect upon Parkman's condition seems to have been bracing, and he acquired fresh impetus as he approached the goal. There can be little doubt that his physical condition was much improved by his habit of cultivating plants in garden and conservatory. He was a horticulturist of profound attainments, and himself originated several new varieties of flowers. His work in this department made him an enthusiastic adherent of the views of Darwin. He was professor of horticulture in the agricultural school of Harvard in 1871-1872, and published a few books on the subject of gardening. He died at Jamaica Plain, near Boston, on the 8th of November 1893.

The significance of Parkman's work consists partly in the success with which he has depicted the North-American Indians, those belated children of the Stone Age, who have been so persistently misunderstood alike by romancers, such as Cooper, and by detractors like Dr Palfrey. Parkman was the first great literary author who really understood the Indian's character and motives. Against this savage background of the forest Parkman shows the rise, progress and dramatic termination of the colossal struggle between France and Great Britain for colonial empire. With true philosophic insight he shows that France failed in the struggle not because of any inferiority in the ability and character of the men to whom the work was entrusted, but chiefly by reason of her despotic and protective régime. There is no more eloquent commentary upon the wholesome results of British self-government than is to be found in Parkman's book. But while the author deals with history philosophically, he does not, like Buckle, hurl at the reader's head huge generalizations, or, like Carlyle, preach him into somnolence. With all its manifold instructiveness, his book is a narrative as entertaining as those of Macaulay or Froude. In judicial impartiality Parkman may be compared with Gardiner, and for accuracy of learning with Stubbs.

There is a good Life by G. H. Farnham (Boston, 1900). (J. Fr.) PARLA KIMEDI, a town of British India, in Ganjam district of Madras. Pop. (1901), 17,336. It is the residence of a raja, who claims descent from the ancient kings of Orissa. His estate covers an area of 614 sq. m., and pays a revenue of £7000 out of an estimated income of £26,000. He maintains a college, and has constructed a light railway (25 m.) to the station of Naupada on the East Coast railway. There is a trade in rice, and mats and other articles are woven of reeds.

PARLEMENT (see PARLIAMENT), in O. Fr. the name given to any meeting for discussion or debate (parler, to speak), a sense in which it was still used by Joinville, but from the latter half of the 13th century employed in France in a special sense to designate the sessions of the royal court (curia regis). Finally, when the Parlement of Paris had become a permanent court of justice, having the supreme authority in cases brought before it, and especially in appeals against the sentences of the baillis and seneschals, it retained this name, which was also given to the other supreme courts of the same nature which were created after its model in the provinces.

The early Capetians had a custom, based upon ancient precedents, of summoning periodically to their court their principal vassals and the prelates of their kingdom. These gatherings took place on the occasion of one of the great festivals of the year, in the town in which the king was then in residence. Here they deliberated upon political matters and the vassals and prelates gave the king their advice. But the monarch also gave judgment here in those cases which were brought before him. These were few in number during the early days of the

Capetian dynasty; for though the king always maintained the principle that he was judge, and even that his competence in this respect was general and unlimited, this competence was at the same time undefined and it was not compulsory to submit cases to the king. At this period, too, appeals, strictly so called, did not exist. Nevertheless when a suit was brought before the king he judged it with the assistance of his prelates and vassals assembled around him, who formed his council. This was the curia regis. But in law the king was sole judge, the vassals and prelates being only advisers. During the 12th and at the beginning of the 13th centuries the curia regis continued to discharge these functions, except that its importance and actual competence continued to increase, and that we frequently find in it, in addition to the vassals and prelates who formed the council, consiliarii, who are evidently men whom the king had in his entourage, as his ordinary and professional councillors. Under the reign of St Louis (which was also the period at which the name parlement began to be applied to these judicial sessions) the aspect of affairs changed. The judicial competence of the Parlement developed and became more clearly defined; the system of appeals came into existence, and appeals against the judgments of the baillis and seneschals were brought before it; cases concerning the royal towns, the bonnes villes, were also decided by it. Again, in the old registers of the Parlement at this period, the first Olim books, we see the names of the same councillors recurring from session to session. This suggests that a sufficient number of councillors was assured beforehand, and a list drawn up for each session; the vassals and prelates still figuring as a complementary body at the council.

