privileges which, in these days, constitute the House of Commons a collateral part of the government: they were in those times called up only to provide for the wants of the king, and approve the resolutions taken by him and the assembly of the Lords. But it was nevertheless a great point gained, to have obtained the right of uttering their complaints, assembled in a body and in a legal way-to have acquired, instead of a dangerous resource of insurrections, a lawful and regular means of influencing the motions of the government, and thenceforth to have become a part of it. Whatever disadvantage might attend the station at first allotted to the representatives of the people, it was soon to be compensated by the preponderance the people necessarily acquire, when they are enabled to act and move with method, and especially with concert.t

And indeed this privilege of naming representatives, insignificant as it might then appear, presently manifested itself by the most considerable effects. In spite of his reluctance, and after many evasions unworthy of so great a king, Edward was obliged to confirm the Great Charter; he even confirmed it eleven times in the course of his reign. It was moreover enacted, that whatever should be done contrary to it should be null and void; that it should be read

*The end mentioned in the summons sent to the Lords was, de arduis negotiis regni tractatur et consilium impensuri: the requisition sent to the Commons was, ad faciendum et consentiendum. The power enjoyed by the latter was even inferior to what they might have expected from the summons sent to them. "In most of the ancient statutes they are not so much as named; and in several, even when they are mentioned, they are distinguished as petitioners merely, the assent of the Lords being expressed in contradistinction to the request of the Commons."-See on this subject the preface to the Collection of the Statutes at Large, by Ruff head, and the authorities quoted therein.

+ France had, indeed, also her assemblies of the general estates of the kingdom, in the same manner as England had her parliament; but then it was only the deputies of the towns within the particular domain of the crown, that is, for a very small part of the nation, who, under the name of the third estate, were admitted in those estates; and it is easy to conceive that they acquire no great influence in an assembly of sovereigns who gave the law to their lord paramount. Hence, when these disappeared, the maxim became immediately established, The will of the king is the will of the law :-in old French, Que veut le roy, ce veut la loy.

twice a year in all cathedrals; and that the penalty of excommunication should be denounced against any one who should presume to violate it.*

At length he converted into an established law a privilege of which the English had hitherto had only a precarious enjoyment; and, in the statute de tallagio non concedendo, he decreed, that no tax should be laid, nor impost levied, without the joint consent of the Lords and Commons.† A

* Confirmationes Chartarum, cap. 2, 3, 4.

"Nullum tallagium vel auxilium, per nos, vel hæredes nostros, in regno nostro ponatur seu levetur, sine voluntate et assensu archiepiscoporum, episcoporum, comitum, baronum, militum, burgensium, et aliorum liberorum hominum de regno nostro." Stat. an. 34, Ed. I. stat. 4, c. 1.

The statute 25 Ed. I. 6, declares "that no manner of aids, tasks, nor prizes should be taken but by the common assent of the realm, and for the common people thereof, saving the ancient aids and prizes then due and accustomed:" these were for making the king's eldest son a knight, marrying his eldest daughter, and redeeming his person from captivity.-Ed.

The 15th of Edward II. (1322) although it lay long dormant, and does not appear among the statutes until the official edition of the laws was published in the beginning of the present century, yet thoroughly established the authority of parliament by setting forth that the matters to be "established for the suite of the king and his heirs, and for the state of the realm and of the people, shall be treated, accorded, and established in Parliament by the king, and by the assent of the Prelates, Earls, Barons, and the Commonalty of the realm, accordingly as had been before accustomed."-Ed.

Edward I., in order to insure safety of life and protection to the towns, villages, highways, pastures, and woods, and for the peaceful occupation of the husbandry, manufactures, and trade of the realm, established the Court of Trail Bâton, consisting of Commissioners with summary jurisdiction to try all crimes and disorders, and to inflict severe punishments on all who were found guilty. They made circuits through the several counties of the kingdom, and inflicted such severe punishments, and such exorbitant fines, that they carried terror over the whole country. But although the fines replenished the king's exhausted treasury, so terrible were those sentences and punishments that when the disorders were suppressed, he withdrew the commission. He, however, never willingly abated any part of the royal prerogative, and was compelled to confirm the Magna Charta by signing the statute Confir matio Chartarum, declaring it to be allowed as common law, although it became by this statute de facto written law; and that sentence of excommunication should be pronounced against all those who contrary to its authority or in any way infringed it. By the statute De Donis Con

most important statute this, which, in conjunction with Magna Charta, forms the basis of the English constitution. If from the latter the English are to date the origin of their liberty, from the former they are to date the establishment of it and as the Great Charter was the bulwark that protected the freedom of individuals, so was the statute in question the engine which protected the charter itself, and by the help of which the people were thenceforth to make legal conquests over the authority of the crown.

This is the period at which we must stop, in order to take a distant view, and contemplate the different prospect which the rest of Europe then presented.

The efficient causes of slavery were daily operating and gaining strenth. The independence of the nobles on the one hand, the ignorance and weakness of the people on the other, continued to be extreme: the feudal government still continued to diffuse oppression and misery; and such was the confusion of it, that it even took away all hopes of amendment.

