REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. Representative government in the modern mean ing of the term was unknown to the ancients. Kings, chiefs and administrative officers were often elected by popular vote or acclamation, but neither in ancient Greece nor Rome did a body exist even remotely resembling a Con gress, a Parliament or a Reichstag. States which were not absolute despotisms were gov erned, as a rule, by a council of magistrates and a popular assembly, in which latter all persons with civic rights took part, and which was very much like a New England town meeting; but there is no instance of the popular ancient times developing into a representative body. The Roman Senate was composed of magistrates and ex-magistrates and resembled the American Senate of to-day only in name. This ancient system, which appears from the standpoint of to-day both unwieldy and un ruly, was well enough fitted, however, for the so-called republics in which it prevailed, and in which all power was reserved to the central city, whether Athens, Thebes or Rome. The citizens in public assembly stood for the state, and were the state, and did not think it neces sary to delegate their powers to representatives. When civic rule in Rome gave place to imperial ism, the public assembly ceased to exist, while the Senate was retained to register the decrees of the Caesars, and offer honorable retirement to those who had gained imperial favor.
Representative government, as we know it to-day, is not derived, therefore, from any Ro man or Greek institution. It is essentially an outgrowth of that love of liberty inherent alike in Saxon, Norman and Celt, and reached its present development through centuries of 'struggle and of political and social evolution. The English Parliament, with its combination of mediaeval House of Lords and 20th century House of Commons, has grown gradually from beginnings dating back almost to the Norman Conquest. The barons asserted their rights against tyrannical kings, and the necessities of the kings compelled them to recognize the well to-do classes outside the nobility, who had the wealth of which the royal exchequer stood badly in need. Taxation gave birth to repre sentation, and at length it became a recognized principle that Englishmen would not stand taxa tion imposed without their own consent through representatives in Parliament assembled. It was not, however, until far into the 19th cen tury that the common people of England were permitted to have a voice in public affairs, and not until 1885 that the suffrage was bestowed on virtually all male subjects of adult age in the United Kingdom. The Parliament of to
day, therefore, represents the English people; less than half a century ago it represented only the privileged classes.
Representative government in the United States inherited its spirit from England, but not its form. The American system is of native origin. It developed from town-meeting to assembly, and when the new States adopted new fundamental laws, the upper house was called a senate, after the ancient Roman Senate, while the right of originating measures of taxation was reserved to the popular branch of the leg islature. In the United States, also, however, the right or privilege of voting was generally restricted to taxpayers and property-owners for many years after independence, and in one of the States — Rhode Island — a landholding qualification for foreign-born citizens existed until a few years ago. Excepting some peculiar restriction intended to prevent negroes from voting in certain Southern States, nearly all male citizens of adult age now possess the right to vote. The second decade of the 20th century saw the extension of the suffrage to women in many States of the Union and the passage of the Federal amendment to the Constitution, in 1918, by which all women in the United States are enfranchised ends the long struggle in other States and confers the voting power on mil lions, making for a really representative govern ment. SCe SUFFRAGE.
In the Hanseatic towns, in Switzerland, the Italian free cities, and other republics of the Middle Ages, representative government had no real existence so far as the common people were concerned, and the parliaments of modern Europe are not derived from the institutions of those states. The American Revolution gave the impulse and inspiration needed to awaken the people of Europe to a sense of their rights and wrongs and the constitutions granted by monarchs on the Continent to their subjects adopted as models a mixture of the English and American systems. Every European country at present has a congress or parliament in which the people are represented by deputies elected according to law. Japan has a similar system, and representative government, which 100 years ago was practically confined to the United States and England, is now coextensive with civilization in every continent. See DE