Even in England a medieval Parliament was scarcely a
legislature in our sense of the word. Legislation of a permanent and general
kind was an occasional expedient. New laws were usually made in answer to the petitions
of the Estates; but the laws were framed by the King and the Crown lawyers, and
often took a form which by no means expressed the desires of the petitioners.
The most important changes in the law of the land were not made, but grew,
through the accumulated effect of judicial decisions. The chief function of
Parliaments, after the voting of supplies, was to criticise and to complain; to
indicate the shortcomings of a policy which they had not helped to make. Except
as the guardians of individual liberty they cannot be said to have made
medieval government more scientific or efficient.
In the fifteenth century the English
Commons criticised the government of the Lancastrian dynasty with the utmost
freedom; but it was left for Yorkist and Tudor despots to diagnose aright the
maladies of the body politic. Englishmen and Frenchmen alike were well advised
when, at the close of the Middle Ages, they committed the task of national
reconstruction to sovereigns who ignored or circumvented parliamentary
institutions. A parliament was admirable as a check or a balance, as a symbol
of popular sovereignty, as a school of political intelligence. But no
parliament that had been brought together in any medieval state was fitted to
take the lead in shaping policy, or in reforming governmental institutions.
