Amongst the new products found growing upon the old soil after the deluge had subsided, was one of a political nature. Perhaps the chief boast of the middle ages is, that they gave birth to the system of representative government an invention, as it has been justly called, by which free institutions become applicable to extensive territories. The old form of the republic was appropriate only to a single city; the plan of representation allows an extensive territory to be united under a free and equal government.

We trace representation as a lineal descendant from that very feudalism to which it is now seen in the light of a direct antagonist. Feudalism could never itself have been converted into a good government, for its chief characteristic consisted in the absence of any adequate idea of a state. It yielded inevitably before the love of order. It was not conquered by arms. Without aid of a standing army, we see monarchy in Spain, in France, in England, every where prevailing It was monarchy alone that could give these countries any approximation to free and equal government; and therefore it naturally grew with their increasing wealth and intelligence, and increasing desire for good government. But though such was the impracticable nature of feudalism itself, yet it infused a free spirit into men which tempered the monarchies of Europe, and moreover gave birth to a political offspring, which was fated, not only to check, but to compete with monarchy.

We shall take our own House of Commons as the type and exemplar of what was passing in the mind of Europe. We suppose no one is so little given to reflection as to be satisfied with ascribing the origin of our second house of Parliament to the writs issued by Simon Mountfort, in the disturbed reign of Henry III.; this is an historical incident, which may or may not have hastened the development of that institution, which dates its constitutional existence from the succeeding reign of Edward I. We are all prepared to trace such an institution, not to an incident of this description, but to political notions working in the mind of the people at large.

The character of feudalism, as we

have endeavoured to show, was this: -instead of the commonwealth being regarded as the great corporate body, to the welfare of which the desires and passions of the individual should be subordinated, the individual stood forth in his own claims, asserted his own rights, made the best stipulation he could for their preservation and the good of the community; its order and government were left to be the chance result of these several treaties. Liberty assumed a quite different form from that which it bore in the ancient republics. There was here no public; there was scarce any representative of the public; all was private property, all was personal privilege, the conflict and compromise of individual claim. Every baron, every freeholder, had made his distinct treaty with his sovereign; he held his land on tenure, that is, on condition of performing certain services to his lord; these services rendered, he had done all that could be rightfully demanded; if he did more, it was voluntary. He had made his bargain with the state, and to that he held.

The situation of the Jews in all the feudal governments illustrates the manner in which the commonwealth was built up. Contrary to custom, they could here make no good bargain for themselves. They were attached to the soil neither as its lords and conquerors, nor as its bound cultivators; nor could the pious burgess associate with them, nor they with him, in those guilds and corporations which in their essence were a species of voluntary association. They were put quite out of the pale of government. The king seized upon them, by virtue of his prerogative; they became part of the Crown property-a sort of treasuretrove. The king protected and pillaged them at his pleasure. He sometimes even lent out his Jews, and took up money upon them as a security. We know that religious animosity led, in the first instance, to their being thus segregated from the rest of the world; but under no government where laws were made in the true spirit of legislation, as having the good of a whole community in prospect, could any body of men be allowed to remain in this predicament. They would either have been expelled entirely, or the common rights of citizens, the usual

protection of person and property, would have been extended to them.

This, then, was the prevailing spirit of feudal times: - The individual entered into a compact with the governing power, separating himself, as it were, from that community of which, in fact, he was a component part, and treating with it in his own person. The king, however powerful, never thought of laying any additional tax upon the feudatory without his consent. But how, in this respect, were the towns or burghs situated? These, if in the royal demesne, originally formed part of the crown property, and the king could levy a talliage upon them at his pleasure. If they fell within the barony of the greater lord, the lord could, in the same manner, exact tribute from them. But the royal towns obtained charters from the king, by which they were relieved from uncertain and arbitrary taxation on the payment of a fixed and stipulated sum. These charters, many of which were granted by King John, were either purchased from the necessity, or granted by the policy of the crown. Such burghs as were the property of the barons obtained relief in a similar way; the inhabitants paid a certain fixed sum for their land and houses, and then held by what was called burgage tenure. The towns were now placed, with respect to the sovereign power, in the same independent position as the nobles; they had made their treaty, though they could not always guard it from infringement quite so effectually as the barons. But the wants of the crown and the wealth of the burghs were both increasinga new composition must be made; but the will of both parties must now be consulted. The power of the king and of his great council of peers might be, and doubtless was, sufficient to enforce a tax upon the towns; but it was ever the more profitable plan to respect the feeling of right which the burgess now shared with the noble. man, and induce him to tax himself. To enter into a new treaty with the towns a treaty to be renewed as often as the want of money was renewed was scarcely possible, without some system of deputation. Citizens were sent up from the different towns to the meeting of the great council, who, on hearing the wants of the sovereign, would appoint the quota to be paid by themselves. As it was not

