on a majority of the House of Commons were thoroughly developed in their
present form. England, now grown into the United Kingdom, had at last,
after six centuries of strife, won her national independence, and for
one brief century has enjoyed a full measure of self-government.

+Comparison of the Two Stages.+--How do the conditions presented by the
nineteenth century differ from those of the fourteenth? And how is the
problem of representation affected? We have seen that the great forces
which animated the nation in the fourteenth century were organization
and leadership. Have these forces ceased to operate? Assuredly not. In
the fourteenth century we had a united people organized under its chosen
leaders against the encroachments of the King and nobility on its
national liberty. In the nineteenth century the people have won their
political independence, but the struggle is now carried on between two
great organized parties. The principle of leadership is still as strong
as ever. The careers of Pitt, Peel, Palmerston, Beaconsfield, and
Gladstone attest that fact. The one great difference, then, between the
fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries is that instead of one party
there are two. The problem of representation in the fourteenth century
was to keep the people together in one united party, and to allow them
to select their most popular leaders. Surely the problem is different in
the nineteenth century. The requirements now are to organize the people
into two great parties, and to allow each party separately to elect its
most popular leaders. And yet we are still using the same method of
election as our forefathers used six centuries ago. Although the
conditions have entirely changed, we have not adapted the electoral
machinery to the change. The system of single-membered electorates was
rational in the fourteenth century, because there was only one party. Is
it not on the face of it absurd to-day, when there are two parties?