Next came the series of ordinances regulating the tenure of the Parlement, those of 1278, 1291, 1296 and 1308, and the institution was regularized. Not only were the persons who were to constitute each Parlement named in advance, but those who were not placed on this list, even though vassals or prelates, were excluded from judging cases. The royal baillis had to attend the Parlement, in order to answer for their judgments, and at an early date was fixed the order of the different bailliages, in which the cases coming from them were heard. The baillis, when not interested in the case, formed part of the council, but were afterwards excluded from it. Before the middle of the 14th century the personnel of the Parlement, both presidents and councillors, became fixed de facto if not de jure. Every year a list was drawn up of those who were to hold the session, and although this list was annual, it contains the same names year after year; they are as yet, however, only annual commissaries (commissaires). In 1344 they became officials (officiers) fixed but not yet irremovable. At the same time the Parlement had become permanent; the number of the sessions had diminished, but their length had increased. In the course of the 14th century it became the rule for the Parlement to sit from Martinmas (Nov. 11) till the end of May; later the session was prolonged till the middle of August, the rest of the year forming the vacation. The Parlement had also become fixed at Paris, and, by a development which goes back to fairly early times, the presidents and councillors, instead of being merely the king's advisers, had acquired certain powers, though these were conferred by the monarch; they were, in fact, true magistrates. The king held his court in person less and less often, and it pronounced its decrees in his absence; we even find him pleading his cause before it as plaintiff or defendant. In the 14th century, however, we still find the Parlement referring delicate affairs to the king; but in the 15th century it had acquired a jurisdiction independent in principle. As to its composition, it continued to preserve one notable feature which recalled its origin. It had originally been an assembly of lay vassals and prelates; when its composition became fixed and consisted of councillormagistrates, a certain number of these offices were necessarily occupied by laymen, and others by ecclesiastics, the conseillers lais and the conseillers clercs.

The Parlement was at the same time the court of peers (cour des pairs). This had as its origin the old principle according

to which every vassal had the right to be tried by his peers, i.e. by the vassals holding fiefs from the same lord, who sat in judgment with that lord as their president. This, it is well known, resulted in the formation of the ancient college of the peers of France, which consisted of six laymen and six ecclesiastics. But although in strict logic the feudal causes concerning them should have been judged by them alone, they could not maintain this right in the curia regis; the other persons sitting in it could also take part in judging causes which concerned the peers. Finally the peers of France, the number of whom was increased in course of time by fresh royal creations of peerages, became ex officio members of the Parlement; they were the hereditary councillors, taking the oath as official magistrates, and, if they wished, sitting and having a deliberative function in the Parlement. In suits brought against them personally or involving the rights of their peerage they had the right of being judged by the Parlement, the other peers being present, or having been duly summoned.

