Not among our
English forefathers only, but among all the peoples of mediaeval and
modern Europe has the struggle gone on, with various and instructive
results. In all parts of romanized Europe invaded and colonized by
Teutonic tribes, self-government attempted to spring up. What may have
been the origin of the idea of representation we do not know; like most
origins, it seems lost in the prehistoric darkness. Wherever we find
Teutonic tribes settling down over a wide area, we find them holding
their primary assemblies, usually their annual March-meetings, like
those in which Mr. Hosea Biglow and others like him have figured.
Everywhere, too, we find some attempt at representative assemblies,
based on the principle of the three estates, clergy, nobles, and
commons. But nowhere save in England does the representative principle
become firmly established, at first in county-meetings, afterward in a
national parliament limiting the powers of the national monarch as the
primary tribal assembly had limited the powers of the tribal chief. It
is for this reason that we must call the method of nation-making by
means of a representative assembly the English method. While the idea of
representation was perhaps the common property of the Teutonic tribes,
it was only in England that it was successfully put into practice and
became the dominant political idea.
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