Thus was formed and perpetuated our House of Commons. It arose from the application to chartered towns of the feudal notion that those who had made their stipulation with government could not further be taxed without their own consent; -a notion which soon became a prevailing sentiment of the people at large. The county member represented the small freeholders, who had an undoubted right to partake in this political sentiment. The county courts, it may be observed, which had been preserved from Saxon times, gave a facility for this mode of representation, which otherwise perhaps might not have been devised. Thus, our second branch of the Legislature arose from no endeavour to approximate the constitution to a republic, nor from any design on the part of the people to share in the general work of legislation; and nothing can be more absurd than the clamour (it cannot be called argument) of those who, while they are carrying forward and amplifying the theory of representation, talk of reforming and returning to ancestral purity. It was some time before the Commons took any other part in legislation than the humble one of petitioning. Their petitions were referred by the crown to his council, or to the lords of Parliament, who, if they were granted, converted them into a law. They were burghers who came up, and often very reluctantly, to hear the wants of their sovereign, and fix their tributes; taking occasion, however, to bring with them their grievances along with their money. This character of men who came up to be taxed, they long preserved. We find them unwilling to enter on questions of peace and war, when these are proposed by the king; they declare that such high and lofty matters are above their simple understandings; they decline giving any opinion. This affectation of modesty, which has been described as a notable humility, we have no doubt arose from sound mercantile policy. They were unwilling to give any pledge, by participating in the king's counsels, that they would support those counsels with their purses; nor did they wish to see too clearly those exigencies of the state, which were laid before them, they knew, as foundations for a pecuniary demand.

But though the principle of representation was thus limited in its origin, it was one well calculated for growth. The Commons began to represent their constituents on more subjects than one, and gradually crept up to an equality with the hereditary legislators which the feudal system had provided. Their petitions are listened to with respect in the reign of Edward I. In the commencement of that of Edward III. their assent to the statutes is first mentioned; probably, as Hallam suggests, with the object only of giving additional weight and popularity to a law which would have been equally valid without that assent. What, during the long reign of Edward III., grew to be a custom, became a right in that of his successor Richard II. In the reign following, namely that of Henry IV., they made an attempt to share the judicial functions of Parliament; in this they failed, but their equality in the legislative power was at the same time distinctly acknowledged.

Still they were far, even under the Lancastrian Kings, from having attained the position we recognise as due to a House of Representatives. Circumstances in the reigns of Richard II. and his successor, gave to the House of Commons an appearance of power which it by no means possessed; but its substantial and independent power dates from a subsequent period. How is it, we have heard the question sometimes asked, that the Commons, who under Richard II. made so bold a stand against the royal prerogative -impeached the King's Ministers, and Chancellor, and an Archbishop of Canterbury, and controlled and scrutinized all the expenses of the Crown -were the passive tools of a court under Henry VIII., and had scarce spirit enough to mutter something about their rights and privileges under Elizabeth and James? The people of England had grown more wealthy, more enlightened, and yet

