the people; the very rabble can learn to know how far they are to go, and with this, as with their right, to be content, and advance no further.

The advantages obtained in the cheerfulness and vigour, that are thus imparted to the whole political system of a country, are above all price, and the occasional excesses of a mob are an evil trifling, and in comparison of no account.

Men of arbitrary or timid minds WILL not understand this, and men bred under abitrary governments never can.

Foreigners who survey, for instance, one of our popular elections at Brentford or Westminster, generally suppose that our government is to break up in the course of the week, and have been known to announce to their correspondents on the continent, and even to their courts, an approaching revolution. The mob, in the mean time, know very well the limits within which they may for a time disturb the peace of the community, and they therefore sing their ballads, hoot their superiors, remind them (very usefully) of their faults and follies, parade the streets and brandish their bludgeons, but as to an insurrection or revolution, no enterprise of the kind ever enters into their thoughts; certainly it makes no part of their particular bill of the performances.

In a word, power is like money; men should be accustomed, as much as possible, as much as they can bear, to the handling of it, that they may learn the proper use of it: they are so, more or less, in free governments; not so in arbitrary : and this is the circumstance which always constitutes the insecurity of arbitrary governments, while they stand, and the difficulty of improving them, when they can stand no longer.

Where popular privileges exist, the monarch can always distinguish between the characters of a lawful sovereign and an arbitrary ruler; so can his counsellors, so can his people, these are advantages totally invaluable. The world has nothing to do with certainty and security; but popular privileges afford the best chance of real tranquillity, strength, and happiness to all the constituent parts of a body politic, the monarch, the aristocracy, and the people.

Far from viewing the popular part of our mixed constitution with the indifference, or suspicion, or dislike, or hostility,

which Mr. Hume and others seem to do, nothing, as I conceive, can be so perfectly reasonable or truly philosophic as the interest, the anxiety, the reverence with which Millar and others have pursued the history of the democratic part of our constitution through our most eventful annals.

Do not fail to observe that the two great countries of Europe, France and England, have set out from beginnings much the same; but France lost her constitution, and England not. How was this? I ask the student; and let him ask, in his turn, the authors I recommend, the Abbé de Mably, and Hume, and Rapin, and Blackstone, and above all Millar. Surely the question will not be an indifferent one to him. He deserves not the name of Englishman if it be.

I must enter a little more into the subject, though detail is impossible.

The three great points are always.-1st, What is the law? 2nd, Who are the legislators? and lastly, and above all, What is the general spirit and habits of thinking in the community?

Take, then, the long period before us, from the departure of the Romans to the reign of Henry VIII.

1st, What was the law, the constitutional law more particularly, if I may so speak. You will find the history of it given you in a manner sufficiently concise and intelligible in many parts of Blackstone and in Millar. You must mark its gradual improvements, and you must mark them again and again, through different periods, down to our own. I speak now chiefly of the first and fourth volumes of Blackstone.

In former courses of my lectures, I had mentioned a few of the principal changes that took place, but I now think it best to refer to Blackstone and Millar, and to do no more. I do not occupy your time with what you may better find elsewhere.

But 2dly, Who have been the legislators? This is a very curious part of our history. There was once a Wittenagemote, or great national assembly. How was it constituted, and what were its powers? But we have no such assembly now. When, therefore, did it cease? and when it did cease, how came another assembly to arise ?—a parliament, a House of Barons or Lords? But more: we have now not only one

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assembly, but two; not only an House of Lords, but an House of Commons. This is surely still more extraordinary. The barons, the aristocracy, have not only their house of assembly; but the commonalty, the people, have, in some way or other, obtained the same. But how, or when, or why? Such are the objects of enquiry which I have to offer to your curiosity.

I will first say a word on the origin of these two different houses of assembly.

Secondly, on the origin and growth of the different prerogatives and privileges belonging to each estate, of king, lords, and commons.

The great facts of this first subject, those that you are especially to observe, seem to be these:

That there was first a Wittenagemote or great council. That this Wittenagemote existed before and soon after the Conquest, but that it at length ceased or the name was altered into that of parliament.

Now, unfortunately, no records exist of this Wittenagemote and parliament after the conquest, so that we cannot ascertain what were the qualifications that gave a seat in those assemblies, nor how the one gradually was changed into the other.

