APPENDIX. A. THE first article in a wise plan of reformation, would, in our opinion, be the immediate addition of twenty Members to the House of Commons, to be chosen by the most opulent and populous of the communities which are at present without direct representation; with such varieties in the right of suffrage as the local circumstances of each community might suggest, but in all of them on the principle of a widely diffused franchise. In Scotland, Glasgow ought to be included: in Ireland we think there are no unrepresented communities to which the principle could be applied. In endeavouring to show that this proposal is strictly constitutional, according to the narrowest and most cautious use of that term, that it requires only the exercise of an acknowledged right, and the revival of a practice observed for several ages, we shall abstain from those controverted questions which relate to the obscure and legendary part of our Parliamentary history. A very cursory review of the authentic annals of the House of Commons, is sufficient for the present purpose. In the writs of summons of the 11th of Edward I., the Sheriffs were directed (as they are by the present writ) to send two Members from each city and borough within their respective bailiwicks. The letter of this injunction appears, from the beginning, to have been disobeyed. The Crown was, indeed, desirous of a full attendance of citizens and burgesses, a class of men then subservient to the Royal pleasure, and who, it was expected, would reconcile their neighbours in the provinces to the burthen of Parliamentary grants; but to many boroughs, the wages of burgesses in Parliament were a heavy and sometimes an insupportable burthen: and this struggle between the policy of the Crown and the poverty of the boroughs, occasioned great fluctuation in the towns who sent Members to the House of Commons, in the course of the fourteenth century. Small boroughs were often excused by the Sheriff on account of their poverty, and at other times neglected or disobeyed his order. When he persisted, petitions were presented to the King in Parliament, and perpetual or temporary charters of exemption were obtained by the petitioning boroughs. In the 1st of Edward III. the county of Northumberland, and the town of Newcastle, were exempted, on account of the de vastations of the Scotch war. The boroughs in Lancashire sent no Members from the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry VI.; the Sheriff stating, in his returns, that there was no borough in his bailiwick able to bear the expense. Of one hundred and eightyfour cities and boroughs, summoned to Parliament in the reigns of the three first Edwards, only ninety-one continued to send Members in the reign of Richard II. In the midst of this great irregularity in the composition of the House of Commons, we still see a manifest, though irregular, tendency to the establishment of a constitutional principle, viz. that deputies from all the most important communities, with palpably distinct interests, should form part of a national assembly. The separate and sometimes clashing interests of the town and the country, were not intrusted to the same guardians. The Knights of the Shire were not considered as sufficient representatives even of the rude industry and infant commerce of that age. The dangerous discretion of the Sheriffs was taken away by the statutes for the regulation of elections, passed under the princes of the House of Lancaster. A seat in the House of Commons had now begun to be an object of general ambition. Landed gentlemen, lawyers, even courtiers, served as burgesses, instead of those traders, sometimes, if we may judge from their names, of humble occupation, - who filled that station in former times. Boroughs had already fallen under the influence of neighbouring proprietors: and, from a curious passage in the Paston Letters (vol. i. p. 96. ), we find, that in the middle of the fifteenth century, the nomination of a young gentleman to serve for a borough, by the proprietor, or by a great man of the Court, was spoken of as not an unusual transaction. From this time the power of the Crown, of granting representation to new boroughs, formed a part of the regular praetice of the government, and was exercised without interruption for two hundred years. In the cases of Wales, Chester, and long after of Durham, representation was bestowed by statute, probably because it was thought that no inferior authority could have admitted Members from those territories, long subject to a distinct government, into the Parliament of England. In these ancient grants of representation, whether made by the King or by Parliament, we discover a great uniformity of principle, and an approach to the maxims of our present constitution. In Wales and Chester, as well as in England, the counties were distinguished from the towns; and the protection of their separate interests was committed to different representatives: the rights of election were diversified, according to the local interests and municipal constitution of the several towns. In the preamble of the Chester Act, representation is stated to be the means of securing the county from the wrong which it had suffered while it was unrepresented. It was bestowed on Wales with the other parts of the laws of England, of which it was thought the necessary companion; and the exercise of popular privileges is distinctly held out as one of the means which were to |