A new

While maintaining its unity, the Parlement had been subdivided into several chambres or sections. In the first place there was the Grand Chambre, which represented the primitive Parlement. To it was reserved the judgment in certain important cases, and in it a peculiar procedure was followed, known as oral, though it admitted certain written documents. Even after the offices of the Parlement had become legally saleable the councillors could only pass from the other chambers into the Grand Chambre by order of seniority. The Chambres des enquêtes and des requêles originated at the time when it became customary to draw up lists for each session of the Parlement. The enquêteurs or auditeurs of the Parlement had at first been an auxiliary staff of clerks to whom were entrusted the inquests ordered by the Parlement. But later, when the institution of the appeal was fully developed, and the procedure before the various jurisdictions became a highly technical matter, above all when it admitted written evidence, the documents connected with other inquests also came before the Parlement. form of appeal grew up side by side with the older form, which had been mainly an oral procedure, namely the appeal by writing (appel par écrit). In order to judge these new appeals the Parlement had above all to study written documents, the inquests which had been made and written down under the jurisdiction of the court of first instance. The duty of the enquêteurs was to make an abstract of the written documents and report on them. Later the reporters (rapporteurs) were admitted to judge these questions together with a certain number of members of the Parlement, and from 1316 onwards these two kinds of member formed together a chembre des enquêtes. As yet, no doubt, the rapporteur only gave his opinion on the case which he had prepared, but after 1336 all those who formed part of the chamber were put on the same footing, taking it in turn to report and giving judgment as a whole. For a long time, however, the Grand Chambre received all cases, then sent them to the Chambre des enquêtes with directions; before it too were argued questions arising out of the inquiry made by the Chambre des enquêtes, to the decisions of which it gave effect and which it had the power to revise. But one by one it lost all these rights, and in the 16th century they are no longer heard of. Several Chambres des enquêtes were created after the first one, and it was they who had the greater part of the work.

The Chambre des requêtes was of an entirely different nature, At the beginning of the 14th century a certain number of those who were to hold the session of the Parlement were set apart to receive and judge the petitions (requêtes) on judicial questions which had been presented to the king and not yet dealt with. This eventually led to the formation of a chamber, in the strict sense of the word, the Requêtes du palais. But this became purely a jurisdiction for privileged persons; before it (or before the Requêtes de l'hôtel, as the case might be) were brought the civil suits of those who enjoyed the right of Committimus. The Chambre des requêtes had not supreme jurisdiction, but appeals from its decisions could be made to the Parlement

proper.

The Parlement had also a criminal chamber, that of La Tournelle, which was not legally created until the 16th century, but was active long before then. It had no definite membership, but the conseillers lais served in it in turn.

Originally there was only one Parlement, that of Paris, as was indeed logical, considering that the Parlement was simply a continuation of the curia regis, which, like the king, could only be one. But the exigencies of the administration of justice led to the successive creation of a certain number of provincial parlements. Their creation, moreover, was generally dictated by political circumstances, after the incorporation of a province in the domain of the Crown. Sometimes it was a question of a province which, before its annexation, possessed a superior and sovereign jurisdiction of its own, and to which it was desired to preserve this advantage. Or else it might be a province forming part of feudal France, which before the annexation had had a superior jurisdiction from which the Crown had endea voured to institute an appeal to the Parlement of Paris, but for which after the annexation it was no longer necessary to maintain this appeal, so that the province might now be given a supreme court, a parlement. Sometimes an intermediate régime was set up between the annexation of the province and the creation of its provincial parlement, under which delegates from the Parlement of Paris went and held assizes there. Thus were created successively the parlements of Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen, Aix, Rennes, Pau, Metz, Douai, Besançon and Nancy. From 1762 to 1771 there was even a parlement for the principality of Dombes. The provincial parlements reproduced in a smaller scale the organization of that of Paris; but they did not combine the functions of a court of peers. They each claimed to possess equal powers within their own province. There were also great judicial bodies exercising the same functions as the parlements, though without bearing the name, such as the Conseil souverain of Alsace at Colmar, the Conseil supérieur of Roussillon at Perpignan; the provincial council of Artois had not the supreme jurisdiction in all respects.

The parlements, besides their judicial functions, also possessed political rights; they claimed a share in the higher policy of the realm, and the position of guardians of its fundamental laws. In general the laws did not come into effect within their province until they had been registered by the parlements. This was the method of promulgation admitted by the ancient law of France, but the parlements verified the laws before registering them, i.e. they examined them to see whether they were in conformity with the principles of law and justice, and with the interests of the king and his subjects; if they considered that this was not the case they refused their registration and addressed remon strances (remontrances) to the king. In acting thus they were merely conforming to the duty of counselling (devoir de consrid) which all the superior authorities had towards the king, and the text of the ordinances (ordonnances) had often invited them to do so. It was natural, however, that in the end the royal wi should seek to impose itself. In order to enforce the registra tion of edicts the king would send lettres de cachet, known as lettres de jussion, which were not, however, always obeyed. Or he could come in person to hold the parlement, and have the law registered in his presence in a lit de justice. This was explained in theory by the principle that if the king himself beld his court, it lost, by the fact of his presence, all the authority which he had delegated to it; for the moment the only authority existing in it was that of the king, just as in the ancient curis regis there was the principle that apparente rege cessat magis tratus. But, principally in the 18th century, the parlements maintained that only a voluntary registration, by the consent of the parlement, was valid.

