Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/350

336 delegation made the transition natural and easy. The knights and country gentlemen made now no scruple to assemble with the burgesses of the towns on this common principle, and all distinction was soon lost in the lower house, which thenceforth assumed a place and dignity worthy of its functions, impose the taxes on their own order. This great king was 500 years in advance of the legislators of the reign of George III., who lost an empire rather than admit the doctrine that there should be no taxation without representation. He not only voluntarily avowed the principle, but immediately acted upon it.



There was another institution which arose simultaneously with the House of Commons, and from precisely the same causes, the king's necessities and his admirable sense of political justice. Ho was obliged to levy contributions from the clergy; and he deemed it absolutely necessary that, as a body, they should also fiend up representatives to an assembly of their own to clergy, for the first time in English history, therefore, met by delegation as a lower house of convocation. Yet Edward was not so liberal where his own prerogative was concerned; and this reign presents tho narrative of a great contest for the confirmation of the Great Charter of the nation, and tho lesser charter, that of the forests. In both cases, however, the king was compelled to