ree centuries that
followed--namely, the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth--the
monarchs of France managed to keep this body barely in existence,
without giving it any real power. When the king was secure upon his
throne and imperialism had received its full power, the nobility, the
clergy, and the commons were no longer needed to support the throne of
France, and, consequently, the will of the people was not consulted.
It is true that each estate of nobility, clergy, and commons met
separately from time to time and made out its own particular grievances
to the king, but the representative power of the people passed away and
was not revived again until, on the eve of the revolution, Louis XVI,
shaken with terror, once more called together the three estates in the
last representative body held before the political deluge burst upon
the French nation.

_Failure of Attempts at Popular Government in Spain_.--There are signs
of popular representation in Spain at a very early date, through the
independent towns. This representation was never universal or regular.
Many of the early towns had charter rights which they claimed as
ancient privileges granted by the Roman government. These cities were
represented for a time in the popular assembly, or Cortes, but under
the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Cortes were seldom called, and
when they were, it was for the advantage of the sovereign rather than
of the people. Many attempts were made in Spain, from time to time, to
fan into flame this enthusiasm for popular representation, but the
predominance of monarchy and the dogmatic centralized power of the
church tended to {342} repress all real liberty. Even in these later
days sudden bursts of enthusiasm for constitutional liberty and
constitutional privilege are heard from the southern peninsula; but the
transition into monarchy was so sudden that the rights of the people
were forever curtailed. The frequent outbursts for liberty and popular
government came from the centres where persisted the ideas of freedom
planted by the northern barbarians.

_Democracy in the Swiss Cantons_.--It is the boast of some of the rural
districts of Switzerland, that they never submitted to the feudal
regime, that they have never worn the yoke of bondage, and, indeed,
that they were never conquered. It is probable that several of the
rural communes of Switzerland have never known anything other than a
free peasantry. They have contin