their representatives had grown more feeble and insignificant, and political power appears to have deserted them as their wealth and knowledge, which we are told are the true sources of political power, had increased. The difficulty, which else would be very startling, is solved by this consideration; - that the privileges and powers of the House of Commons in the reign of Richard II. flourished under the protection of the Peers of Parliament. What they did was not done in their own strength. The Commons had not themselves grown weaker in the time of Henry VIII., but they had lost their powerful allies. These had indeed become politically feeble; they had been transformed by the change of manners which England with all Europe was undergoing, from independent barons, jealous of their rights, and prompt to maintain them by force of arms, into submissive and silken courtiers, competing for the favours of a monarch; or, at all events, into gentlemen willing to lead a very different life from that which could alone preserve their feudal superiority. The Commons under Richard II. were as little able to stand alone, or in the front of the battle, against the king, as under Henry VIII. The nobility took them in alliance, and the Lower House itself gained part of its strength from that minor nobility which represented the counties, and which shared in the fluctuations of that order to which it belonged. We may always observe, that whenever Richard is predominant over his refractory barons, the Commons drop their lofty tone. When the confederacy of the Lords Appellant is crushed or dissolved, the privilege of Parliament is found to be no protection against the most extravagant resentment of the king. During this period, and through the reign of the Lancastrians, the nobility are seen as the rude conservators of the liberties of the country and the rights of Parliament. Under the Tudors they for. feited this honourable character; they deserted their post, or rather, they were no longer the men capable of occupying it. The Commons were now left to themselves; and when they next grew strong, their strength was their own. In the ensuing dynasty of the Stuarts, our house of representatives obtained and abused an independent and predominating power.

Were we to travel through Europe, especially to Spain and the Netherlands, we should still more distinctly see how representation followed the charter, and grew out of feudal notions. But we have no wish to weary our readers by any such survey. A glance, however, at the corresponding history of our neighbour France, while it will show the same principles operating elsewhere, will also corroborate what has been said of the progress of our House of Commons. Notwithstanding the advantage which is said to have accrued to kingly power in that country by reason of its having grown on the conquest of the great fiefs, the same difficulty occurred to the crown of France as to that of Eugland in raising money without consent of their subjects. There, too, the States-General were accordingly convened, to which the chartered towns sent their representatives. But in France there was no union between

the burghers and the nobility; on the contrary, the burghers were more jealous of the privileges of the nobles than even of the power of the Crown. These privileges were the first object of their attack: the Crown protected the nobility, and the nobility were willing to assist him in dispensing with the States-general.

This origin of the representative system is a striking instance of the indirect and circuitous route in which human affairs seem to progress, and it instructs us to look at the notions prevalent in the general mind for the real causes of momentous changes. "What great events from trifling causes spring!" has been a frequent exclamation. But what are called "great events" are often such only to the imagination, or to the persons immediately concerned; they are perhaps matters of indifference in the real history of mankind. The change of a dynasty, or the conquest of a kingdom, may leave the life of man just where it was. If it should be found that society had gained a new idea, a new

principle of conduct-had advanced a step in the art of government-this would be a "great event," but it would hardly be traceable to some one "trifling cause," but rather to very many causes acting on the public mind, some remote, some direct, and acting perhaps through a long period of time. The introduction of the principle of representation is a great event; but we must reverse the usual exclamation. All the pomp of circumstance attends upon the causethe result itself steals unperceived into the world. The tumult and uproar of feudal times, and the barbarian conquest, were the noisy precursors that prepared the way for this unheeded novelty. Society seems to have been driven back to its first elements, in order that, at its reconstruction, another invention should be added to our schemes of polity.

Representation, viewed as a complete theory of politics-a theory which is to solve, for all future times, the problem of human governmentis manifestly defective: it proceeds on the supposition that the wisest election will be made by the greatest number of electors, and carries with it the altogether impracticable conclusion, that a man is bound to obey the laws of his country only on the ground of his having given his assent, or having had some share in their construction. Representation cannot safely pretend to be more than a conventional method of electing the senate, or any other body of rulers. But then let this also be borne in mind, that we should never have enjoyed the benefits of this conventional institute, unless there had existed in the country at large some notions of individual right, however obscure and ill-defined, leading to its adoption. A theory arose in the minds of the commonalty which has its fit result in a method of election, not to be determined by the theory, but shaped according to the times and the people.

