Meanwhile the real unity of the people clearly showed itself at the time when the Crown began to tax the poor as well as the rich.  The moment the King laid hands on the tradesman’s and the laborer’s pockets they demanded to have their share in making the laws.  Out of that demand, made in 1265, rose the House of Commons (SS213, 217).  It was a body, as its name implies, composed of representatives chosen mainly from the people and by the people.

Next, after generations of arduous struggle, followed by the King’s grant of the Petition of Right (S432) and then by the great Civil War (SS441, 450), it was finally settled that the House of Commons, and the House of Commons alone, had complete power over the nation’s purse.  From that time the King knew, once for all, that he could not take the people’s money unless it was granted by the people’s vote (S588).

After the flight of James II Parliament passed the Bill of Rights in 1689 and in 1701 the Act of Settlement (S497).  These two revolutionary measures wrought a radical change in the government of England.  They deliberately set aside the old order of hereditary royal succession and established a new order which made the King directly dependent on the people for his title and his power to rule (S497).  About the same time, Parliament passed the Toleration Act, which granted a larger degree of religious liberty (S496), and in 1695 the House of Commons took action which secured the freedom of the press (S498).

Less than thirty years afterwards another radical change took place.  Hitherto the King had appointed his own private Council, or Cabinet (S476), but when George I came to the htrone from Germany he could speak no English.  One of the members of the Cabinet became Prime Minister in 1721, and the King left the management of the government to him and his assoaciates (S534).

Two generations later another great change occurred.  Watt’s invention of a really practical steam engine in 1785, together with the rapid growth of manufacturing towns in the Midlands and the North of England, brought on an “Industrial Revolution” (S563).  A factory population grew up, which found itself without any representation in Parliament.  The people of that section demanded that this serious inequality be righted.  Their persistent efforts compelled the passage of the great Reform Bill of 1832.  That measure (S582) broke up the political monopoly hitherto enjoyed in large degree by the landholders, and distributed much of the power among the middle classes.

The next important change took place at the accession of Victoria (1837).  The principle was then finally established that the ruling power of the government does not center in the Crown but in the Cabinet (S534).  Furthermore, it was settled that the Prime Minister and his Cabinet are responsible solely to the House of Commons, which in its turn is responsible only to the expressed will of the majority of the nation (S587).