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A SECOND ADVANTAGE ENGLAND HAD OVER FRANCE:-IT FORMED ONE UNDIVIDED STATE.

Ir was in the reign of Henry the First, about forty years after the conquest, that we see the above causes begin to operate. This prince having ascended the throne to the exclusion of his elder brother, was sensible that he had no other means to maintain his power than by gaining the affection of his subjects; but at the same time he perceived that it must be the affection of the whole nation: he, therefore, not only mitigated the rigour of the feudal laws in favour of the lords, but also annexed as a condition to the charter he granted, that the lords should allow the same freedom to their respective vassals. Care was even taken to abolish those laws of the Conqueror which lay heaviest on the lower classes of the people.*

Under Henry the Second, liberty took a farther stride; and the ancient trial by jury, a mode of procedure which is at present one of the most valuable parts of the English law, made again, though imperfectly, its appearance.†

* Amongst others, the law of the Curfeu.-It might be matter of curious discussion to inquire what the Anglo-Saxon government would in process of time have become, and of course the government of England be at the present time, if the event of the conquest had never taken place; which, by conferring an immense as well as unusual power on the head of the feudal system, compelled the nobility to contract a lasting and sincere union with the people. It is very probable that the English government would at this day be the same as that which long prevailed in Scotland (where the king and nobles engrossed, jointly or by turns, the whole power of the state); the same as in Sweden, the same as in Denmark,-countries whence the Anglo-Saxon came.

+ Although it has been contended that trial by jury was essentially of Saxon origin, this is not the fact. It was common to the Normans also, and to all the Teutonic or Gothic nations; the number twelve also, jurati, or members of the Jurata (jury) as compurgators were even known among the Anglo-Saxons in the trial by wager of battle, and though in disuse was only abolished in 1833: but this was entirely different from the jury. Some writers, Hukes, Reeves, and Palgrave, contend that William the Conqueror introduced trial by jury, and juries are certainly more discernible in the more ample Norman than

But these causes, which had worked but silently and slowly under the two Henrys, who were princes in some degree just, and of great capacity, manifested themselves at once under the despotic reign of King John. The royal prerogative, and the forest laws, having been exerted by this prince to a degree of excessive severity, he soon beheld a general confederacy formed against him:-and here we must observe another circumstance highly advantageous, as well as peculiar, to England.

England was not, like France, an aggregation of a number of different sovereignties: it formed but one state, and acknowledged but one master, one general title.* The same laws, the same kind of dependence, consequently the same notions, the same interests, prevailed throughout the whole. The extremities of the kingdom could, at all times, unite to give a check to the exertions of an unjust power. From the river Tweed to Portsmouth, from Yarmouth to the

in the remnants we possess of the Saxon laws. Yet Spelman, Coke, Sharon Turner, Nicholson, Wilkins, and Blackstone, argue that trials by juries were instituted in the Saxon period; and there appears to me no doubt that their opinions are perfectly correct.-Ed.

*The constitutional advantages gained by England becoming one country are owing chiefly to the tyranny and despicable character of King John, at a time when two great sovereigns acquired power in Europe. One was Innocent III., who at the age of only 37 years, and gifted with extraordinary capacity, was elected Pope. The other was the resolute, able, and renowned Philippe Augustus. Had John been King of France at the time, and had Philippe been Sovereign of Normandy and England, it is probable that the language, the history, and the manners of both kingdoms, would have settled under one dominant government, and that England, instead of becoming independent, would have become a province of a great Gallican Empire. Happily for the cause of British civilization and freedom, Innocent III. laid King John under an interdict, which humbled him into a vassal under Rome, and enabled the barons and the church to resist the authority of the tyrant, and to obtain from him the Magna Charta. Fortunately also for England, Philippe Augustus utterly destroyed the power of John in France, and reduced him altogether to dependence for revenue and authority upon Englishmen, and those Norman barons who, rather than forfeit their estates, became Englishmen ; while at the same time the extinction of the Norman power in England and in France formed a new era in the progress of both countries. It was not, owever, until the 14th century that the amalgamation of the Saxons and Normans as one national and social people was completed.-Ed.

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Land's End, all was in motion: the agitation increased from the distance, like the rolling waves of an extensive sea; and the monarch, left to himself, and destitute of resources, saw himself attacked on all sides by an universal combination of his subjects.

No sooner was the standard set up against John, than his very courtiers forsook him. In this situation, finding no part of his kingdom less irritated against him than another, having no detached province which he could engage in his defence by promises of pardon or of peculiar concessions, the trivial though never-failing resources of government, he was compelled, with seven of his attendants, all that remained with him, to submit himself to the disposal of his subjects, -and he signed at Runny-Mead* the charter of the Forest, together with that famous charter, which, from its superior and extensive importance, is denominated Magna Charta.

