REPRESENTATIVE BODIES, 591 



promised that no scutage or aid, save those which were established, 

 should be imposed without consent of the national council, there per- 

 petually recurred, both before and after the expansion of Parliament, 

 endeavors on the king's part to get supplies without redressing 

 grievances, and endeavors on the part of Parliament to make the 

 voting of supplies contingent on fulfillment of promises to redress 

 grievances. 



On the issue of this struggle depended the establishment of popu- 

 lar power, as we are shown by comparing the histories of the French 

 and Spanish Parliaments with that of the English Parliament. Quota- 

 tions above given prove that the Cortes originally established, and for 

 a time maintained, the right to comply with or to refuse the king's 

 requests for money, and to impose their conditions ; but they eventu- 

 ally failed to get their conditions fulfilled. 



In the struggling condition of Spanish liberty under Charles I, the Crown 

 began to neglect answering the petitions of Cortes, or to use unsatisfactory 

 generalities of expression. This gave rise to many remonstrances. The depu- 

 ties insisted, in 1523, on having answers before they granted money. They 

 repeated the same contention in 1525, and obtained a general law, inserted in 

 the Recopilacion, enacting that the king should answer all their petitions be- 

 fore he dissolved the assembly. This, however, was disregarded as before. 



And thereafter rapidly went on the decay of parliamentary power. 

 Different in form, but the same in nature, was the change which 

 occurred in France. Having at one time, as shown above, made 

 the granting of money conditional on the obtainment of justice, 

 the States-General was induced to surrender its restraining powers. 

 Charles VII 



obtained fi*om the states of the royal domains w^hich met in 1439 that they 

 [the tallies] should be declared permanent, and from 1444 he levied them as 

 such i. e., uninterruptedly and without previous vote. . . . The permanence 

 of the tallies was extended to the provinces annexed to the crown, but these 

 preserved the right of voting them by their provincial states. ... In the hands 

 of Charles VII and Louis XI the royal impost tended to be freed from all control. 

 ... Its amount increased more and more. 



"Whence, as related by Dareste, it resulted that, " when the tallies 

 and aides . . . had been made permanent, the convocation of the 

 States-General ceased to be necessary. They were little more than 

 show assemblies." But, in our own case, during the century succeed- 

 ing the final establishment of Parliament, continued struggles neces- 

 sitated by royal evasions, trickeries, and falsehoods, brought an in- 

 creasing power to withhold supplies until petitions had been at- 

 tended to. 



Admitting that this issue was furthered by the conflicts of politi- 

 cal factions, which diminished the coercive power of the king, the 

 truth to be emphasized is that the increase of a free industrial popula- 



