ABSTRACT
No relationship, sound or unsound, could exist until the functions of execution and representation had become differentiated. From the tension and the balance of the two powers- that of the ruler and that of the ruled- there evolved the written and the unwritten contracts of the constitution. The representative assembly is the consenting power, the petitioning, the approving and the criticizing, the accepting and the refusing power. The government must be able to govern and the citizens must be represented in order that they shall not be oppressed. The Western liberal democracies are a declining power in human affairs. Large mass electorates are something quite new, much newer than the ideals, the ideas, the institutions and the usages of the liberal state. Political orators often assume that the mass of the people voted their own liberties.
