n by the majority of electors. The citizens of London
replied to this by choosing Wilkes for Sheriff and Alderman in 1770, and by
making him Lord Mayor four years later. The Government gave up the contest
at last, and Wilkes was allowed to take his seat. Besides vindicating the
right of constituencies against the claim of Parliament to exclude
undesirable persons, Wilkes did a good deal towards securing that right of
Parliamentary debating which was practically admitted after 1771.

But the "Wilkes and Liberty" movement was no more than a popular enthusiasm
of the London mob for an enemy of the Government, and a determination of
London citizens and Middlesex electors not to be brow-beaten by the
Government. Wilkes himself always denied that he was a "Wilkesite," and he
had no following in the country or in Parliament.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VI

THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA

THE WITNESS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

The idea of constitutional government has its witnesses in the Middle Ages,
democratic theories are common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
but it is not till the eighteenth century that France, aflame to realise a
political ideal, proves that democracy has passed from the books of
schoolmen and philosophers, and is to be put in practice by a nation in
arms.

In the thirteenth century the friars rallied to Simon of Montfort and
preached, not democracy, but constitutional liberty.[70] Thomas Aquinas,
the great Dominican doctor, became the chief exponent of political theory,
and maintained that sovereignty expressed in legislative power should be
exercised for the common good, and that a mixed government of monarch,
nobles, and people, with the Pope as a final Court of Appeal, would best
attain that end.[71]

A hundred years later, John Ball and his fellow agitators preached a gospel
of social equality that inspired the Peasant Revolt. But communism was the
goal of the peasant leaders in 1381, and freedom from actual oppression the
desire of their followers. No conception of political democracy can be
found in the speeches and demands of Wat Tyler.

In the sixteenth century Robert Ket in Norfolk renewed the old cries of
social revolution, and roused the countryside to stop the enclosures by
armed revolt. And again the popular rising is an agrarian war to end
intolerable conditions, not a movement for popular government.

THE "SOCIAL CONTRACT" THEORY

The theory of