The words "Elegi facias," instead of "venire facias" (which were retained in 1275; see PARLIAMENT), still appear to make the parliament of 1295 the model, rather than that of 1275, though in other respects the latter appears now to have established the summoning of county and borough representatives.
In tais summoning by the king of the two knights and two burgesses with full and sufficient power for themselves and for the community, we find therefore the origin of political repre sentation of the commons, as opposed to the actual presence and personal attendance of the peers. But it must always be remem bered that the idea of "majority rule," i.e., that an assembly of persons could bind a minority of its members, is a conception of slow growth. The "Common Council" of Magna Carta was far from holding that it had any right to bind any dissentient mem bers. As McKechnie, in his "Commentary on Magna Carta" (1914), aptly observes, " 'No new exactions without the consent of the individual taxed' was nearer the ideals of 1215 than 'no taxation without the consent of parliament'." Indeed in 1221, a member, the bishop of Winchester, of a council, summoned to consent to a scutage tax, refused to pay, after the council had made the grant, on the ground that he dissented and the Ex chequer upheld his plea. In the case of the Commons, where each individual "represented" other persoils besides himself, such an attitude was, of course, absent—the very fact of their election discountenanced it. But, as Gierke says (Political Theories of the Middle Age, pp. 64 and 166), the idea of old Germanic law was that, even in a more or less "representative" assembly, "unanimity is requisite," although "a minority ought to, and can be, compelled to give way." The idea of representation and with it, majority rule, makes its way into the political sphere through the church councils who adopted it from the law of corporation (Gierke, p. 64). But even in the church the canonists held that minorities had certain irrefragable rights and that matters of faith could not be decided by mere majorities.
gradual increase in power of the House of Commons till it be came the predominant partner in the English bicameral consti tution. (See PARLIAMENT.) But from the point of view of histori cal theory it is important to note that its representative character does not essentially depend upon the particular method (election by vote) by which its members have for so long been chosen. It is a common error to regard the House of Commons as having a national authority higher than that of the House of Lords merely on the ground that it is composed of elected members, and to stigmatize the House of Lords as "unrepresentative" because it is not elected. But in strictness the question of election, as such, has nothing to do with the matter. The proper distinction (ignor ing for the moment the later inclusion in the House of Lords of a certain representative element—strictly so regarded—in the Scotch and Irish peers) is that the House of Lords, as still con stituted in 191o, remained a presentative chamber, while the House of Commons was essentially a representative one; in the former the members, summoned personally as individuals, were entitled to speak in the great council of the nation, while in the latter the members were returned as the mouthpieces of whole communitates, to whom, in the person of the sheriffs, the sum mons had been directed to send persons to speak for them.
The preponderant authority of the House of Commons is due not to its members being elected—that is only one way of settling who the mouthpieces of the commons shall be—but to the progress of popular government. The two British houses have historically existed as assemblies of the separate estates of the realm—the House of Lords of the two estates of lords spiritual and tem poral, and the House of Commons of the commons. The third estate has so increased in power as to become predominant in the country; but the authority of its own assembly simply depends on the powers of those it represents. If the balance of political power had not been shifted in the country itself, the authority and competence of the peers, speaking for themselves in a primary assembly, would in theory actually appear higher, so far as their order is concerned, than that of members of the House of Commons, who can only "represent" the popular con stituencies. Moreover, the fact that most members of the House of Commons are elected by a party vote is apt to make them very often even less authoritative spokesmen of their constitu encies—the communitates—than if they were selected by some method which would indicate that they had the full confidence of the whole body they "represent." It is notorious that many members of a modern House of Commons, or of any other "representative" assembly, have only been elected by the votes of a minority of their constituency, or (where there have been more than two candidates) a minority even of those who voted ; and there always comes a time when it is certain that if a representative has to come again before the electorate for their votes he will be defeated; he, in fact, no longer reflects their views, while he still sits and legislates. The real de sires of the commons in a certain British constituency may even be more faithfully, even if only accidentally, reflected by a local peer whose only right to speak in parliament is technically pre sentative. In his Vindication of the British Constitution (1835), Disraeli, writing of the Reform Bill of 1832, observed that "in the effort to get rid of representation without election, it will be well if eventually we do not discover that we have only obtained election without representation." A truer word was never spoken. A man may be representative, practically consensu omnium, al though no vote, resulting from a division of opinion, has been taken for the purpose of selecting him. The vote is merely a method of selection when there is a definite division of opinion involving an uncertainty; and even in the modern House of Commons many members are returned "unopposed," no actual voting taking place. A well-recognized representative character (as regards the functions involved) attaches, for instance, in British public life to other persons in whose selection the method of popular voting has had no place ; such as the king himself, the Cabinet (in relation to the political party in power), or the bishops (as regards the Church of England).