He would only have substituted an aristocracy for a king. Even
after the Commons were represented in parliament, they for some
centuries appeared only as petitioners, except in the matter of
taxation, when their consent was asked. And almost the only
source of their influence on legislation was this: that they
would sometimes refuse their consent to the taxation, unless the
king would pass such laws as they petitioned for; or, as would
seem to have been much more frequently the case, unless he would
abolish such laws and practices as they remonstrated against.
The influence, or power of parliament, and especially of the
Commons, in the general legislation of the country, was a thing
of slow growth, having its origin in a device of the king to get
money contrary to law, (as will be seen in the next volume,) and
not at all a part of the constitution of the kingdom, nor having
its foundation in the consent of the people. The power, as at
present exercised, was not fully established until 1688, (near
five hundred years after Magna Carta,) when the House of
Commons (falsely so called) had acquired such influence as the
representative, not of the people, but of the wealth, of the
nation, that they compelled, the king to discard the oath fixed
by the constitution of the kingdom; (which oath has been already
given in a former chapter, [5] and was, in substance, to preserve
and execute the Common Law, the Law of the Land, or, in the
words of the oath, "the just laws and customs which the common
people had chosen;") and to swear that he would "govern the
people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereto
belonging, accordingto the statutes in parliament agreed on, and
the laws and customs of the same.
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