So far then from representation founding itself on a right, inherent in all individual wills, to concur in the exercise of power, it on the other hand rests on the principle that no will has in itself any right to power, and that whoever exercises, or claims to exercise power, is bound to prove that he exercises, or will exercise it, not according to his own will, but according to reason. If we examine the representative system in all its forms,—for it admits of different forms according to the state of society to which it is applied,—we shall see that such are everywhere the necessary results and the true foundations of that which we call representation.
Lecture XI.
Formation of a Parliament.
Introduction of county deputies into the Parliament.
Relations of the county deputies to the great barons.
Parliament of Oxford (1258).
Its regulations, termed the Acts of Oxford.
Hesitancy of the county deputies between the great barons and the crown.
Formation Of A Parliament.
Before we commenced the history of the charters, and after we had for some time fixed our attention on the Anglo-Norman government, we saw that this government was composed of but two great forces, royalty and the council of barons, a unique and central assembly, which alone shared with the king the exercise of power. Such was the state in which we found the government of England under William the Conqueror and his sons. But from their reigns to that of Edward I., a great change was being gradually evolved; after a laborious struggle, the charters were finally conceded, and the rights which they proclaim were definitively recognised. If, after this complete revolution, we cast a glance over the institutions of the country, we find them all changed; we perceive that the government has taken another form, that new elements have been introduced into it, that the Parliament,—composed in one of its divisions of the lords spiritual and temporal, in the other of deputies from the counties and boroughs,—has taken the place of the great council of barons.
This transformation is a fact; how was it produced? what were its causes and its mode of advance? what was the new Parliament after its formation? how far and in what respects did the introduction of these deputies change the character of the government? These are the questions that we have now to consider; and in order to answer them we must analyze and examine the principal individual facts which here combine to produce the common result.
Of County Deputies.
The first of these facts is the introduction of county deputies into the national assembly. I shall first enquire how this event was brought about; and I shall then propose similar enquiries with respect to the introduction of town and borough representatives into the same assembly.