thority which was enjoyed by the commons at a period when
the constitution assumed a more tangible shape and form." This is
supported with that copiousness and variety of illustration which
distinguish his theories, even when there hangs over them something not
quite satisfactory to a rigorous inquirer, and when their absolute
originality on a subject so beaten is of itself reasonably suspicious.
Thus we come in a few pages to the conclusion--"Certainly there is no
theory so improbable, so irreconcilable to general history or to the
peculiar spirit of our constitution, as the opinions which are held by
those who deny the substantial antiquity of the house of commons. No
paradox is so startling as the assumption that the knights and burgesses
who stole into the great council between the close of the reign of John
and the beginning of the reign of Edward should convert themselves at
once into the third estate of the realm, and stand before the king and
his peers in possession of powers and privileges which the original
branches of the legislature could neither dispute nor withstand" (p.
332). "It must not be forgotten that the researches of all previous
writers have been directed wholly in furtherance of the opinions which
have been held respecting the feudal origin of parliament. No one has
considered it as a common-law court."

I do not know that it is necessary to believe in a properly feudal
_origin_ of parliament, or that this hypothesis is generally received.
The great council of the Norman kings was, as in common with Sir F.
Palgrave and many others I believe, little else than a continuation of
the witenagemot, the immemorial organ of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy in
their relation to the king. It might be composed, perhaps, more strictly
according to feudal principles; but the royal thanes had always been
consenting parties. Of the representation of courts-leet we may require
better evidence: aldermen of London, or persons bearing that name,
perhaps as landowners rather than citizens (see a former note), may
possibly have been occasionally present; but it is remarkable that
neither in historians nor records do we find this mentioned; that
aldermen, in the municipal sense, are never enumerated among the
constituents of a witenagemot or a council, though they must, on the
representative theory, have composed a large portion of both. But,
waiving this hypothesis, which the author seems not here to insist upon,
though h