For in these young republics formidable difficulties lay in the way of securing any popular control whatever over administration. In the first place the general assembly, which was to be the pledge of the people’s liberties, and to assure to them the final word about the taxes they had to pay and the manner in which they were to be governed, proved in its actual working but a poor security for freedom. It would seem sometimes that in the hurry and excitement of expanding trade, men busy in their shops had as little time or attention to bestow on serious politics as American citizens of a later date; or perhaps the very opposite accident might befall the borough, and a heterogeneous and unmanageable mob gathered at the place of assembly, where strangers and unenfranchised journeymen pushed their way in among the lawful citizens. But a tumultuous gathering of ignorant and over-tasked artizans and poor householders crowding from the narrow lanes of the borough must manifestly have been a very rare and occasional expedient, and at the best meant an assembly incapable of real business. In general it would seem that any small number of burgesses who happened to be present at a meeting in the common hall or at the court leet, or a select group of the better class specially summoned by the mayor,[466] were taken to represent the general body of inhabitants, and their consent was legally counted as conveying the assent of the burghers at large. From the very first, and under the most favourable circumstances, it is evident that the assembly gave no real security to the commonalty, that through its gatherings they could never hope to bring sustained or efficient pressure to bear on the governing class, and that “the entire assent and consent of the whole community” was for the most part simply taken for granted. If the theory of government by the people for the people already existed in law books and ordinances the means of realizing such an ideal had yet to be found.