d. There was a time when the crown claimed and exercised the
right to suspend, or to dispense with, laws which had been duly enacted
and put in operation. But this practice was forbidden definitely (p. 056)
in the Bill of Rights, and no sovereign since the last Stuart has
sought to revive the prerogative. Still another aspect of the ancient
participation by the king in the legislative function was the
influencing of the composition of the House of Commons through the
right to confer upon boroughs the privilege of electing members. This
right, never expressly withdrawn, is regarded now as having been
forfeited by disuse. Finally, the power to withhold assent from a
measure passed in Parliament has not been exercised since the days of
Queen Anne,[72] and while legally it still exists, it is conceded for
all practical purposes to have been extinguished.

[Footnote 72: In 1707, when the Queen refused her
assent to a bill for settling the militia in
Scotland.]

*57. Principles Governing the Actual Exercise of Powers.*--After full
allowances have been made, the powers of the British crown to-day
comprise a sum total of striking magnitude. "All told," says Lowell,
"the executive authority of the crown is, in the eye of the law, very
wide, far wider than that of the chief magistrate in many countries,
and well-nigh as extensive as that now possessed by the monarch in any
government not an absolute despotism; and although the crown has no
inherent legislative power except in conjunction with Parliament, it
has been given by statute very large powers of subordinate
legislation.... Since the accession of the House of Hanover the new
powers conferred upon the crown by statute have probably more than
made up for the loss to the prerogative of powers which have either
been restricted by the same process or become obsolete by disuse. By
far the greater part of the prerogative, as it existed at that time,
has remained legally vested in the crown, and can be exercised
to-day."[73]

[Footnote 73: Government of England, I., 23, 26.]

The next fundamental thing to be observed is that the extended powers
here referred to are exercised, not by the king in person, but by
ministers with whose choosing the sovereign has but little to do and
over whose acts he has only an incidental and extra-legal control.
Underlying the entire constitutional order are two princip