In all the elements of power, the region beyond Trent is now at least a third part of England.

When in our own time the representative system was adjusted to the altered state of the country, almost all the small boroughs which it was necessary to disfranchise were in the south.

Two thirds of the new members given to great provincial towns were given to the north.

If therefore any English government should suffer the Convocations, as now constituted, to meet for the despatch of business, two independent synods would be legislating at the same time for one Church.

It is by no means impossible that one assembly might adopt canons which the other might reject, that one assembly might condemn as heretical propositions which the other might hold to be orthodox, [501] In the seventeenth century no such danger was apprehended.