Petition, a supplication preferred to one capable of granting it. The right of the British subject to petition the sovereign or either House of Parliament for the redress of grievances is a fundamental principle of the British constitution, and has been exercised from very early times. The earliest petitions were generally for the redress of private wrongs, and the mode of trying them was judicial rather than legislative. The earlier petitions were generally addressed to the House of Lords; the practice of petitioning the House of Commons first became frequent in the reign of Henry IV. Since the Revolution of 1688 the practice has been gradually introduced of petitioning parliament, not so much for the redress of specific grievances, as regarding general questions of public policy. Petitions must be in proper form and respectful in language; and there are cases where petitions to the House of Commons will only be received if recommended by the crown, as where an advance of public money, the relinquishment of debts due to the crown, or compensation for losses out of the public funds is prayed for. A petition must, in ordinary cases, be presented by a member of the House to which it is addressed. The system is, however, not without its disadvantages, as when the attempt is made to over-ride the courts of law by popular agitation—vast numbers of petitions being presented on behalf of murderers convicted after fair trial. For election petitions, see PARLIAMENT, Vol. VII. p. 775. The monster Chartist petition of 1848 claimed to bear six million signatures. In the five years ending 1842 the number of petitions presented to the House of Commons was 70,072; in the five years ending 1872, 101,573; in the years 1873-81, 123,870. In one year (1875) there were as many as 20,610, signed by 3,088,970 persons. On the other hand, the year 1889 produced only 8317 petitions.
In the United States the right of the people to petition government is expressly secured by the First Amendment of the Constitution, and is thoroughly interwoven with the ideas and usages of the nation—although, during the conflicts on slavery, it was resolved that petitions relating to slavery or the abolition thereof should be laid on the table without being printed or read, and finally that such petitions should not be received at all.