594 '^HE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



produced a permanent separation between the representative body and 

 the consultative body. 



Thus at first of little account, and growing in power only because 

 the free portion of the community occupied in production and distri- 

 bution grew in mass and importance, so that its petitions, treated with 

 increasing respect and more frequently yielded to, began to originate 

 legislation, the representative body came to be that part of the gov- 

 erning agency which more and more expresses the sentiments and ideas 

 of industrialism. While the monarch and upper house are the prod- 

 ucts of that ancient regime of compulsory cooperation, the spirit of 

 which they still manifest, though in decreasing degrees, the lower 

 house is the product of that modern reghne of voluntary cooperation 

 which is replacing it ; and in an increasing degree this lower house 

 carries out the wishes of people habituated to a daily life regulated by 

 contract instead of by status. 



To preA'^ent misconception, it must be remarked before summing up, 

 that an account of representative bodies which have been in modern 

 days all at once created is not here called for. Colonial Legislatures, 

 consciously framed in conformity with traditions brought from the 

 mother-country, illustrate the genesis of senatorial and representative 

 bodies in but a restricted sense ; showing, as they do, how the struct- 

 ures of jDarent societies reproduce themselves in derived societies, so 

 far as materials and circumstances allow ; but not showing how these 

 structures were originated. Still less need we notice those cases in 

 which, after revolutions, peoples who have lived under despotisms are 

 led by imitation suddenly to establish representative bodies. Here we 

 are concerned only with the gradual evolution of such bodies. 



Originally supreme, though passive, the third element in the triune 

 political structure, subjected more and more as militant activity devel- 

 ops its appropriate organization, begins to reacquire power when war 

 ceases to be chronic. Subordination relaxes as fast as it becomes less 

 imperative. Awe of the ruler, local or general, and accompanying 

 manifestations of fealty, decrease ; and especially so where the prestige 

 of supernatural origin dies out. Where the life is rural, the old rela- 

 tions long survive in qualified forms ; but clans or feudal groups clus- 

 tered together in towns, mingled with numbers of unattached immi- 

 grants, become in various ways less controllable ; while by their habits 

 their members are educated to increasing independence. The small 

 industrial groups, thus growing up within a nation consolidated and 

 organized by militancy, can but gradually diverge in nature from the 

 rest. For a long time they remain partially militant in their structures 

 and in their relations to other parts of the community. At first char- 

 tered towns stand substantially on the footing of fiefs, paying feudal 

 dues and owing military service. They form within themselves unions, 

 more or less coercive in character, for mutual protection. They often 



