BEPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 423 



tainecl only on condition that the obligations on either side 

 are fulfilled. Where they are not fulfilled the relation lapses, 

 and leaves outstanding those relations in which they are ful 

 filled. Commercial success and growth have thus, as their 

 inevitable concomitants, the maintenance of the respective 

 rights of those concerned, and a strengthening consciousness 

 of them. 



In brief, then, dissolving in various ways the old relation 

 of status, and substituting the new relation of contract (to 

 use Sir Henry Maine s antithesis), progressing industrialism 

 brings together masses of people who by their circumstances 

 are enabled, and by their discipline prompted, to modify the 

 political organization which militancy has bequeathed. 



498. It is common to speak of free forms of government 

 as having been initiated by happy accidents. Antagonisms 

 between different powers in the State, or different factions, 

 have caused one or other of them to bid for popular support, 

 with the result of increasing popular power. The king s 

 jealousy of the aristocracy has induced him to enlist the 

 sympathies of the people (sometimes serfs but more fre 

 quently citizens) and therefore to favour them ; or, otherwise, 

 the people have profited by alliance with the aristocracy in 

 resisting royal tyrannies and exactions. Doubtless, the facts 

 admit of being thus presented. With conflict there habitually 

 goes the desire for allies ; and throughout medieval Europe 

 while the struggles between monarchs and barons were 

 chronic, the support of the towns was important. Germany, 

 France, Spain, Hungary, furnish illustrations. 



But it is an error to regard occurrences of these kinds as 

 causes of popular power. They are to be regarded rather as 

 the conditions under which the causes take effect. These 

 incidental weakenings of pre-existing institutions, do but 

 furnish opportunities for the action of the pent-up force which 

 is ready to work political changes. Three factors in this 

 force may be distinguished : the relative mass of those com- 



