In the great national measure of the year 1327, which closed the calamitous reign of the second Edward, a e find them confounded together under the general name of commons, by whose "counsel and assent," as well as by that of "the pre lates, earls, barons, and other great men" of the kingdom, it is stated in the writs issued to the sheriffs on that occasion by the young Edward to proclaim himself king, that his father had " removed him self" (that is, had been deposed), and he (the younger Edward) had taken upon him the government.
And according to the preamble of the statutes made at the first parliament of Edward III., the acts were passed "at the petition of the commons presented to the king in his council of parliament, by the assent of the prelates, earls, barons, and other great men." This form of petitioning the king in parliament, that is, in the baronial assembly or house of lords, was long the only mode possessed by the commons of introducing a measure sanctioned by themselves into that higher assembly, and remained a memorial of their first seemingly timid advances to wards the complete legislative character, until, on their attainment of the latter station, they abandoned. the term petition for the more business-like and less sub missive one of bill. [Bus IN PARLIA is very reign of Edward III., they proceeded so far as to claim an absolute veto upon all enactments affecting those great bodies of the people which they represented, by declaring to the king in parliament that they would not be com pelled by any of his statutes or ordinances, made without their assent. Edward III. had too much general sagacity, and was too mindful of the popular concurrence in the revolution which had deposed his father, to seek to evade or oppose this legislative assent of the Commons.
It should be borne in mind that the ori ginal basis of the representation, in the time of Edward I., was very different from what we must suppose it would have been made, had the crown and its advisers at that period contemplated in this arrange ment any such thing as the composition of a legislative assembly. The very large proportion of the whole number of its members that were sent from the towns, at a period when the population and general importance of the towns, as com pared with those of the counties at large, were vastly less than they are now, was manifestly a circumstance repugnant to all the political notions and tendencies of the government of that day. Under
Edward I. the town representatives bore so large a proportion to those of the shires as 246 to 74; and under Ed ward III. as 282 to 74. The reason why, on the first settling of the repre sentative system into regularity and per manency, each constituency was uni formly summoned to elect two, members, without regard to its known or presumed proportion of wealth or populousness, seems to have been very simple and very natural. So long as the parliamentary voice of the commons was confined to matters of taxation merely, the only thing that appears to have been seriously re garded in fixing the number of delegates was the securing such a delegation from each constituency as at the smallest in convenience and expense to it should have full power to treat of the pecuniary business in question, and two, being the smallest number compatible with the im portant conditions of mutual consultation and joint testimony, was fixed upon as the number that imposed the smallest bur den on the constituents, and was also most convenient for avoiding a too crowded assemblage of representatives. And thus it seems to have been that the periodi cal and frequent shire and borough courts presenting the most natural and convenient modes and occasions of ap pointing the parliamentary deputies of the several communities, two representatives, and two only, were summoned, indiffer ently from the shire as from the borough, and from the largest shire or borough as from the smallest.
When the power and authority of the commons in parliament had become so firmly consolidated under the first three Edwards as to exercise an effective control over all the great measures of govern ment, the composition of the representa tive body was an object of constant atten tion and solicitude to the crown. As the number and names of the counties entitled to send members admitted neither of doubt nor of dispute, the right of the boroughs became the first object of attack from that quarter. The attempts of this nature, made through the arbitrary exer cise of the presumed power of the sheriff to select or omit boroughs, were defeated by parliamentary enactment of the 5th of Richard II.; and, in like manner, statutes were passed in the three following reigns to restrain the corrupt and irreelar pro ceedings of the sheriffs both m county and in borough elections.