The ancient Allodial Right and the happy social system based upon it, Mr. Laing found jealously guarded by the yeomanry, 'who have not only the legislative power and the election of the Storthing' (or Parliament) 'almost entirely in their own hands, but also the whole civil business of the community.' He may, therefore, well say, without fear of contradiction, that 'the Norwegian people enjoy a greater share of liberty, have the framing and administering of their own laws more entirely in their own hands, than any European nation of the present time;' and, further, that 'it is not a little extraordinary that almost the only result' of the universal delirium of 1790,[9] 'which approaches in reality to the theories of that period, has been the Norwegian Constitution.'
The paramount influence of the agrarian class over the destinies of the kingdom may be judged by the circumstances that the rural districts are permanently represented in the Storthing by two-thirds of the total number of members, limited by the Constitution to 114; and that practically the suffrage is now universal, the principal conditions of its possession being, under recent legislation, a qualification of age (25 years) and a residence of five years in the country. It is well known that the Parliament thus elected (under a system of double election), with its _de facto_ single Chamber, subdivided for the more rapid and effective discharge of certain business into what Mr. Laing chooses to call an 'Upper House' and a 'House of Commons,' has, within very recent days, in virtue of the largely predominant rural, radical vote, exercised its power of impeaching and punishing, by fine and dismissal from office, an entire Cabinet, for the crime of having advised the King that his veto was not merely suspensive, but absolute, in the matter of any Bill affecting the principles of the Constitution, and that the questions in dispute between the Sovereign and the Storthing were of a constitutional character, involving indirectly not only the stability of a monarchical form of government, but also that of the personal union between the crowns of Norway and Sweden--a stability pre-eminently essential in both respects to the highest interests of Scandinavia, and in no small degree also to the maritime and political interests of this country. It is this form of Parliament that Mr. Laing extols 'as a working model of a constitutional government on a small scale, and one which works so well as highly to deserve the consideration of the people of Great Britain.'