ainly much against these antiquaries; and it passed
at one time for a surrender of popular principles, and almost a breach
of privilege, to dispute the lineal descent of the House of Commons from
the witenagemot.[76]

The true ground of these pretensions to antiquity was a very
well-founded persuasion that no other argument would be so conclusive to
ordinary minds, or cut short so effectually all encroachments of the
prerogative. The populace of every country, but none so much as the
English, easily grasp the notion of right, meaning thereby something
positive and definite; while the maxims of expediency or theoretical
reasoning pass slightly over their minds. Happy indeed for England that
it is so! But we have here to do with the fact alone. And it may be
observed that several pious frauds were practised to exalt the antiquity
of our constitutional liberties. These began, perhaps, very early, when
the imaginary laws of Edward the Confessor were so earnestly demanded.
They were carried further under Edward I. and his successor, when the
fable of privileges granted by the Conqueror to the men of Kent was
devised; when Andrew Horn filled his Mirrour of Justices with fictitious
tales of Alfred; and, above all, when the "Method of holding parliaments
in the time of Ethelred" was fabricated, about the end of Richard II.'s
reign; an imposture which was not too gross to deceive Sir Edward
Coke.[77]

[Sidenote: Causes of summoning deputies from boroughs.]

There is no great difficulty in answering the question why the deputies
of boroughs were finally and permanently ingrafted upon parliament by
Edward I.[78] The government was becoming constantly more attentive to
the wealth that commerce brought into the kingdom, and the towns were
becoming more flourishing and more independent. But chiefly there was a
much stronger spirit of general liberty and a greater discontent at
violent acts of prerogative from the era of Magna Charta; after which
authentic recognition of free principles many acts which had seemed
before but the regular exercise of authority were looked upon as
infringements of the subject's right. Among these the custom of setting
tallages at discretion would naturally appear the most intolerable; and
men were unwilling to remember that the burgesses who paid them were
indebted for the rest of their possessions to the bounty of the crown.
In Edward I.'s reign, even before the great act of Confirmation of the
Charte