However, some towns early acquired sufficient importance not only to gain and defend their liberties, but also to take part in general politics. Among these towns, London and the Cinque ports [Footnote 29] must especially be mentioned.
[Footnote 29: The five towns of Dover, Sandwich, Romney, Hastings and Hythe, were called the Cinque ports. ]
Borough Representation.
The importance which these possessed is established by a great number of facts, and we often find their inhabitants called nobiles and even barones. Indeed, their deputies appeared sometimes at the general assembly even before the Parliament of 1264, but in this there was no general principle, no public right recognized. There was this difference between the introduction into Parliament of county deputies, and that of town deputies;—that the former is associated with a right, the right of the immediate vassals of the king, and therefore possessed from the first a character of generality; while the second, the introduction of town deputies, was dissevered from every idea of right, and resulted simply from isolated facts bearing no relation to one another. Representatives were granted to a particular town, but this did not involve any similar concession to all towns. Hence the arbitrariness that of necessity prevailed in the division of representation among towns and boroughs. Hence the vices which still actually exist in the electoral system of England. [Footnote 30] There remain to the present day towns of considerable importance which send no deputies to the House of Commons; and these abuses arise from the fact that the elections of towns and boroughs have never been regulated in a general manner, and as public rights. In the first instance, all was decided by a solitary fact, and the right to representation has still continued as a right in the case of many boroughs and towns, although the primitive fact which originally suggested the right has disappeared,—the fact, namely, of the importance of the town or borough. Through these causes the evil of rotten boroughs was introduced into the representative system of England.
[Footnote 30: It must not be forgotten that this course of lectures was delivered in 1821, ten years before the passing of the Reform Bill.]
However this may be, not till the parliament of 1264 do we see deputies from towns and boroughs appear in any large numbers in the Parliament. We do not know how many towns were then called upon to exercise this right; but the writs were addressed to them directly, and not by the intervention of the sheriffs. This innovation was doubtless a result of the policy of the Earl of Leicester. He had sought for protection against the king in the knights of the shires, and through these auxiliaries the king and the royal authority had fallen into his hands; but soon finding the want of another support against the barons, who had become his rivals, he found it in the towns, and called upon them to take a share in the exercise of power. This it was that rendered his memory so popular that the king was obliged especially to forbid his being spoken of as a saint.
The Mad Parliament.
We must then refer the complete formation of the English Parliament to the year 1264. Its existence was still very precarious; it rested on no law, on no public right; it was the creation of a time of faction. The first Parliament, in which Leicester had principally ruled (the Parliament of Oxford) was soon called the Mad Parliament,—Parliamentum insanum. It might have been expected that the new form of Parliament, the presence of county and borough deputies, would have shared the same fate as that suffered by the other institutions which were introduced by Leicester for the purpose of organizing a purely aristocratic government, and which disappeared with him. But these rudiments of parliamentary organization were of a different character; they were veritably public institutions, which, instead of attaching themselves merely to particular interests, had for their basis the interests of the entire population. They survived Leicester, and his attempts against the royal power, which was itself obliged to adopt them. Under the reign of Edward I. they became definitely established, and acquired a consistency and stability which would no longer allow of their being attacked with success.