repealed two centuries earlier when an at tempt was made by the House of Commons to get rid of it. So might the statutes con cerning wages; for both sets of statutes ceased to be heeded after seats in the House of Commons once became in de mand and men were outbidding each other in their eagerness to find constituencies to elect them. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries no men were more eager to be elected than the lawyers. All through the fifteenth cen tury they were laying siege to the boroughs, which were fortunate enough to be possessed of the much valued right to send members to the House of Commons. Bribery in parlia mentary elections is often spoken of as mod ern. It has been written of beginning with the Stuarts. Bribery of individual electors may perhaps be dated about that time, although it was not general until after the Restoration. But for a century or a century and a half before the beginning of the Stuart dynasty candidates for Parliament had been bribing constituencies in bulk. Bribery really began when candidates first offered to serve for nothing, and gave written undertakings that, if elected, they would not claim from their constituents the wages which the law enacted should be paid to all mem bers of the House of Commons. To lawyers the credit or the discredit of introducing this practice of bribing constituencies in bulk must be given. It was begun in the boroughs; and it was begun there for two reasons. In the first place it was easier to arrange a bargain of this kind in the boroughs than in the counties. In the counties, the electors were scattered over a comparatively large area of country. In the boroughs, the electors were concentrated in comparatively small places. They were few in number and were easily assembled, and in most places they had mu nicipal corporations to act as go-betweens in the making of a bargain. In the next place, the lawyers had more to do with the
boroughs than with the counties. In the period between the beginning of the House of Commons and the end of the Tudor dynasty it was a poor borough which was without a recorder. Later on it came to be regarded as not absolutely necessary that the recorder of a borough should be a law yer. In the seventeenth and eighteenth cen turies members of the House of Lords and other owners and patrons of parliamentary boroughs, who had never been called to the bar, often held the office of recorder. In these cases a deputy who was a lawyer was necessary. Prior to the beginning of the reign of the first of the Stuarts, however, the recorder was a lawyer, and was usually the actual as well as the nominal holder of the office. He was the guardian of the privileges of the citizens or the burgesses and the custodian of the records and charters of the municipality. It was his duty to register new acts and by laws. He was also a justice of the peace, and was the public orator for the municipal body on all ceremonial occasions. To these duties in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially in the fifteenth, the recorder frequently added the represen tation of his borough in Parliament. As lawyers, the recorders found that it added greatly to their importance to be of the House of Commons; and in many of the municipal records of this period there are entries showing how the recorder secured election to Parliament. The plan was very simple. In the earli est days of the House of Commons, even when payment of wages and expenses was assured, citizens and burgesses had not com peted much among themselves for the honor of representing their cities or their boroughs in Parliament. Membership of Parliament was not regarded in those days as confer ring honor, and when a town or a county chose its representatives from its own midst, the sheriff was careful to make the members find sureties for their attendance. When