CHIVALRY is the only remaining institution of the middle ages that we are here desirous of characterizing; but before we touch on this, (which we shall do very lightly,) let us drop a word, in passing, upon the Judicial Combat, an elder and independent institution, which reveals to us the

martial spirit of the times, and prepares us to expect that the virtues of dawning civilisation would be grafted, as on their main stock, on the passions of the warrior. Nor is it, perhaps, undeserving of remark, that war had earned a sort of judicial sacredness before it was enlisted in the service of the cross, and called on to encamp around the tomb at Palestine.

As to those numerous ordeals of which we read-such as walking upon burning ploughshares, holding in the hand a heated iron, or plunging the supposed criminal in the water, to see whether he would sink or swimthey, no doubt, deserve to be enumerated amongst the historical curiosities of the times; but we nowhere read, nor is it possible to believe, that they were ever the frequent and ordinary methods by which truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence, were to be determined. They were too unskilfully framed to have borne the test of repeated experiment; they could only have been an occasional, unsystematized folly; they belong rather to the manners than the jurisprudence of the people. There was one mode of trial, however, partaking of the nature of an appeal to Heaven; namely, this of the judicial combat, which, though hardly less absurd, undoubtedly prevailed, and was the favourite method of deciding all legal controversies, whether civil or criminal. But then the judicial combat was not only supported by a superstitious faith that victory would fall to the true man or the innocent, it was demanded by a fierce and warlike people, impatient of law, and confident in their prowess, who held it the highest prerogative of free men to defend their own cause by their own right arm. It partook of the nature of the ordeal, but still more of another character; namely, the permitted violence of men too rude and warlike to submit to a peaceful arbitration of their claims-who would have been satisfied with no decision in which force had not the casting-vote-who would have thought

"Arms ridiculous, useless the forgery Of brazen shield or spear,"

unless with these they had been al lowed to maintain and establish their own claims.

The judicial combat was a sort of jurisprudence which the feudal baron could perhaps administer quite as well as the most learned judge who ever presided at Westminster Hall; and this made it still more acceptable among a rude nobility, proud of the privilege of executing justice, and accounts probably for its application to all persons, and to all manner of questions. That all ranks and conditions might have

the benefit of so enlightened a system of laws, those beneath the dignity of a knight might confirm their testimony by the weight of their cudgels, and champions were allowed to women and to the clergy. And not only did this very compendious method of judicial investigation decide on the innocence or veracity of the individual brought before the court, but if, after the facts had been determined, the law itself were uncertain, the wisdom of the Bench might be assisted by sending down the issue to be tried in the lists. It was at one time an unsettled point whether the son of an elder brother, or the next living brother, should succeed to the estate the law was decided at the point of the lance. According to the rules of the judicial combat, the accused might not only challenge his accuser, but might challenge any witness who gave his testimony against him; and, on the continent, he might even challenge the peers, or the baron himself who passed judgment on him. This was called an appeal of false judgment, and was tried by arms, with great solemnity, in the court of the king or the next superior lord. On reading such a passage as the following, which is extracted from Robertson's Survey of the State of Europe, prefixed to his history of Charles V., one is quite perplexed, so egregious appears the folly it exposes, how to believe it; one is apt to make a sort of mental reservation, and without venturing exactly to contradict the author, to resolve internally that there is some mistake or exaggeration. "To complete," he says, "the absurdity of this military jurisprudence, even the character of a judge was not sacred from its violence. Any one of the parties might interrupt a judge when about to deliver his opinion; might accuse him of iniquity and corruption in the most reproachful terms, and throwing down his gauntlet, might challenge him to defend his integrity in the field; nor could he without infamy refuse to accept the defiance, or decline to enter the lists against such an adversary." The passage perhaps requires a little explanation. Robertson is here speaking of this appeal of false judgment; but the sacred character of judge, which he somewhat indignantly describes as being thus violated, was sustained, be it remembered, by the same sort of person as the challenger himself. These judges were not men