Back to Ming Dynasty with Industrial Revolution System

Chapter 1582 Constitutional Monarchy
"The first is to adjust the upper and lower houses. The upper house is still composed of nobles and is not elected. The upper house has the highest judicial power. The members of the lower house need to be elected by the civilians in each constituency, and the nobles are not allowed to run for members of the lower house. The term of office of members of the lower house is 5 years , All re-elections will be re-elected at the end of the term. Each constituency will be adjusted, giving emerging towns more seats in the House of Commons, and banning the seats of declining towns and cities.”

"The House of Commons still has legislative power, and the King has a special veto power over bills passed by the House of Commons. This special veto power is limited to bills passed by Parliament that are unfavorable to the Crown. I can order the repeal of King Charles's series of tax orders, respect Congress has the special power to decide on taxation. In exchange, Congress should provide the royal family with a fixed annual income and funds sufficient to maintain the Royal Army and Navy. This fee should not be less than 50% of all taxes, and the remaining taxes can be paid by Congress Designate its use. During times of war and other special periods, the royal family enjoys special allocations to lead the army to safeguard the interests of the people of the kingdom."

"Abolish institutions such as the Privy Council and form a cabinet. The prime minister and members of the cabinet are appointed by the king and are responsible to the king. In the future, the cabinet will be responsible for administrative matters. They will implement the resolutions of the king and the parliament and be responsible for managing the daily affairs of the kingdom. As the cabinet Supervisors can impeach officials who do not perform their duties, and the king will remove them as appropriate. Finally, Congress has the right to propose a no-confidence motion against the cabinet. If the no-confidence motion is passed by the House of Commons with more than two-thirds of the votes, The cabinet must resign, or the king dissolves the House of Commons and calls a snap election."

Queen Sophia returned to England. While the parliament was still in session, she announced the reform plan formulated by the Advisory Committee in front of hundreds of members of the upper and lower houses, re-defining the relationship between the king and the parliament, and abolishing the Organizations such as the Privy Council of the kingship established a cabinet appointed by the king and supervised by the parliament to manage the kingdom.

The House of Lords and the House of Commons were shocked by the Queen's drastic reforms. They whispered to each other, and the parliament was as noisy as the vegetable market for a while.

Sophia knew that announcing such a change would cause uproar among MPs, and too many people's interests were involved.

Not to mention anything else, even the adjustment of constituencies will affect the interests of the House of Commons.

There is also the establishment of a cabinet to replace institutions such as the Privy Council and become an administrative agency in the de facto sense. Then it will form a situation where the cabinet has executive power, the legislative power of the House of Commons, and the judicial power of the House of Lords.The members of the cabinet and the prime minister are appointed by the king, so the king has executive power.

If this reform can be successful, this power will be fully established in the form of law!
"Will the Royal Army and the Royal Navy also be in the hands of the King?"

Amid the uproar, a member of the House of Commons raised an important question.

At this time, almost everyone looked at Queen Sophia.

The control of the army is very important. One of the important reasons why the parliament was unwilling to allow Charles I to establish a standing army was that it was afraid that the king would use the army against his own people.

"The officers of the Royal Army and the Royal Navy are appointed by the king, but the king needs the joint permission of the upper house and the lower house of parliament to launch a war. In addition to dissolving the parliament in accordance with normal procedures, the king may not instruct the royal army and the royal navy to arrest members or any free citizens without authorization. MPs enjoy freedom of speech," Sofia said.

Her decision sent parliament into another uproar, this time the queen intends to negotiate with parliament to reach a compromise between the two parties.

Compared with Charles I, this is simply unimaginable!

Although Queen Sophia's reform measures are still biased towards the royal family, they have made great progress compared with the previous kings, and intend to completely draw the boundaries of power between the king and the parliament.

Faced with this huge concession, the members of parliament began to discuss the feasibility of the measures after being shocked. They treated the Queen's willingness to negotiate with them on the division of power very seriously.

This is the first time that the new Queen took the initiative to propose changes to the Parliament after she came to the throne. She can completely follow the general policies of James I or Charles I, but Sophia chose to change.

In the city of London and even in various counties of England, rumors began to circulate that the Queen presided over the reform, which caused a huge sensation.

A group that is closely concerned about Queen Sophia's reforms is the ambassadors sent by various continental European kingdoms in the city of London.

They learned that the queen of the United Kingdom was going to reform the law herself, and they kept a close eye on the matter, and they were still trying to get information about the reform from the parliament.

This is a big event. There are only two results of the change. One result is the success of the change and it becomes a first-class power. The other result is the failure of the change and the kingdom falls into chaos or war or invasion by foreign enemies.

No kingdom is willing to take the initiative to make changes without major events happening, but England, which has just experienced the civil war, is obviously exposed to this opportunity, and Sophia is confident.

Even if the reform fails, she still has a way out.

"We must report the situation here to the Archbishop and His Majesty the King in detail. In the worst case, England will become an oriental centralized kingdom like the Ottoman Empire and actively expand to the mainland." Several French ambassadors were in their ambassador's house Talk about Queen Sofia's transformation.They were afraid that the queen who was studying in the east would establish a new kingdom according to the oriental model, which would pose a threat to France's upcoming European hegemony.

The English Parliament knows that this matter is of great importance, and they do not disclose this matter to the outside world easily, but are conducting intense negotiations.

For example, readjust the number of seats in the House of Commons in each constituency. For the constituency where the royalists are located, they can undoubtedly allocate more votes. seats.Just adjusting the constituency seats is a huge project.

The parliament almost perfected the reform measures proposed by the queen one by one in the quarrel until most people were satisfied.Of course, these measures cannot meet everyone's expectations, and in fact they cannot satisfy everyone. They can only follow the principle of the majority in the parliament.

The division of power between the parliament and the king is only the first step of change. Queen Sophia has proposed new goals-establishing the Bank of England to provide financial services to the public and the kingdom, changing the teaching content of Oxford and Cambridge universities, and revitalizing the navy. To replace the Netherlands in the position of sea coachman in Europe.

(End of this chapter)