The partiality of sheriffs in leaving out boroughs, which were accustomed in old time to come to the parliament, was repressed, as far as law could repress it, by a statute of Richard II., which imposed a fine on them for such neglect, and upon any member of parliament who should absent himself from his duty.[271] But it is, I think, highly probable that a great part of those who were elected from the boroughs did not trouble themselves with attendance in parliament. The sheriff even found it necessary to take sureties for their execution of so burthensome a duty, whose names it was usual, down to the end of the fifteenth century, to endorse upon the writ along with those of the elected.[272] This expedient is not likely to have been very successful; and the small number, comparatively speaking, of writs for expenses of members for boroughs, which have been published by Prynne, while those for the knights of shires are almost complete, leads to a strong presumption that their attendance was very defective. This statute of Richard II. produced no sensible effect. [Sidenote: Who the electors in boroughs were.] By what persons the election of burgesses was usually made is a question of great obscurity, which is still occasionally debated before committees of parliament. It appears to have been the common practice for a very few of the principal members of the corporation to make the election in the county-court, and their names, as actual electors, are generally returned upon the writ by the sheriff.[273] But we cannot surely be warranted by this to infer that they acted in any other capacity than as deputies of the whole body, and indeed it is frequently expressed that they chose such and such persons by the assent of the community;[274] by which word, in an ancient corporate borough, it seems natural to understand the freemen participating in its general franchises, rather than the ruling body, which, in many instances at present, and always perhaps in the earliest age of corporations, derived its authority by delegation from the rest. The consent, however, of the inferior freemen we may easily believe to have been merely nominal; and, from being nominal, it would in many places come by degrees not to be required at all; the corporation, specially so denominated, or municipal government, acquiring by length of usage an exclusive privilege in election of members of parliament, as they did in local administration. This, at least, appears to me a more probable hypothesis than that of Dr. Brady, who limits the original right of election in all corporate boroughs to the aldermen or other capital burgesses.[275] [Sidenote: Members of the house of commons.]