During three centuries these powers have tended to centralization in France; so much so, that if we would study the government of the country we must attend to them all, for they were all united and limited to the same individuals. Richelieu, Louis XIV, the Revolution, Napoleon, though in different positions, seem to have inherited the same projects and moved in the same direction. Such has not been the case in England. The administrative power there, for example, is to the present time divided and subdivided; it belongs either to those who are themselves interested in its movements, or to local magistrates, independent of the central power of the State, and forming no corporation among themselves. The judicial power itself is divided. It was so to some extent, through another and stronger cause, in the earlier times of England's social life, as in all societies which have made but small advancement. Different powers are then not only distributed but commingled. The legislative power is no more central than others: its functions are continually usurped by local powers. Judicial power is almost entirely local. Centralization commences with the executive power properly so called, and this for a long time remains the only one in which any centralizing tendency is found. The proof of this is furnished by the feudal system, when almost all powers--those connected with justice, militia, taxes, &c.--were local, although the feudal hierarchy had at its head the king, and the assembly of the most important possessors of fiefs. In this distribution and confusion of powers at the period we are considering, the institutions which we have especially to study in order to find the origin of representative government, are those which were central, that is to say, the Parliament and the king. On the Continent, centralization has resulted from an absolute power which has broken up and absorbed all local powers. In England, on the other hand, local powers have subsisted after a thousand vicissitudes, while they have increasingly regulated and defined their own action. A central government has emanated from them by degrees--it has progressively formed and extended itself. We shall trace this formation step by step, and shall only study local institutions as they relate to this one fact; and we shall see that this circumstance has been the principal cause of the establishment of a free government in England. {290} The Anglo-Norman Parliament.