the Chambers calls for a resolution on its part; there is therefore something more than mere singularity in depriving it of the means of adopting that resolution with a full knowledge of the cause. It is a great defect of representative government that, leading as it necessarily does to the systematic organization and permanent conflict of parties, it habitually divides the truth into two parts, and induces men never to consider questions on more than one side, and to see only half the ideas or facts in reliance upon which their decision must be made. It is, without doubt, a system of exaggeration and partiality; and this evil is, to a certain point, inevitable. All means of diminishing it are, therefore, of great importance. Now, the most effectual, indisputably, is to compel opposing opinions to unite, on certain occasions, in a common search after truth. This is the effect of the right of enquiry. When these opinions reach the moment of decision, without having been brought into contact or made acquainted with each other, without having been constrained mutually to communicate motives and facts, their resolution will chiefly be dictated by party spirit, and by anterior engagements which have experienced no necessity to modify it. Everything, on the other hand, that brings the minority and the majority into presence, before the moment when they must appear in public and pronounce their decision, draws them for a time out of their habitual sphere, and leads them to extend or to correct their ideas. This is especially the case in reference to facts. It is immensely inconvenient if all communications of this kind can only be made at the rostrum, and in the midst of the decisive combat; for they are then rejected, and scarcely ever influence the decision. Thus, as the absence of the right of enquiry leaves parties in their natural ignorance and primitive crudity, it is injurious not only to the goodness of the special resolutions of deliberative assemblies, but also to the wisdom of their general arrangements.

Besides, when the right of enquiry is wanting, its absence is supplied in the same way as that of the right of initiative by the right of petition. As it is impossible to undertake a serious and complete investigation of any particular kind of abuse which appears to have introduced itself into the government, special complaints are suggested and multi

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plied. Now, the right of petition is no more competent to supply the place of the right of enquiry than that of the right of initiative. The revelation of abuses or grievances which it occasions is, by the very nature of things, full of confusion and error; matters are seldom presented without prejudice and with generality. And yet, from the very fact that there are no means of going into the details, and examining them in all their bearings, men are involuntarily led to put confidence in these complaints. Never were the demands presented by the House of Commons itself for the redress of grievances so numerous and violent as in those times when it was allowed to address them to the king only, and was permitted neither to have them thoroughly investigated by its own members, nor to sum them up in a body of facts accompanied by satisfactory proofs.

Finally, when the representative system of government is complete, and provided with all the rights and all the means of action which it needs in order to accomplish its ends, the right of petition is nothing but the right of calling the attention of the Houses of Parliament, by means of one of their members, to any particular question, or act of the governing power. When once this first provocation has taken place by way of petition, the petition has attained its object; nothing more is necessary but a discussion and resolution of the House itself, which takes place according to the ordinary formalities, as if it had originated within the assembly itself, and independently of all relations with the external world. Thus the exercise of a right which should belong to all citizens is reconciled with the dignity of the public power of the nation, and with the maturity befitting their acts. Thus all grievances may solicit redress, all desires may be expressed, without giving rise to any disorder, any precipitation, or any subversion of the procedure of the great deliberative bodies. When, on the contrary, these deliberative bodies themselves are deprived of the rights and means of action which are necessary to them for the fulfilment of their destination, the right of petition becomes an irregular and often violent means by which the public and the legislative chambers endeavour to supply their deficiencies. And then this right, by all the practices to which it lends itself, and by the vicious mode of deliberation which it entails, creates, in

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its turn, new disorders which men undertake to remedy by imposing upon the right itself restrictions or trammels which would be completely useless if the legislative chambers were invested with all the means of action which are their due. Political liberty has this in common with science generally; it is most dangerous when it is incomplete. The history of the British Parliament proves this at every step.

Condition of the Parliament under Edward II.-Progress of the power of the Commons-Their resistance of the Ing-Regularity of the convocation of Parliament.-Measures akten for the security of ins dei serations-Division of the Partiament into wo Enses.Speaker of the House of Commons-Firmness of the Eouse of Commons in maintaining its right to grant taxes-Accounts given by the government of the collection of the taxes-Appropriation of the funds granted by Parliament-Parliamentary Legislation. — Difference between statutes and ordinances.

HITHERTO we have only met with political struggles between the king and his barons, or between opposite aristocratic factions; the Commons have hitherto acceared only in a second rank; they exercised as yet hardly any direct influence over general affairs, over the government properly so called; or if they occasionally interfered in the adminis tration of the country, it was merely as the auxiliary or the instrument of some particular faction.

The reign of Edward III. presents a different aspect; the conflict between the king and his barons has ceased, and all the great aristocracy seems to be grouped around the throne; but at the same time, the Commons have formed themselves into a body, distinct and powerful in itself. They do not aspire to snatch the supreme power from the hands of the king and the barons; they would not have strength enough to do so, nor do they entertain any thought of it; but they resist every encroachment upon those rights which they are beginning to know and to appreciate; they have acquired a consciousness of their own importance, and know that all public affairs properly fall under their cognizance. Finally, either by their petitions, or by their debates in reference to taxation, they are daily obtaining a larger share in the government, exercise control over affairs which, fifty

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years before, they never heard mentioned, and become, in a word, an integral and almost indispensable part of the great national council, and of the entire political machine.

Thus, whereas hitherto the political aspect of England has been the conflict of the great barons with the king; from the reign of Edward III., the resistance of the Commons to the king's government, generally formed and sustained by the barons, becomes the great fact of the history. It is not unintentionally that I here employ the words conflict and resistance. In the first period, in fact, the barons struggled, not only to defend their rights, but to invade the supreme power, and to impose their own government upon the king. This conflict was consequently nothing but a permanent civil war. But during the second period, this was no longer the case; we hear of no revolts, and of no civil wars: under Edward III., at least, the Commons do not arm to attack the government with force; but they oppose to it a political resistance, they constantly protest against the abuses and arbitrariness of the central power. Instead of directing their attacks against the king himself, they lay all blame upon his ministers, and begin to assert and popularize the principles of parliamentary responsibility. Finally, they separate completely from the great barons, act on their own account, and become the true depositaries of the pledges of public liberties.

This was a great revolution, and it prepared the way for all others. The more minutely we examine into the events of the reign of Edward III., the more proofs shall we discover of this important change. I shall content myself with giving a rapid summary of these proofs by recapitulating the general facts which characterize this reign.

The first of these facts is the regularity, previously unexampled, with which the Parliament was convoked. A measure was adopted for this purpose in 1312, during the reign of Edward II., by the Lords Ordainers. Subsequently we meet with two statutes relative to the convocation of this assembly, one of which was passed in 1331, and the other in 1362. Finally, in 1377, the last year of the reign of Edward III., the Commons themselves demanded by petition that the sessions of Parliament should take place regularly every year. It is curious to compare this petition with the