at the distance of six or seven centuries. The reformation of parliament,
which first afforded proof from experience that liberty, order, greatness,
power, and wealth, are capable of being blended together in a degree of
harmony which the wisest men had not before believed to be possible, will
be held in everlasting remembrance. He died unconscious of the
imperishable name which he acquired by an act which he probably considered
as of very small importance--the summoning a parliament, of which the
lower house was composed, as it has ever since been formed, of knights of
the shires, and members for cities and boroughs. He thus unknowingly
determined that England was to be a free country; and he was the blind
instrument of disclosing to the world that great institution of
representation which was to introduce into popular governments a
regularity and order far more perfect than had heretofore been purchased
by submission to absolute power, and to draw forth liberty from
confinement in single cities to a fitness for being spread over
territories which, experience does not forbid us to hope, may be as vast
as have ever been grasped by the iron gripe of a despotic conqueror. The
origin of so happy an innovation is one of the most interesting objects of
inquiry which occurs in human affairs; but we have scarcely any positive
information on the subject; for our ancient historians, though they are
not wanting in diligently recording the number and the acts of national
assemblies, describe their composition in a manner too general to be
instructive, and take little note of novelty or peculiarity in the
constitution of that which was called by the Earl of Leicester.

"That assembly met at London, on the 22nd of January, 1265, according to
writs still extant, and the earliest of their kind known to us, directing
'the sheriffs to elect and return two knights for each county, two
citizens for each city, and two burgesses for every burgh in the county.'
If this assembly be supposed to be the same which is vested with the power