true of the difficult method provided for amending the Constitution.

Such a preference for stability above all else is characteristic of the extreme conservatism of the Anglo-Saxon race. The greatest merit of the Constitution, indeed, might be said to be its adaptability for the people who were to be governed by it. With any other race, in all probability, its ponderous mechanism would have ceased to move at several crises in our history, and the government have fallen by its own weight. It is characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, however, that while the slowest race to be moved, still of all races he is always the most able to meet a crisis. Such is the lesson of the Federal Constitution. No speculative theory has ever moved the country enough to secure the amendment of the Constitution, but where the practical necessity of the movement demanded relief which the Constitution could not afford, the remedy has always been found either in an amendment to the Constitution, or in some extra-constitutional but not unconstitutional, proceedings."

CHAPTER VII.

THE LEGISLATIVE DEPARTMENT.

§ 117. The Anglo-Saxon's Greatest Contribution to Political Progress.-The Anglo-Saxons' greatest contribution to the world's political progress has been in the evolution and development of representative legislative assemblies. The lack of such institutions in earlier times rendered free government impractical, except in mere city states. It was largely this defect which caused the fall of the Roman republic. The Roman legislative assemblies, the comita curiata,1 the comita centuriata, the comita tributa,3 were all primary assemblies. All Roman citizens voted in such assemblies. Such a system, which could succeed when Rome was a city republic on the Tiber, became inadequate with the extended area of her later days. Legislation by primary popular assemblies was no longer possible, and representative legislative assemblies had not yet appeared. There remained nothing but the Empire. The Roman Senate, which existed both under the republic and the empire, was not a representative body, being filled by appointments.

The nearest approach to representative assemblies among the Greeks was in the yearly assemblies of the Achaian League, where each city was represented by such of her citizens as chose to attend, but where the representatives from each city had one vote.

§ 118. The Evolution of the English Parliament.—Popular elections seem to have been well known to the Anglo-Saxons,

even in their continental homes," and were not forgotten by them after their invasion and conquest of Britain. The old Dux was an elective office. The later developed Kingship was theoretically and to a certain extent also actually elective. The higher ecclesiastical officials, the bishops and the abbots, were elected by the clergy. The principle of representation was to be found in the reeve and four men from each township who attended the county and hundred courts, as the representatives of such township. The development of the system of representative government, therefore, in England during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was no radical departure, but merely a new application of principles with which the Englishmen of that period were already familiar.

Neither the elective nor the representative principle, however, had had any place in the legislative branch of the English Government during the early Norman period. The Curia Regis of the Norman English Kings, the nearest approach to a legislative body in England for the period after Senlac, was a court of the King's feudal vassals, a body whose powers and duties were of a mixed legislative executive and judicial nature. In theory, at least, every tenant-in-chief of the King by military service, had a personal right to be summoned to this council; certainly when the King was to impose any extraordinary aid, and probably also on other occasions." This right to attend was, however, seldom exercised by those tenants-in-chief, who held only small estates as the expense of attendance alone would have prevented this. There were two great assemblies of the land owners of the kingdom, the Gemot of Salisbury in 1086, and the assembly called by Henry I. at Salisbury in 1116. Besides these two there probably was never any meeting of the Curia Regis at all generally attended by the lesser barons.

As time went on the distinction between the position of the greater and lesser barons in regard to this assembly became more marked. "Henry II. made the national council a different thing from what Henry I. had left it. Its composition was

5 See the Germania of Tacitus. Taswell-Langmead's Constitu

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tional History of England, Chap. VII.

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a perfect feudal court-archbishops, bishops, abbotts, priors, earls, barons, knights and freeholders. That towards the end of his reign he found it necessary to limit the number of lower freeholders who attended the councils is very probable; the use of summonses, which prevailed from the first year of the reign, gave him the power of doing this." It was about this period that the custom grew up of summoning the greater barons by special summons, and the lesser barons by general summons. Such a custom put greater power into the hands of the King by allowing him to determine the honor of special summons. The matter is regulated in the 14th Section of Magna Charta: "Et ad habendum commune consilium regni, de auxilis assidendo aliter quam in tribus casibus praedictis, vel de scutagis assidendo, summoneri daciemus archiepiscopos, episcopos, allotes, comites, et majores, barons, sigillatim per litteras nostras; et praeterea faciemus summoneri in general, per vice comites at ballivos nostres omnes illos qui de nolu tenant in capite; ad certum diem, scilicet ad terminum quadragnita dierum ad minus, et ad certum locum; et in omnibis litteris illus summonitionis saucam summonitionis exprimemus; et sic facta summonitione negotim ad diem assignatum procedat secumdum consilium illorum qui preasentes fruerint, quambis non omes summoniti venerint." (In order to take the common council of the nation in the imposition of aids (other than the three regular feudal aids) and of scutage, the King shall cause to be summoned the archbishops, earls and greater barons by writ directed to each severally, and all other tenants in captive by a general writ addressed to the sheriff of each shire; a certain day and place shall be named for their meeting, of which forty days' notice shall be given; in all letters of summons the cause of summons shall be specified; and the consent of those present on the appointed day shall bind those who, though summoned, shall not have attended.)

§ 119. Beginning of the Representative Character of Parliament. The first national council or parliament which was in any sense a representative body was that held at St. Albans on August 4th, 1213, where the royal demesnes were each represented by the reeve and four men. The lesser barons, i. e., lesser 'Stubb's Select Charters, Int. 22.

tenants-in-chief, about this time began to lose their theoretical right to attend the national council; at the same time they, in common with the other freeholders, began to acquire the right to elect representatives to the national council. Four Knights of the Shire were summoned by King John to the national council in 1215. Two Knights from each shire attended the national council in 1254; these were chosen by the freeholders of the shire in their county court, the semi-popular, semi-representative assembly of the county.

A rapid development of representative governments took place during the barons' war. In 1261 there were two rival summons to a national council; the one by the barons summoning three knights from each country to meet at St. Albans, and the other by the King for a similar representation in his council to be held at Windsor. In Simon de Montfort's first parliament the counties were represented by four knights each. The final step was taken by Simon de Montfort the following year, when, in addition to the knights of the shires, he summoned to the parliament two citizens from each city or borough. This was the first parliament in which all classes of the people were represented; the first truly national representative assembly in the history of the world. The overthrow of Simon de Montfort a few weeks later put a check to this work. The representation of the cities and even of the knights of the shire during the next thirty years is irregular and uncertain, and "it is only from the latter year that we can date the regular and complete establishment of a perfect representation of the three estates in parliaFrom 1295, however, all the constituent elements of parliament became established. With the exceptions that the representations of the lesser clergy drop out in the fourteenth century and the abbotts in the sixteenth, there was little change in the Constitution of parliament from the parliament held by Edward I. in 1295 to the one which passed the great reform bill in 1832.

$120. The Division of Parliament into Two Houses.-The division of the national council into two branches was left to the

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Taswell-Langmead's Constitutional History of England.