ves, as to this point,--"We are inclined, in the main,
to agree with Mr. Hallam," lets us know, two or three years afterwards,
that the scale was tending the other way, when, in his review of the
Report of the Lords' Committee, who give a decided opinion that cities
and boroughs were on no occasion called upon to assist at legislative
meetings before the forty-ninth of Henry III., and are much disposed to
believe that none were originally summoned to parliament, except cities
and boroughs of ancient demesne, or in the hands of the king at the time
when they received the summons, he says,--"We are inclined to doubt the
first of these propositions, and convinced that the latter is entirely
erroneous." (Edinb. Rev. xxxv. 30.) He allows, however, that our kings
had no motive to summon their cities and boroughs to the legislature,
for the purpose of obtaining money, "this being procured through the
justices in eyre, or special commissioners; and therefore, if summoned
at all, it is probable that the citizens and burgesses were assembled on
particular occasions only, when their assistance or authority was wanted
to confirm or establish the measures in contemplation by the
government." But as he alleges no proof that this was ever done, and
merely descants on the importance of London and other cities both before
and after the Conquest, and as such an occasional summons to a great
council, for the purpose of advice, would by no means involve the
necessity of legislative consent, we can hardly reckon this very acute
writer among the positive advocates of a high antiquity for the commons
in parliament.

Sir Francis Palgrave has taken much higher ground, and his theory, in
part at least, would have been hailed with applause by the parliaments
of Charles I. According to this, we are not to look to feudal principles
for our great councils of advice and consent. They were the aggregate of
representatives from the courts-leet of each shire and each borough, and
elected by the juries to present the grievances of the people and to
suggest their remedies. The assembly summoned by William the Conqueror
appears to him not only, as it did to lord Hale, "a sufficient
parliament," but a regular one; "proposing the law and giving the
initiation to the bill which required the king's consent." (Ed. Rev.
xxxvi. 327.) "We cannot," he proceeds, "discover any essential
difference between the powers of these juries and the share of the
legislative au