lower house. That
principle grew historically from the principle that all taxation must
be voted by the people, directly or indirectly; must be with the
common consent and for the common benefit. That principle was
established by the House of Commons, and consequently they arrogated
to themselves that part of the legislative power. That principle we
have retained in our Federal Constitution, and in most of our State
constitutions; all of which have the double house.

The first functions of Parliament were restricted to voting taxes.
The king called the barons together merely to get "aids," and they
wouldn't give them until he recognized what they chose to call the old
law of England, always a pre-existing law. It was still a long time
before there was constructive legislation. Just as, before the
Conquest, in the seventh century, we find it said of the law of
Wihtred: "Then the great lords with the consent of all came to a
resolution upon these ordinances and added them to the customary
laws of the men of Kent"; and, in the time of King Alfred: "I, then,
Alfred, king, gathered these [laws] together, and commanded many of
those to be written which our forefathers held, those which to me
seemed good; and many of those which seemed to me not good I rejected
them, by the counsel of my 'witan,' and they then said that it seemed
good to them all to be holden";[1] so, after the Conquest, every
Norman king was made on his coronation oath to promise this, the law
of Edward the Confessor, until Magna Charta; after that they promised
to respect Magna Charta instead, which was thus reissued or confirmed
thirty-two times in the eighty-two years which intervened between
Runnymede and the final Confirmation of Charters under Edward I. Thus,
William the Conqueror himself, in his charter to the city of London,
says, in Anglo-Saxon: "_And I do you to wit that I will that ye two be
worthy of all the laws that ye were worthy of in King Edward's day_."
So the Domesday Book records "_the customs_," that is to say,
the laws, of various towns and counties; these bodies of customs
invariably containing a mere list of penalties for the breach of the
established law; while later charters usually give the inhabitants of
a town all the customs and free privileges enjoyed by the citizens of
London.

[Footnote 1: Stubbs's "Charters," p. 62.]

But after the Conquest laws could only be enacted with the concurrence
of the king; and the phrase was,