idea of agency was not unknown in the ancient world, but that agents should have power to bind those for whom they acted was something entirely new.  It was necessary, however, that they should have this power, and it suited the King’s convenience that they should exercise it.  Already, in the earliest writ of which we have knowledge, summoning each shire to send two good and discreet knights, it was provided that they should be chosen in the stead of each and all.  This happened in 1254, and in the following year the clergy were also summoned for the same purpose of granting aid to the King.  In the meantime the merchants and trade guilds in the cities were growing rich.  The King cast longing eyes on their possessions, and wished to tax them.  So we find that in 1264 Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, issued the celebrated writ summoning each of the cities and boroughs to send two of its more discreet and worthy citizens and burgesses.  This is sometimes regarded as the beginning of the House of Commons, but it was really not until the fourteenth century that these several assemblies, each of which up till then taxed itself separately and legislated in its own sphere, coalesced into the present Houses.  First the lower clergy fell out, and, with the knights, citizens, and burgesses, were merged into the House of Commons; and the higher prelates with the earls and barons formed the House of Lords.

This, then, is the first stage of representation.  What was the nature of this new force which had come into the world and was destined to so profoundly affect the whole course of human affairs?  One result of immense importance is apparent at a glance.  It solved a problem which had baffled the ancients—­that of the nationalization of local communities on a free basis.  But it is generally assumed that the only difficulty overcome was that of size; that the representative assembly is a mere substitute for the larger assembly of the whole nation.  Starting with this assumption, it is claimed that the representative assembly should be a mirror of the people on a small scale, and the more faithfully it reflects their faults as well as their virtues, their ignorance as well as their intelligence, the more truly representative it is said to be.  It is even asserted that with the modern facilities for taking a poll, representative government might be dispensed with and the people allowed to govern themselves.  Democracy, we are assured, means that every man should exercise an equality of political power.  Now, if this conception is correct, we should at once insist that every law should be submitted to a direct referendum of the people; that legislators should be mere agents for drawing up laws; and that the executive should be directly responsible to and elected by the people.  But if representation is not a mere substitute for the direct action of the people this idea as to the true line of democratic progress falls to the ground.  The whole question, therefore, hinges on what representation is and what are the principles underlying it.