interests and associations, peculiar views on public affairs, and peculiar sympathies and modes of thought. These distinctive habits and feelings produce a distinctive character. The individuality, the independent life, of each political body, is established; and it acquires and desires to express its special shade of feeling and of thought.

A district, then, is something different from a mere polling division. Its electoral uses are the consequence, not the cause, of its existence. It is not, like a polling place, formed to be a part of the machinery of election; but it is fitted to perform electoral functions by reason of its previous organization. An electoral division, on the contrary, such as most reformers contemplate, has a purely artificial character. It does not contemplate any other use than those for which it has been specially established. It has no existence prior to those uses or apart from them. In determining, therefore, the area of an electoral district, it does not fully satisfy the principles of our Constitution to collect together from any quarter the required amount of electors. Such a course recognizes one element only of a district, and excludes a second and not less important element. It takes into account population, but not neighbourhood. If a town be too small to have a political individuality, if it be not a nós, but only a kúpn, it ought not to have any special representation, and should merge into the surrounding county. If its size be sufficient to admit of representation, it ought to have its own peculiar political organ, and its individuality should not be lost by an intermixture with other distinct bodies. Districts, since they are determined by a natural, and not by an arbitrary division, will, like all other natural objects, vary, although within certain limits, in size. This natural inequality cannot be remedied either by the arbitrary subdivision of a populous district or by the consolidation of several districts

in which the population is small. Such divisions or amalgamations may sometimes be convenient for polling purposes, but they do not affect the community of feeling and of interest which our ancestors required as characteristic of a district.

Equal representation of

electorates.

§ 3. Another principle hardly inferior in importance to that of the representation of localities may also be traced to the very origin of our Parliamentary history. The writs have always required the election of Knights for each specific county, and of citizens and burgesses for each specific city or town. But, in addition to this requirement, all the electoral districts were originally regarded as equal. The total number of members, indeed, frequently varied. The earlier Plantagenets exercised a large and absolute power not only over the towns entitled to representation, but over the number and the qualifications of the representatives.* They sometimes commanded the presence of four, but generally of two Knights. Sometimes the writs directed that the same Knights, citizens, and burgesses should be a second time returned, and that new elections should be held in those cases only where members had died or become incapacitated. At other times a moiety of the old members were summoned to correct the imperfections of the work done by the whole body. In 1352† one Knight only from each county and one citizen and burgess from each city and town were required to attend for that turn, "that we may withdraw as few men as possible from their autumnal occupation." On that occasion London and the Cinque Ports sent two citizens and Barons, which appears to have been half their usual number. Sometimes the city of London and the Cinque Ports were

commanded to return two citizens; sometimes the number was increased to four. Sometimes two Barons were held to be sufficient for all the ports. Sometimes two citizens and burgesses, and sometimes one only, were ordered to attend for each city or town. Again, an option* is given of sending sometimes two or three members and sometimes three or four. But in all this diversity the relative equality of the several constituencies was maintained. The number of members which each constituency returned might vary in separate Parliaments; but in the same Parliament all were treated alike. No one district enjoyed a greater privilege or bore a heavier burthen than the rest.

There is little room for doubt as to the cause of these differences. The presence of a greater or less number of members cannot have been of any practical importance. At the time at which votes were separately counted, the usage as to numbers was complete. But in earlier times it seems to have been long unsettled whether votes should be taken per capita or per stirpes, whether each representative was entitled to give his separate voice, or whether the several representatives of a constituency were required to concur in a single expression of opinion. So late as the time of Henry the Fourth, the King granted+ special leave of absence to Admiral Clyderowe, one of the members for Kent; and the other member, Robert Clifford, was at the same time authorized to act as if both were present. If this usage prevailed, it would of course still more strongly illustrate the principle of equality. It would also explain the apparent anomalies in the representation of the Cinque Ports and of London, an anomaly which in the latter case has continued to the present day. It would explain, too, the origin of that principle of inequality which

* Parry, 54.

† 3 Rolls of Parl., 572 a.

we meet at the end of the first Edward's reign. In a writ of the last year of that King the Sheriffs are commanded. in the usual way to send two Knights, two citizens, and two burgesses, or only one, as the borough may be larger or smaller.* This deviation from equality was probably due to considerations of economy. The object was to reduce the burthen upon the smaller towns, not to give to the larger any exclusive privilege. Thus, to the Parliament of 1403 Norwich was required to send four burgesses. This enlargement of their franchise seemed to the burgesses so alarming that they paid £3 to John de Alderford to get the matter altered. Similar considerations of expense sometimes led to the total extinction of political rights. The borough of Chard, for example, sent burgesses to Parliament for the first thirty years of the fourteenth century; and then finally ceased to exercise the right on the avowed plea of inability to meet the expenses. The distinction thus established became permanent. Until the present century, although many new constituencies were added in England and the unions with Scotland and Ireland had been accomplished, the proportion between the various electoral bodies remained as it had been settled at the end of the reign of Edward the First. Each county until the increase in the representation of Yorkshire on the disfranchisement of Grampound, and except London each city, sent respectively their two members. Of the boroughs some sent two members, others only one. No unreformed constituency except the two already mentioned had more than two representatives, none could have less than one.

§ 4. I have already observed that the Anglican polity is representative, and not, in the classical sense of the term,

* Parry, 67.

Roberts, Southern Counties, 469.

democratic. But this distinction does not express the full National re- force of national representation. That system presentation. is distinguished not only from the democracy of the market place, but from delegation. In almost all the medieval kingdoms of northern origin the government by assembled estates prevailed; but the members of these estates, when they did not appear in their own right, were deputies or attorneys sent with specific powers to remedy specific grievances.* In England alone the Knights and townsmen, who came from their respective counties and towns, were not delegates, but were true representatives. They were general agents, and were not limited by any specific instructions. They were not mere messengers to present the petitions of their constituents; but their presence was required both to aid in forming a national policy, and to assent to it when it was formed. The office, therefore, of a member of the House of Commons implies something more than even a general agency for a particular district. Such a member is empowered, indeed, to speak and to act for himself and for his constituents. But his powers do not stop there. He is a member of the Supreme Council of the Crown. He is bound to give the King true and faithful advice to the best of his judgment, not upon the matters which affect his own constituents merely, but on all questions which concern the King, his estate, and the defence of the realm and the Church of England. Thus, although he has been selected by the electors, or a portion of the electors of a particular district, he represents not merely those who voted for him, or even the inhabitants of his district, but the whole kingdom.† Each constituency in effect undertakes the care of providing a specified number of persons for the Royal council and of superintending

* Lieber, Civil Liberty, 133.

+ 4 Inst., 14.