By the former the most tyrannical parts of the forest laws were abolished; and by the latter, the rigour of the feudal laws was greatly mitigated in favour of the lords. But this charter did not stop there; conditions were also stipulated in favour of the numerous body of the people who had concurred to obtain it, and who claimed, with sword in hand, a share in that security it was meant to establish. It was hence instituted by the Great Charter, that the same services which were remitted in favour of the barons should be in like manner remitted in favour of their vassals. This charter moreover established an equality of weights and measures throughout England; it exempted the merchants from arbitrary imposts, and gave them liberty to enter and depart the kingdom at pleasure: it even extended to the lowest orders of the state, since it enacted, that the villain, or bondman, should not be subject to the forfeiture of his implements of tillage. Lastly, by the thirty-ninth article of the same charter, it was enacted, that no subject should be exiled, or in any shape whatever molested, either in his person or effects, otherwise than by judgment of his peers,

* Anno 1215.

+ But domestic slavery was not then nor until long after abolished. -Ed.

and according to the law of the land ;*-an article so important, that it may be said to comprehend the whole end and design of political societies:-and from that moment the English would have been a free people, if there were not an immense distance between the making of laws and the observing of them.†

But though this charter wanted most of those supports which were necessary to ensure respect to it,-though it did not secure to the poor and friendless any certain and legal methods of obtaining the execution of it (provisions which numberless transgressions alone could, in process of time,

"Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, vel dissesiatur de libero tenemento suo, vel libertatibus, vel liberis consuetudinibus suis; aut utlagetur, aut exueletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur; nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum, vel per legem terræ. Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus, aut differemus, justitiam vel rectum.”—Magna Chart. cap. xxxix. xl. [Freeman, however, in this meaning (liber homo) was a person very much elevated above the great mass of the people, who were, with little amelioration by the Magna Charta, still continued in a serfage state.-Ed.]

The Magna Charta is the first recognised statute or written law, although we have transcripts of parts of the Anglo-Saxon laws of Ina, Alfred, and Edward the Confessor, upon which the common law chapters of Magna Charta are no doubt grounded. Nor must this great law or rather chapters of laws be considered as conceding any privileges from the king to the people which they had not enjoyed at a former period of their history. The Magna Charta, in fact, consists of binding contracts, engaging the king to restore the ancient and undoubted rights of his subjects. This has been admirably laid down by Algernon Sidney, who justly states that "The Magna Charta was made to assert the native and original liberties of our nation by a confession of the king then being, that neither he nor his successors should any way encroach upon them; and it cannot be said that the power of the king is diminished by it or any other law, for as he is king only by law, the law may confer the power on one particular or on him and his successors, but can take nothing from them, because they have nothing but what is given to them as that the law gives is given by those making the law, they only are capable of judging whether he they gave it to employs well or ill that power, and consequently are only fit to counteract the difficulties that are found in it."-Discourses concerning Government, sec. 27, p. 343, edition 1704. [These remarks, with some others, although the authorship was not proved, and the work only in MS., were construed into treason in the charges for which that great political martyr died.-Ed.]

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point out); yet it was a prodigious advance towards the establishment of public liberty. Instead of the general maxims respecting the rights of the people and the duties of the prince (maxims against which ambition perpetually contends, and which it sometimes even openly and absolutely denies), here was substituted a written law; that is, a truth admitted by all parties, which no longer required the support of argument. The rights and privileges of the individual, as well in his person as in his property, became settled axioms. The Great Charter, at first enacted with so much solemnity, and afterwards confirmed at the beginning of every succeeding reign, became like a general banner perpetually set up for the union of all classes of the people; and the foundation was laid, on which those equitable laws were to rise, which offer the same assistance to the poor and weak as to the rich and powerful.*

Under the long reign of Henry the Third, the differences which arose between the king and the nobles rendered England a scene of confusion. Amidst the vicissitudes which the fortune of war produced in their mutual conflicts, the people became still more and more sensible of their importance, and so did, in consequence, both the king and the barons also. Alternately courted by both parties, they obtained a confirmation of the Great Charter, and even the addition of new privileges, by the statutes of Merton and of Marlebridge. But I hasten to reach the grand epoch of the reign of Edward the First,-a prince who, from his nume

* The reader, to be more fully convinced of the reality of the causes to which the liberty of England has been here ascribed, as well as of the truth of the observations made at the same time on the situation of the people of France, needs only to compare the Great Charter, so extensive in its provisions, and in which the barons stipulated in favour even of the bondman, with the treaty concluded at St. Maur, October 29, 1465, between Louis XI. and several of the princes and peers of France. In this treaty, which was made in order to terminate a war that was called a war for the public good (pro bono publico), no provision was made but concerning the particular power of a few lords: not a word was inserted in favour of the people. It may be seen at large in the pièces justificatives annexed to the Mémoires de Philippe de Comines. [This observation is just; and long afterwards, when the English villains were freed from serfage, they, as freemen, and then only, enjoyed the benefits of Magna Charta.-Ed.]

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