The next facts are, that burgesses from the towns were summoned by Leicester at the close of the reign of Henry III. afterwards by Edward I. and the succeeding monarchs. And, lastly, that in the course of the reign of Edward III. the lesser thanes or knights of the shire had been incorporated with the burgesses, and they had become together a separate house.

But of these most important events, this rise of a second house of assembly, or regular estate, and this mixture of the knights of the shire with the burgesses, no detail or history can be given: no sufficient records exist. All this is very unfortunate.

You will now, therefore, understand how easily our antiquarians and patriots may dispute on the origin and growth of our House of Commons. But on this subject you will observe what is said by Gilbert Stuart on the one side, by Hume on the other. You must on the whole be decided, I think, by Millar.

may now

This lecture was written many years ago, but I mention, that you may note what is said by Burke, in his abridgment of the English history, where he speaks of the Wittenagemote. There are also two articles in the Edinburgh Review, volume xxvi. in March, 1817, which you may consider.

These works and their references will enable you to go through all the learning connected with the subject, though I conceive the works themselves will be quite sufficient for your information, quite sufficient to enable you to form your opinion.

I will give you, in a few words, some idea of the reasonings of these writers.

The constitution, then, and office of the Wittenagemote seem to have been as analogous to those of the free assemblies we read of in Tacitus, as the different nature of two different though kindred periods of society would lead us to expect. The principal powers of government were vested in this great council. It decided on peace and war, and on all military concerns; it made laws; and it concurred in the exercise of the royal prerogative, as far as we can observe, on all occasions. The wites or sapientes are always supposed or referred to in the documents that have reached us; but who these wites or sapientes were, cannot now be accurately determined, and, in the first place, a controversy has arisen with respect to the constitution of this great council, whether it was entirely aristocratical or only partly so; and this is in truth the dispute of the origin of the House of Commons.

Stuart and others contend that the people had always their share in the legislature, that they were even represented in the Wittenagemote; and, to support this opinion, various expressions are produced from such documents as have come down to us: "Seniores, sapientes populi mei"-" convocato communi concilio tam cleri tam populi"-"præsentibus et subscribentibus archiepiscopis, &c. &c. procerumque totius terræ, aliorumque fidelium infinitâ multitudine."

But to this it is replied by Millar, that these expressions, if they prove any thing, prove too much, for they go to prove that all the people, even those of the lowest rank, personally voted in the national council. And it is urged by Hume,

among other remarks, that the members of the Wittenagemote are almost always called the principes, magnates, proceres, &c. terms which seem to suppose an aristocracy. That the boroughs also, from the low state of commerce, were so small and so poor, and the inhabitants in such dependence on the great men, that it seems in nowise probable, that they would be admitted as part of the national council. And the various remarks and arguments of Millar, a zealous protector of the popular part of our constitution, take the same general ground, and are on the whole decisive.

The most important remark, however, made by Stuart, on the other side of the question, is a reference to a paper in the 5th of Richard II. In the latter end of the passage (to the former part a reply might be made) are these remarkable words:

"And if any sheriff of the realm be from henceforth negligent in making his returns of writs of the parliament, or that he leaves out of the said returns any cities or boroughs which be bound and of old time were wont to come to the parliament, he shall be amerced," &c.

Of "old time," you will observe. The intervening space of two or three reigns, it is contended, between the 49th of Henry III. and 5th of Richard II. (about a century), could never give occasion to the use of such an expression as “the old time."

Again: Lord Lyttleton, in his Life of Henry II., goes through a very candid and temperate inquiry into this question, and he thinks the commons were originally a part of the national council or parliament. The strongest evidence he produces is drawn from the two celebrated instances of the petitions, sent, one by the borough of St. Albans, the other by Barnstaple.

The words are given by Lyttleton in the petition from St. Albans; they pray to send burgesses: "Prout totis retroactis temporibus venire consueverunt," &c. " tempore Eduardi (I.) et progenitorum suorum."

The date of this petition is 1315, in the time of Edward II. and it is contended that such words must mean a period before the 49th of Henry III., the supposed origin of the House of Commons, which was only fifty-one years before: