relatively to the rest of the population. In no part of England did three such important towns as Lynn, Yarmouth and Norwich lie within so short a distance of one another, not to mention others which were then rising in the number and consideration of their inhabitants. But the statements made of the mortality in the towns will not bear examination they represent mere guesses, nothing more. This, however, may be assumed as certain that the death-rate in the towns at such a time as this cannot have been less than the death-rate in the villages, and that the scourge which so cruelly devastated the huts and cabins of the countrymen was not likely to fall less heavily upon the filthy dens and hovels of the men of the streets. Town life in the fourteenth century was a very dreadful life for the masses.

How did the great bulk of the people comport themselves under the pressure of this unparalleled calamity? How did their faith stand the strain that was put upon it? How did their moral instincts support them? Was there any confusion and despair? What effectssocial, political, economical-followed from a catastrophe so terrible? How did the clergy behave during the tremendous ordeal through which they had to pass? What glimpses do we get of the horrors or the sorrows of that time-of the romantic, of the pathetic side of life?

I hope to deal with some of these questions in another paper; for on all these matters our Records have something to tell. I believe they have a great deal more to tell than, in the present state of our knowledge, most men could be easily brought to suspect. The evidence is ready at hand. Who will examine it?

The Rolls of Manor Courts dating back to the beginning of the fourteenth century still exist in large numbers. They are for the most part hidden away in private depositories, a very small proportion of them having found its way, or being at all likely to find its way, into our public archives. Except for the satisfaction of antiquarian curiosity, and for the light they throw upon certain historical problems, these Rolls are as useless as our grandmothers' spinning wheels. But because they do throw some light upon these problems, some students are beginning earnestly to ask, or will soon ask, that they may be allowed to see these documents, consult them, make notes from them, turn them to account in fact, before they are flung upon the dust-heapsfor they are not likely to be consigned to the flames. Unhappily, they who are able and willing to devote much time to the study of such sources of information are few, and the skilled labourers are hardly to be had for the asking. But this is not all-there is an inveterate reluctance on the part of some people to allow inquisitive explorers to look at their papers; and as a rule family solicitors strongly object.

Observe that papers burn easily—you may light your fires with them. Parchment does not burn-if you thrust it in the fire it will go some way towards putting your fire out, and it will infallibly make a smell.

to non-professional Paul Prys poking into their clients' deed-boxes. I hardly wonder at the fact-I only deplore it. While such difficulty exists, however, time is devouring its thousands, and neglect and ignorance their tens of thousands, and these written voices of the past are perishing-going down into silence. Must it be so?

For myself, I hereby protest to all those whom it may concern, that if any of those gracious and much-favoured persons-noble and gentle-who may still possess the ancient evidences of their manorial rights will be pleased to grant me access to them, and allow me to examine them, I will concern myself with nothing and look at nothing less than five hundred years old: I will eat my own bread and drink my own-tea. I will hold my tongue, and get in nobody's way. And though it is slanderously reported that any man with the remotest pretension to be an antiquary can no more be honest than a horse-dealer can, yet I will prove myself-as far as in me lies—an exception to the general rule, and I will steal less than, under the circumstances, would be stolen by anyone else.

AUGUSTUS JESSOPP.

PROPORTIONAL

VERSUS MAJORITY

REPRESENTATION.

'SHALL We have regard in any degree, and if so in what degree, to the principle of the community as distinct from the individual?' To this question, addressed to the House of Commons by the Prime Minister in the speech in which he moved the second reading of the Franchise Bill, no answer has as yet been forthcoming, and yet on the answer which Parliament may give depend not only the character of the coming Redistribution Bill, but the chances of good or bad government, of national prosperity or national disaster.

It must, I think, be obvious to almost every one that, whether we aim at the representation of communities, or of the individuals who compose those communities, it will be impossible to resist for long the demand of those who insist that representation shall in every case be apportioned to population. I am aware there are some politicians of high position in the State who still cherish the conviction that we can secure that variety in the representation which has always been regarded as essential to the composition of a good House of Commons by the preservation of anomalies. The ground, however, on which this conviction is based grows more rotten every day. So long as any locality is invested with an amount of Parliamentary privilege denied to other places, it will be the object of envy, and its subjection to a position of equality with the remaining constituencies will be the aim of every district less favoured than itself. If, then, we wish to deal with redistribution in such a manner as to secure, as Sir S. Northcote demands, that the settlement we arrive at now should be one of an enduring character, and one that will not require to be opened up again every few years,' we must abandon the idea of endeavouring to provide for the representation of the various interests of the country by a system based on the careful maintenance of anomalies. We must, on the other hand, build up our system of redistribution on some principle which, once accepted, will remain for ever; and the only principle which admits of finality, and is incapable of development, is that which demands for every vote, as nearly as electoral arrangements will allow, an equal political value, or which, in other words, insists that the vote of every single elector shall count for as much as that of any other elector.

Accepting then as inevitable the principle which assigns to each constituency a representation in proportion to its population, we have two alternatives between which to choosc—

1. Electoral districts and the representation of the majority.

2. Electoral districts returning three or more members with some form of minority vote.

I shall endeavour to prove that if it is our honest desire to arrive at the nearest possible approach to the realisation of the Radical formula, 'to every vote an equal value,' it is absolutely necessary that the coming Redistribution Bill should be based on the principle which aims at giving effect to the representation of the individual as opposed to that of the community, and that the only means of giving effect to this principle lies in the adoption of some system of proportional representation.

Let me, however, recognise at once that at present the principle of Parliamentary representation is that each constituency is in itself an integer, the prevailing sense of which shall alone be represented in the House of Commons. For although the principle of individual as opposed to community representation was recognised by the House of Peers, and inserted by them in the shape of Lord Cairns's amendment in the Reform Bill of 1867, and notwithstanding that in School Board elections the principle of individual representation holds undisputed sway, in Parliamentary elections, with the exception of the threecornered constituencies, the community alone is represented, to the exclusion of the individual.' Mr. Bright, who has been from the first a vigorous opponent of the principle of individual representation, denounces it because it is,' as he said during the Reform debates of 1867, an unconstitutional innovation;' because, as he repeated last year at Keighley, 'it involves a departure from the old lines of the Constitution, which, whatever its failings, we have a right to regard with some degree of reverence and affection;' and because, as he said at a recent dinner of the Eighty Club, he prefers the honest and ancient mode of allowing, where elections are concerned, majorities to determine who shall be returned.'

Mr. Bright seems to share the error of those who believe that because a majority has the right to make a law, therefore the majority alone has the right to send a representative. The two things, however, are absolutely distinct. What we ought to aim at is, not the representation of the majority, but the representation of

Charles A. Buckalew, late U.S. Senator from Pennyslvania, in an address to the Social Science Association, Philadelphia: Upon a careful reading of speeches made by John Bright in 1867 at Manchester, at Birmingham, and in the House of Commons, in hostility to cumulative voting and to the limited vote as embodied in the Cairns amendment to the Reform Bill, I became thoroughly convinced of the utter weakness of all possible objections to minority representation (as it was then called). A first-class man, labouring with great earnestness on repeated occasions, was unable to make good a single objection to Reform, and was compelled, in the final debate on the 8th of August, to plant himself upon purely Conservative ground, and insist upon the novelty of the proposition before the House.'

the whole and government by the majority. For if we seek to represent only the larger half of the electorate, and then proceed to pass such laws as may seem good to the larger half of a Legislature so elected, we have no security that the laws so passed are not made by men who represent a minority of the people. It has been often pointed out that a majority of an assembly elected on the plan of community representation may represent a minorit, of the whole: e.g. if two-thirds of the electors only are represented in Parliament, and a two-thirds majority regulate the character of legislation, then the majority of Parliament which frames the laws represents a minority of the electors, for of, which is less than a half.

Now the reason why the principle of community representation has hitherto been allowed to stand unquestioned is, because so long as there was a wide difference between the borough and county franchise, and a great variety in the size of the constituencies, the principle of community representation, as opposed to the individual, secured to us that variety in the representation which the different interests of the country demanded. But as soon as we establish in every constituency the same uniform electorate, the representation of localities no longer supplies us with any security for variety of representation. It by no means follows that because a particular method of election secured us a fairly representative House when we had a variety of franchise, that it will do the same when we have a uniformity of franchise. Unless we recognise this plain and evident truth, and take measures to set up a new form of security which shall prove less objectionable, but not less effectual, than the old form of security that we have decided to remove, we run serious risk of bringing about a change of a far more revolutionary character than that involved in the substitution of proportional for majority representation. The principle of representative government does not necessarily demand, as Mr. Bright seems to imagine, that districts shall be represented instead of men. What it demands is that the electoral machinery employed shall be such as to secure an approximately fair representation of electoral opinion. We have hitherto secured this by the plan of variety of franchise and locality representation.

We have now determined to alter one part of our machinery, and there is great danger that if we change one part of our complicated system without changing the other parts, we put the whole machinery out of gear.'

The chief and vital question raised by the present Reform Bill is this. Can the plan of representing the prevailing sense of the.community only, which could be safely depended upon to give us a good House of Commons approximately reflecting the different interests of the country so long as there existed a broad distinction between the borough and county franchise-can this plan be equally depended upon to give anything like true representation of opinion when we