to the requests and complaints of individuals and cities all over the world, and by the establishment of provincial assemblies, called Κοινά in the East and _concilia_ in the West. When the Romans acquired Greece and Asia they found that neighboring cities in these two regions had already formed religious organizations or political federations. One of these organizations, the assembly of Asia, toward the close of the first century B.C. asked permission to establish the cult of Rome and Augustus. This request was granted, and within the next century provincial assemblies were introduced into most of the provinces of the East and West, primarily to conduct the services of the imperial cult and to celebrate games in honor of the deified emperor. But when the representatives of the several cities of a province met in their annual assembly, it was natural for them to discuss provincial affairs of general interest, and in particular to consider the conduct of the governor and the members of his staff. They never acquired the right to legislate for a province, but they exercised rather freely the right to call the attention of the governor and the emperor to conditions in the province, and in the late empire it seems to be clear from the _Theodosian Code_ that they discussed questions of taxation, the public post, and cases of extortion by imperial officials. The members of these assemblies seem to have been true representatives of their respective cities, and not delegates with a mandate, and in one province, at least, Lycia, they were chosen by a system of proportionate representation. The Councils of the Church were the natural successors of the provincial assemblies. Like the assemblies they were concerned primarily with religious matters. The Provincial Council, meeting under the direction of the Metropolitan, was made up usually of the bishops of the province, but not infrequently we find presbyters, deacons, and laymen present, sent by their respective cities, and from the close of the fifth century, they, as well as the bishops, often vote. Marsiglio of Padua in the thirteenth century went so far as to assert that a General Council should be strictly representative of both clergy and laity, and that a province should have representatives according “to the number and quality” of its inhabitants, and in the following century Occam worked out a complete plan of representation for a Council. It has been suggested by Dunning in his _History of Political Theories_ that Marsiglio may have based his proposal on the system which he found in some of the medieval Italian cities. If that hypothesis is correct, we have a double line of descent in the later period, at least, for the representative idea. It matters little that the political powers of the provincial assemblies were limited, or that the bishops were the controlling element in the Councils of the Church; the essential facts are that representative