ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews whether there has been a close relation between the structure of the state and the economic composition of society. In reviewing the history of government in Western Europe, from the disintegration of the Roman Empire to the opening years of the nineteenth century, it has been discovered that wherever the simple sword-won despotism of the war leader, prince or king, is supplemented or superseded by some form of representation. It is not the people, considered as abstract equal personalities, who are represented, but it is propertied groups, estates. After the era of individualism set in it was more difficult to trace the line between economic groups than it had been in the middle ages. Statesmen, at each period, had in mind not abstract human equality, but what Dr. Stubbs characterized as a constitution in which each class of society should be admitted to a share of power and control.
