King could not be successfully opposed. The church, by reason of the great wealth which it controlled and the powerful influence which it exerted in a superstitious age over the minds of the people, was a factor that could not be ignored. The freemen also played an important part in the constitutional struggles, since they carried the sword and formed the rank and file of the fighting class. The important provisions of the Great Charter relate exclusively to the rights of the church, the nobility and the freemen. The serfs, while not included within the benefit of its pro- ve visions, were an overwhelming majority of the English people. This conclusion is irresistible in view of the fact that the Domesday Survey shows that about four-fifths of the adult male population in the year 1085 were below the rank of freemen.

The Great Charter was, it is true, an important step in the direction of constitutional government, but it contained no element of democracy. It merely converted the government from one in which monarchy was the predominant feature, to one in which the aristocratic element was equally important. The classes represented in the Great Council became a constitutional check on the power of the King, inasmuch as he could not levy taxes without their consent. The important constitutional position which this charter assigned to

1Sebohm, English Village Community, Ch. III; Traill, Social England, Vol. I, p. 240; Ashley, English Economic History, Vol. I, p. 17.

the nobility was not maintained, however, without repeated struggles under succeeding Kings; but it laid the foundation for the subsequent development which limited and finally abolished the power of the monarch.

In the course of time the Great Council split up into two separate bodies, the House of Lords, composed of the greater nobility and the higher dignitaries of the church, and the House of Commons, representing all other classes who enjoyed political rights. When the House of Commons thus assumed a definite and permanent form as a separate body, a new check upon the power of the King appeared. The consent of two separate bodies was now necessary before taxes could be imposed. The development of these checks was hastened by the fact that the King found it easier and safer to get the assent of these bodies to measures which involved an exercise of the taxing power, than to attempt the collection of taxes without their support. In this way the right of assenting to all measures of taxation came in time to be recognized as belonging to the two houses of Parliament. But this was a right not easily established. It was claimed and fought for a long time before it finally became a firmly established principle of the English Constitution. Around the question of taxation centered all the earlier constitutional struggles. The power to tax was the one royal prerogative which was first limited.

In time Parliament extended its powers and succeeded in making its assent necessary to all governmental acts which vitally affected the welfare of the nation, whether they involved an exercise of the taxing power or not. The law-making power, however, as we understand it now was seldom employed, the idea of social readjustment through general legislation being a recent growth. But as revenues were necessary, the taxing power was the one legislative function that was constantly exercised. It is not strange then that the earlier constitutional development should have turned mainly upon the relation of the various political classes to the exercise of this power.

That English constitutional development resulted in a parliament composed of two houses may be regarded as accidental. Instead of this double check upon the King there might conceivably have been more than two, or there might, as originally was the case, have been only one. Two distinct elements, the secular nobility and the dignitaries of the church, combined to form the House of Lords. The House of Commons was also made up of two distinct constituencies, one urban and the other rural. If each of these classes had deliberated apart and acquired the right to assent to legislation as a separate body, a four-chambered parliament, such as existed in

Sweden up to 1866 and still survives in Finland, would have been the result.1

The essential fact, everywhere to be observed in the development of constitutional government, is the rise to political power of classes which compete with the King and with each other for the control of the state. The monopoly of political power enjoyed by the King was broken down in England when the nobility compelled the signing of Magna Charta. This change in the English Constitution involved the placing of a check upon the King in the interest of the aristocracy. with the development of the House of Commons as a separate institution, the power of the King was still further limited, this time in the interest of what we may call the commercial and industrial aristocracy.

Later,

At this stage of its development the English government contained a system of checks and balances. The King still retained legislative power, but could not use it without the consent of both Lords and Commons. Each branch of the government possessed the means of defending itself, since it had what was in effect an absolute veto on legislation. This is a stage in political evolution through which governments naturally pass. It is a form of political organization intermediate between monarchy and democracy, and results from the effort to check and restrain, with1 1 Lowell, Governments and Parties in Continental Europe, Vol. I, Ch. I; Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, Vol. I, p. 265.

out destroying, the power of the King. When this system of checks was fully developed the King, Lords and Commons were three coördinate branches of the English government. As the concurrence of all three was necessary to enact laws, each of these could defeat legislation desired by the other two.

The development of this system of checks limited the irresponsible power of the King only on its positive side. The negative power of absolute veto the King still retained. While he could not enact laws without the consent of the other two coördinate branches of the government, he still had the power to prevent legislation. The same was true of the Lords and Commons. As each branch of government had the power to block reform, the system was one which made legislation difficult.

The system of checks and balances must not be confused with democracy; it is opposed to and can not be reconciled with the theory of popular government. While involving a denial of the right of the King or of any class to a free hand in political matters, it at the same time denies the right of the masses to direct the policy of the state. This would be the case even if one branch of the government had the broadest possible basis. If the House of Commons had been a truly popular body in the eighteenth century, that fact would