and three other persons" elect two members for Bath. "The mayor and all the burgesses" elect two members for Reading. "Eight persons, acting as attorneys, and one lady," are the electors for Yorkshire; "fourteen persons" are the electors for Cumberland; "the mayor, bailiff, and nine citizens" are the electors for Carlisle ; "the mayor and ten persons" are the electors for Bedford; "the mayor and two bailiffs" are the electors for Northampton ; two coroners, the custos and twenty-four citizens' are the electors for Norwich. It is evident from all this that the mass of the electors took no direct share in the election of their representatives. We shall endeavour farther on to ascertain whether or not they took any indirect share.

Attendance at Parliament was compulsory on the part of the representatives. There does not appear to have been any competition for seats in the early Parliaments. If we are to judge from the precautions taken to secure the attendance of the representatives in Parliament, we may indeed assume that they gave their services grudgingly, and often under compulsion. Plato asserted that the only persons who should be invested with political power were those who were most averse to it; and there is reason to believe that these were the sort of men who were elected to our early Parliaments. The representative was not allowed

to resign his position from any cause whatever, and he was required to give security for his due attention to his parliamentary duties. Even as late as 17 Charles I., a motion “that a member at his own request may decline his election, and a new burgess be chosen in his stead," was negatived after discussion in the Commons. In a debate on the subject of election in 25 Charles II. Mr. Waller quaintly describes the difficulty of obtaining representatives for the early Parliaments. Formerly," he says, "the neighbourhood desired him to serve; there was a dinner, and so an end. But now it is a kind of an empire. Some hundred years ago many boroughs sent not. They could get none to serve."

Compulsory attendance rendered it necessary that representatives should be paid. It would have been manifestly unfair to compel a man to attend to public duties, which may have been forced upon him, without making him some recompense for his time, trouble and outlay. We find accordingly that all the representatives in the early Parliaments were paid their "wages" and expenses from the day that they left for Parliament till the day they returned to their constituents. The system of paying members commenced with the Parliament of Simon of Montfort in 1265, and continued in full force till about the middle of the 16th century. Some time before this latter date,

many representatives had ceased to accept payments, and from a debate in the Parliament of 27 Charles II. we learn that the practice of paying representatives had been generally abandoned, but as no Act had ever been passed for its abolition, the law remains in existence to this day.

The foregoing facts will, I believe, amply support the following conclusions, the bearing of which on our arguments will be obvious as we proceed :

I. The Parliament of England was an assembly of estates, and it was also, in part, a representative body. One portion of it was nominated by the Crown, and the other portion was elected by the people. The prelates and barons were summoned by special writs, and appeared in Parliament for themselves; the Commons were summoned by writs issued to the sheriffs, and appeared as delegates or attorneys for others. The prelates were summoned in their capacity as barons,1 the clergy, as a separate estate, having their own Parliament or convocations where they voted their aids separately; but latterly their secular charac

1 In early times the peerage was strictly territorial. The dignity belonged to the land and passed with it. Hence it was not uncommon for the king to summon peeresses to Parliament. The wives or widows of the barons made prisoners or slain in battle were summoned to the Parliament of 49 Henry III., and four abbesses to the Parliament of 34 Edward I. Women also exercised the franchise in respect of their territorial rights as freeholders, as, for example, Parliament, 13 Henry IV., and 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9 Henry V.

ter was merged in their spiritual, and the prelates came to be regarded as the first, and the peers as the second, estate in Parliament. The Commons formed the third estate, and represented all the enfranchised classes not comprised within the other two estates. Representation in the Commons was strictly local in its character. The representatives were chosen, not by the elèctors generally, but by certain groups of electors in constituent bodies scattered over the country. Each county, city, and borough was a separate constituency, and each constituency elected its own representatives. But the representative body were something more than local delegates. They were also class representatives. The constituencies were divided so as to preserve as far as possible class distinctions; and the representatives were required not only to reside in the constituency, but to belong to the particular class which elected them. There were three classes or estates in Parliament-the upper, the middle, and the lower class, and these classes, or estates, found their proper places, or representation, in Parliament. If we eliminate the tenants and bondsmen whom the barons claimed to represent (a claim which the Commons repeatedly refused to recognize, and on which the Crown, when appealed to, as it often was, always shirked pronouncing a decision), there remain first

the barons; secondly, the freeholders of the counties; and thirdly, the merchants and handicraftsmen of the cities and boroughs. The barons corresponded to the upper class of to-day, and were in Parliament for themselves; the freeholders of the counties corresponded to the middle class, and were represented by the knights of the shire; the merchants and handicraftsmen corresponded to the lower middle classes, and were represented by the citizens and burgesses.

There was therefore a marked distinction in the system of representation in those days from ours. These three classes were not only represented in Parliament, but each class was there in proper person, or was represented by members belonging to itself, the barons being there for themselves, the freeholders by the knights of the shires, and the citizens and burgesses, by citizens and burgesses. No lordling represented a yeoman; no knight represented a citizen or burgess in the early Parliaments. The representatives of the freeholders of the shires were actual freeholders; the representatives of the citizens and burgesses were actual citizens and burgesses. The early writs were very particular on this point. They directed that as far as possible the representatives should belong to the same class as their constituents, but superior men of their class.