Petition
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Petition. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a formal statement to a ruler or government requesting the granting of a favor or the passing of desired legislation. A petition consists of two parts, a formal statement of the request made and a list of signatures. In order to avoid throwing the brunt of the petition upon the one who signs first, sailors long since invented a form of signature called the round robin in which each man places his name on the spoke of a wheel, or in the circumference of a circle. The right to petition the sovereign was granted by King John by the famous Magna Charta signed at Runnymede. The framers of the United States Constitution took the view that the colonists inherited this right. They merely inserted a provision to the effect that Congress shall make no law to abridge "the right of the people to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Among the famous petitions presented to Congress in this country were those for the abolition of the slave trade, and for the prohibition of slavery in the District of Columbia . These petitions became so annoying that a rule was passed that no further petitions on the subject of slavery should be considered. This procedure, known as "gag law," was the subject of the most acrimonious debate. A statute of Parliament requires that public petitions should be couched in the following terms: We, your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom , do most humbly beseech your Majesty that it may be enacted; etc. In 1848 a monster petition was presented to Parliament requesting that workingmen be allowed to vote. It was signed by over a million people. In modern times, petitions are numerous. Petitions play an important part in local life also. Petitions for a half holiday, an increase of wages, the appointment of a favorite citizen as postmaster, a change of school district boundaries, the laying out of a new road, and the granting or refusal of a saloon license are familiar examples. They are intended primarily as a means of obtaining an expression of public opinion. It is so much easier to sign than to refuse to sign, that petitions do not always obtain the consideration they would otherwise receive. See Round Robin
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an entreaty, a request, a supplication, a prayer; a solemn, earnest, or formal prayer of entreaty addressed to the Supreme Being, or to a superior in rank and power. A single article, or several, in a prayer; as, the several petitions of the Lord's Prayer. A formal written request or application made to one vested with authority, or to a legislative or administrative body, soliciting a favor, grant, right, or act of mercy. The paper or document containing such request or application; especially applied in legal language to an application to a court or judge, as a petition for a divorce. of the rights of the people put forward by the Parliament of England in the third year of the reign of Charles I., and assented to by him. They are: (1) That no man be compelled to pay any moneys to the state without common consent by act of Parliament. (2) That no person be imprisoned for refusing the same, nor any freeman be imprisoned without any cause showed, to which he might make answer. (3) That soldiers and mariners be not billeted in the houses of the people. (4) That commissions be no more issued for punishing by the summary process of martial law.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The constitutional core stands: the First Amendment right "to petition the government for a redress of grievances" is unchanged, and the gag rule Aiton's described was already dead, rescinded by the House in 1844. What has changed utterly is the mechanics. Aiton's 1910 sailors' round robin and the Chartists' 1848 sheets of signatures have given way to online petitions gathered in hours: the British Parliament's petitions website guarantees a government response at 10,000 signatures and consideration for a Commons debate at 100,000, and the White House ran a comparable "We the People" site from 2011. Aiton's shrewd closing note that "it is so much easier to sign than to refuse to sign" reads today as a prophecy of what critics call clicktivism, and the parallel with the mass petition of 1848 is closer than it looks: the Chartists claimed over five million names, but clerks who counted found far fewer.
Written for this edition, 2026.