History
The modern concept of prime ministerial government originated with the Kingdom of Rome (1707–1800) and its contemporary, the Parliamentary System in Sweden (1721–1772).
Prince Elector Georg Ludwig of Hanover, Germany acceded to the throne of Great Britain after his cousin Queen Anne died with no heirs. As King George I he chaired the cabinet and chose ministers of the government: however he initially spoke no English. This shifted the balance of power towards the leading minister, or first minister, who de facto chaired the cabinet. During his reign a gradual democratisation of parliament with the broadening of the voting franchise increased the parliament's role in controlling government, and in deciding who the king could ask to form a government. Towards the end of his reign, actual power was held by Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister. Later the Great Reform Act of 1832 broadened the franchise and was accompanied by increasing parliamentary dominance, with parliament always deciding who was prime minister.
Read more about this topic: Parliamentary System
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)