The parlements had also a wide power of administration They could make regulations (pouvoir réglementaire) having the force of law within their province, upon all points t settled by law, when the matter with which they dealt fci within their judicial competence, and for this it was only neces sary that their interference in the matter was not forbidden by law. These were what were called arrête de règicm.

See La Roche-Flavin, Treize livres des parlements de France (1617); Felix Aubert, Histoire du parlement de Paris, des origines à François I. (2 vols., 1894); Ch. V. Langlois, Textes relatifs à l'histoire du parlement depuis les origines jusqu'en 1314 (1888); Guilhiermoz, Enquêtes et procès (1892); Glasson, Le Parlement de Paris, son rôle politique depuis le règne de Charles VII. jusqu'à la révolution (2 vols., 1901). (J. P. E.) PARLIAMENT (Anglo-Lat. parliamentum, Fr. parlement, from parler, to speak), the name given to the supreme legislature of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. (For the old French parlement, see PARLEMENT; and for analogous foreign assemblies see the articles on their respective countries.) The word is found in English from the 13th century, first for a debate, then for a formal conference, and for the great councils of the Plantagenet kings; and the modern sense has come to be applied retrospectively. William the Conqueror is said in the Chronicle to have had "very deep speech with his Witan"; this "deep speech" (in Latin colloquium, in French parlement) was the distinguishing feature of a meeting between king and people, and thus gave its name to the national assembly itself. The Statute of Westminster (1275) first uses "parlement" of the great council in England.

The British Parliament consists of the King (or Queen regnant), the Lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons'; and it meets in two houses, the House of Lords (the Upper or Second chamber) and the House of Commons.

The Crown, pre-eminent in rank and dignity, is the legal source of parliamentary authority. The sovereign virtually appoints the lords spiritual, and all the peerages of the lords temporal have been created by the Crown. The king summons parliament to meet, and prescribes the time and place of its meeting, prorogues and dissolves it, and commands the issue of writs for the clection of members of the House of Commons. By several statutes, beginning with the 4 Edward III. c. 14, the annual meeting of parliament had been ordained; but these statutes, continually disregarded, were virtually repealed in the reigns of Charles II. and William and Mary (16 Ch. II. 31; 6 & 7 Will. & Mary, 32). The present statute law merely exacts the meeting of parliament once in three years; but the annual voting of supplies has long since superseded obsolete statutes. When parliament is assembled it cannot proceed to business until the king has declared the causes of summons, in person or by commission; and though the veto of the Crown on legislation has long been obsolete, bills passed by the two houses only become law on receiving the royal assent.

The House of Lords is distinguished by peculiar dignities, privileges and jurisdictions. Peers individually enjoy the rank and precedence of their several dignities, and are hereditary councillors of the Crown. Collectively with the lords spiritual they form a permanent council of the Crown; and, when assembled in parliament, they form the highest court of judicature in the realm, and are (in constitutional theory at all events) a co-equal branch of the legislature, without whose consent no laws can be made (see below, House of Lords Question). Their judicature is of various kinds, viz. for the trial of peers; for determining claims of peerage and offices of honour, under references from the Crown; for the trial of controverted elections of Scotch and Irish peers; for the final determination of appeals from courts in England, Scotland and Ireland; and lastly, for the trial of impeachments.