France, still bleeding from the extravagance of a nobility incessantly engaged in groundless wars, either with each other or with the king, was again desolated by the tyranny of that same nobility, haughtily jealous of their liberty, or rather of their anarchy. The people, oppressed by those

*

ditionalibus he greatly reduced the freedom of alienating lands, and originated the entailing of his estates; but he mitigated this law and the payment of fines; and by the statute Quia Emptores he compelled all those who purchased alienated estates, to hold of him as tenants in capite. By the statute De Religiosis, the alienation of lands to the Church, and religious and corporate bodies, was adjudged illegal. No law gave more satisfaction than the statute prohibiting alienation of lands in mortmain. The statute Quo warranto, for inquiring into the titles of estates, gave great dissatisfaction.-Ed.

Notwithstanding his arbitrary disposition, Edward was not only a great prince, but a great legislator. For expediting cases, he divided the Exchequer into four Courts, appointed Justices of the Peace, abolished the office of High Justiciary, and, although his laws had been frequently evaded, especially during the Tudor and Stuart dynasty, they have never been erased from the Statute Book, and they still form the strongest elements of the British Constitution.- Ed.

* “Not contented with oppression, they added insult. When the gentility," says Mezeray, "pillaged and committed exactions on the peasantry, they called the poor sufferer, in derision, Jaques bon homme

who ought to have guided and protected them, loaded with insults by those who existed by their labour, revolted on all sides. But their tumultuous insurrections had scarcely any other object than that of giving vent to the anguish with which their hearts were filled. They had no thoughts of entering into a general combination; still less of changing the form of government, and laying a regular plan of public liberty.

Having never extended their views beyond the fields they cultivated, they had no conception of those different ranks and orders of men, of those distinct and opposite privileges and prerogatives, which are all necessary ingredients of a free constitution. Hitherto confined to the same round of rustic employments, they little thought of that complicated fabric, which the more informed themselves cannot but with difficulty comprehend, when, by a concurrence of favourable circumstances, the structure has at length been reared, and stands displayed to their view.

In their simplicity they saw no other remedy for the national evils than the general establishment of the regal power; that is, of the authority of one common, uncontrolled master, and only longed for that time, which, while it gratified their revenge, would mitigate their sufferings, and reduce to the same level both the oppressors and the oppressed.

The nobility, on the other hand, bent solely on the enjoy ment of a momentary independence, irrecoverably lost the affection of the only men who might in time support them; and, equally regardless of the dictates of humanity and of prudence, they did not perceive the gradual and continual advances of the royal authority, which was soon to overwhelm them all. Already were Normandy, Anjou, Languedoc, and Touraine, reunited to the crown; Dauphine, Champagne, and part of Guienne, were soon to follow. France was doomed at length to see the reign of Louis the

(goodman James). This gave rise to a furious sedition, which was called the Jaquerie. It began at Beauvais, in the year 1357, extending itself into most of the provinces of France, and was not appeased but by the destruction of part of those unhappy victims, thousands of whom were slaughtered."

Eleventh; to see her general estates first become useless, and be afterwards abolished.

It was the destiny of Spain also to behold her several kingdoms united under one head;—she was fated to be in time ruled by Ferdinand and Charles the Fifth.* And Germany, where an elective crown prevented the re-unions,† was indeed to acquire a few free cities; but her people, parcelled into so many different dominions, were destined to remain subject to the arbitrary yoke of such of her different sovereigns as should be able to maintain their power and independence. In a word, the feudal tyranny which overspread the continent did not compensate, by any preparation of distant advantages, the present calamities it caused; nor was it to leave behind it, as it disappeared, any thing but a more regular kind of despotism.

But in England, the same feudal system, after having

*Spain was originally divided into twelve kingdoms, besides principalities, which, by treaties, and especially by conquests, were collected into three kingdoms: those of Castile, Aragon, and Granada. Ferdinand the Fifth, king of Aragon, married Isabella, queen of Castile; they made a joint conquest of the kingdom of Granada; and these three kingdoms, thus united, descended, in 1516, to their grandson, Charles V., and formed the Spanish monarchy. At this æra the kings of Spain began to be absolute; and the states of the kingdoms of Castile and Leon, "assembled at Toledo in the month of November, 1539, were the last in which the three orders met: that is, the grandees, the ecclesiastics, and the deputies of the towns."-See the History of Spain, by Ferreras.

[The states of Spain were formerly almost democratic republics, with popular assemblies; and, like the Basque provinces until a recent period, and to a great degree at present, with their popular fueros and ayuantamientas, or deliberative assemblies, for legislating on and managing their own affairs.-Ed.]

The kingdom of France, as it stood under Hugh Capet and his next successors, may, with a great degree of exactness, be compared with the German Empire: but the imperial crown of Germany having, through a conjunction of circumstances, continued elective, the emperors, though vested with more high-sounding prerogatives than even the kings of France, laboured under very essential disadvantages: they could not pursue a plan of aggrandisement with the same steadiness as a line of hereditary sovereigns usually do: and the right to elect them, enjoyed by the greater princes of Germany, procured a sufficient power to these to protect themselves, as well as the inferior lords, against the power of the crown.

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