epresenting
all other classes who enjoyed political rights. When the House of
Commons thus assumed a definite and permanent form as a separate body, a
new check upon the power of the King appeared. The consent of two
separate bodies was now necessary before taxes could be imposed. The
development of these checks was hastened by the fact that the King found
it easier and safer to get the assent of these bodies to measures which
involved an exercise of the taxing power, than to attempt the collection
of taxes without their support. In this way the right of assenting to
all measures of taxation came in time to be recognized as belonging to
the two houses of Parliament. But this was a right not easily
established. It was claimed and fought for a long time before it finally
became a firmly established principle of the English Constitution.
Around the question of taxation centered all the earlier constitutional
struggles. The power to tax was the one royal prerogative which was
first limited. In time Parliament extended its powers and succeeded in
making its assent necessary to all governmental acts which vitally
affected the welfare of the nation, whether they involved an exercise of
the taxing power or not. The law-making power, however, as we understand
it now was seldom employed, the idea of social readjustment through
general legislation being a recent growth. But as revenues were
necessary, the taxing power was the one legislative function that was
constantly exercised. It is not strange then that the earlier
constitutional development should have turned mainly upon the relation
of the various political classes to the exercise of this power.

That English constitutional development resulted in a parliament
composed of two houses may be regarded as accidental. Instead of this
double check upon the King there might conceivably have been more than
two, or there might, as originally was the case, have been only one. Two
distinct elements, the secular nobility and the dignitaries of the
church, combined to form the House of Lords. The House of Commons was
also made up of two distinct constituencies, one urban and the other
rural. If each of these classes had deliberated apart and acquired the
right to assent to legislation as a separate body, a four-chambered
parliament, such as existed in Sweden up to 1866 and still survives in
Finland, would have been the result.[2]

The essential fact, everywhere to be observed in the de