The House of Commons also has its own peculiar privileges and jurisdictions. Above all, it has the paramount right of originating the imposition of all taxes, and the granting of supplies for the service of the state. It has also enjoyed, from early times, the right of determining all matters concerning the

Or rather, the representatives of the Commons (see REPRESENTATION); but the term has long been used for the deputies thembeives collectively.

Privileges of Parliament.-Both houses are in the enjoyment of certain privileges, designed to maintain their authority, independence and dignity. These privileges are founded mainly upon the and others abridged or abrogated by statute. law and custom of parliament, while some have been confirmed, The Lords rely entirely upon their inherent right, as having a place and voice in parliament "; but, by a custom dating from the 6th Henry VIII, the Commons lay claim, by humble petition to the Crown at the doubted rights and privileges.". commencement of every parliament, "to their ancient and unEach house has its separate rights and jurisdictions; but privileges properly so-called, being founded upon the law and custom of parliament, are common to both houses. Each house adjudges whether any breach of privilege has been committed, and punishes offenders by censure or commitment. This right of commitment is incontestably estab lished, and it extends to the protection of officers of the house, lawfully and properly executing its orders, who are also empowered to call in the assistance of the civil power. The causes of such commitments cannot be inquired into by courts of law, nor can prisoners be admitted to bail. Breaches of privilege may be summarized as disobedience to any orders or rules of the house, indignities offered to its character or proceedings, assaults, insults, or libels upon members, or interference with officers of the house in discharge of their duty, or tampering with witnesses. offences are dealt with as contempts, according to the circumstances of the respective cases, of which numerous precedents are to be found in the journals of both houses. The Lords may imprison for a fixed period, and impose fines; the Commons can only imprison generally, the commitment being concluded by the prorogation, and have long discontinued the imposition of fines.

Such

Freedom of speech has been one of the most cherished privileges of parliament from early times. Constantly asserted, and often violated, it was finally declared by the Bill of Rights" that the freedom of speech, and debates and proceedings in parliament, ought parliament." Such a privilege is essential to the independence of not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of parliament, and to the protection of members in discharge of their duties. But, while it protects members from molestation elsewhere, it leaves them open to censure or other punishment by the the rules of orderly debate. house itself, whenever they abuse their privilege and transgress

Freedom from arrest is a privilege of the highest antiquity. It was formerly of extended scope, but has been reduced, by later legislation, within very narrow limits. Formerly not only the persons of members but their goods were protected, and their privilege extended to their servants. At present members are themselves free from arrest, but otherwise they are liable to all the processes of the courts. If arrested, they will be immediately discharged, upon motion in the court whence the process issued. Peers and peeresses are, by the privilege of peerage, free from arrest at all times. Members of the House of Commons are free only for forty days after prorogation and forty days before the next appointed meeting: but prorogations are so arranged as to ensure a continuance of the privilege. Formerly, even suits against members were stayed, but this offensive privilege has been abolished by statute. Exemption from attending as witnesses upon subpoena, once an acknowledged privilege, is no longer insisted upon; but immunity from service upon juries is at once an ancient privilege and a statutory right. The privilege of freedom from arrest is limited to civil causes, and has not been suffered to exempt members from the operation of the criminal law, nor even from commitments for contempt by other courts. But, whenever the freedom of a member is so interfered with, the courts are required immediately to inform the house of the causes of his commitment. Witnesses, suitors, counsel and agents in attendance upon parliament are protected from arrest and molestation, and from the consequences of statements made by them, or other proceedings in the conduct of their cases.

As both houses, in enforcing their privileges, are obliged to commit offenders or otherwise interfere with the liberty of the subject, the exercise of these privileges has naturally been called in question before the courts. Each house is the sole judge of its own privileges, but the courts are bound to administer the law, and, where law and privilege have seemed to be at variance, a conflict of jurisdiction has arisen between parliament and the courts. Many interesting controversies have arisen upon such occasions; but of late years privilege has been carefully restrained within the proper limits of the law, and the courts have amply recognized the authority of parliament.