Let us
consult experience, the guide that ought always to be followed whenever
it can be found.
The scheme of representation, as a substitute for a meeting of the
citizens in person, being at most but very imperfectly known to ancient
polity, it is in more modern times only that we are to expect
instructive examples. And even here, in order to avoid a research too
vague and diffusive, it will be proper to confine ourselves to the few
examples which are best known, and which bear the greatest analogy to
our particular case. The first to which this character ought to be
applied, is the House of Commons in Great Britain. The history of this
branch of the English Constitution, anterior to the date of Magna
Charta, is too obscure to yield instruction. The very existence of it
has been made a question among political antiquaries. The earliest
records of subsequent date prove that parliaments were to SIT only every
year; not that they were to be ELECTED every year. And even these annual
sessions were left so much at the discretion of the monarch, that, under
various pretexts, very long and dangerous intermissions were often
contrived by royal ambition.
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