they were all terminated by solemn confirmations given to the Great Charter. Under Edward I. Edward II. Edward III. and Richard II. those who were intrusted with the care of the interests of the people lost no opportunity that offered, of strengthening still farther that foundation of public liberty-of taking all such precautions as might render the Great Charter still more effectual in the event. They had not ceased to be convinced that their cause was the same with that of all the rest of the people.

Henry of Lancaster having laid claim to the crown, the commons received the law from the victorious party. They settled the crown upon Henry, by the name of Henry the Fourth; and added to the act of settlement provisions, which the reader may see in the second volume of the Parliamentary History of England. Struck with the wisdom of the conditions demanded by the commons, the authors of the book just mentioned observe (perhaps with some simplicity) that the commons of England were no fools at that time. They ought rather to have said-The commons of England were happy enough to form among themselves an assembly in which every one could propose what matters he pleased, and freely discuss them;-they had no possibility left of converting either these advantages, or in general the confidence which the people had placed in them, to any private views of their own: they, therefore, without loss of time, endeavoured to stipulate useful conditions with that power by which they saw themselves at every instant exposed to be dissolved and dispersed, and applied their industry to ensure the safety of the whole people, as it was the only means they had of procuring their own.

In the long contentions which took place between the house of York and Lancaster, the commons remained spectators of disorders which in those times it was not in their power to prevent: they successively acknowledged the title of the victorious parties; but, whether under Edward the Fourth, under Richard the Third, or Henry the Seventh, by whom those quarrels were terminated, they continually availed themselves of the importance of the services which they were able to perform to the new-established sovereign, for obtaining effectual conditions in favour of the whole body of the people.

At the accession of James the First, which, as it placed

a new family on the throne of England, may be considered as a kind of revolution, no demands were made by the men who were at the head of the nation, but in favour of general liberty.

After the accession of Charles the First, discontents of a very serious nature began to take place; and they were terminated, in the first instance, by the act called the Petition of Right, which is still looked upon as a most precise and accurate delineation of the rights of the people.. At the restoration of Charles the Second, the constitution being re-established upon its former principles the former consequences produced by it began again to take place; and we see at that era, and indeed during the whole course of that reign, a continued series of precautions taken for securing the general liberty.

Lastly, the great event which took place in the year 1689 affords a striking confirmation of the truth of the observation made in this chapter. At this era the political wonder again appeared-of a revolution terminated by a series of public acts, in which no interests but those of the people at large were considered and provided for;-no clause, even the most indirect, was inserted, either to gratify the present ambition, or favour the future views, of those who were personally concerned in bringing those acts to a conclusion. Indeed, if any thing is capable of conveying to us an adequate idea of the soundness, as well as peculiarity, of the principles on which the English government is founded, it is the attentive perusal of the system of public compacts to which the revolution of the year 1689 gave rise-of the Bill of Rights, with all its different clauses, and of the several acts, which, till the accession of the house of Hanover, were made in order to strengthen it.

The disordera which took place in the latter part of the reign of that prince seem indeed to contain a complete contradiction to the assertion which is the subject of the present chapter; but they, at the same time, are a no less convincing confirmation of the truth of the principles laid down in the course of this whole work. The above-mentioned disorders took rise from that day in which Charles the First gave up the power of dissolving his parliament-that is, from the day in which the members of that assembly acquired an in dependent, personal, permanent, authority, which they soon began to turn against the people who had raised them to it.

CHAP. XVI.

Second difference.-The manner after which the laws for the liberty of the subject are executed in England.

THE second difference I mean to speak of, between the English government and that of other free states, concerns the important object of the execution of the laws. On this article, also, we shall find the advantage to lie on the side of the English government; and if we make a comparison between the history of those states and that of England, it will lead us to the following observation, viz. that though, in other free states, the laws concerning the liberty of the citizens were imperfect, yet the execution of them was still more defective. In England, on the contrary, not only the laws for the security of the subject are very extensive in their provisions, but the manner in which they are executed carries these advantages still farther; and English subjects enjoy no less liberty from the spirit, both of justice and mildness, by which all branches of the government are influenced, than from the accuracy of the laws themselves.

The Roman commonwealth will here again supply us with examples to prove the former part of the above assertion. When I said, in the foregoing chapter, that in times of public commotion no provisions were made for the body of the people, I meant no provisions that were likely to prove effectual in the event. When the people were roused to a certain degree, or when their concurrence was necessary to carry into effect certain resolutions or measures, that were particularly interesting to the men in power, the latter could not, with any prudence, openly profess a contempt for the political wishes of the people; and some declarations expressed in general words, in fa vour of public liberty, were indeed added to the laws that were enacted on those occasions. But these declarations, and the principles which they tended to establish, were afterward even openly disregarded in practice.

Thus, when the people were made to vote, about a year after the expulsion of the kings, that the regal government never should be again established in Rome, and that those who should endeavour to restore it should be devoted to the gods, an article was added which, in general terms,

confirmed to the citizens the right they had before enjoyed under the king, of appealing to the people from the sentences of death passed upon them. No punishment (which will surprise the reader) was decreed against those who should violate this law; and indeed the consuls, as we may see in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy, concerned themselves but little about the appeals of the citizens, and, in the more than military exercise of their functions, con, tinued to sport with rights which they ought to have respected, however imperfectly and loosely they had been secured.

An article to the same purport with the above was afterward also added to the laws of the Twelve Tables; but the decemvirs, to whom the execution of those laws was at first committed, behaved exactly in the same manner, and even worse than the consuls had done before them; and after they were expelled,* the magistrates who succeeded them appear to have been as little tender of the lives of the citizens. I shall, out of many instances, select one, which will shew upon what slight grounds the citizens were exposed to have their lives taken away: Spurius Mælius being accused of endeavouring to make himself king, was summoned by the master of the horse to appear before the dictator, in order to clear himself of this somewhat extraordinary imputation. Spurius took refuge among the crowd; the master of the horse pursued him, and killed him on the spot. The people having thereupon expressed a great indignation, the dictator had them called to his tribunal, and declared that Spurius had been lawfully put to death, even though he might be innocent of the crime laid to his charge, for having refused to appear before the dictator, when desired to do so by the master of the horse.t

About one hundred and forty years after the times we mention, the law concerning the appeal to the people was enacted for the third time. But we do not see that it was

At the time of the expulsion of the decemvirs, a law was also enacted, that no magistrate should be created from whom no appeal could be made to the people (magistratus sine provocatione. Tit. Liv. lib. iii. § 55.), by which the people expressly meant to abolish the dictatorship: but this law was not better observed than the former ones had been.

+Tumultuantem deinde multitudinem, incertâ existimatione facti, ad concionem vocari jussit, et Mælium jure casum pronunciavit, estiamsi regni crimine insons fuerit, qui vocatus a magistro equitum, ad dictatorem non venisset," Tit. Liv. lib. iv. § 15.

better observed in the sequel than it had been before: we find it frequently violated, after that period, by the different magistrates of the republic; and the senate itself, notwithstanding this same law, at times, made formidable examples of the citizens. Of this we have an instance in the three hundred soldiers who had pillaged the town of Rhegium. The senate, of its own authority, ordered them all to be put to death. In vain did the tribune Flaccus remonstrate against so severe an exertion of public justice on Roman citizens; the senate, says Valerius Maximus, nevertheless, persisted in its resolution.

All these laws for securing the lives of the citizens, had hitherto been enacted without any mention of a punishment against those who should violate them. At last the celebrated Lex Porcia was passed, which subjected to ba. nishment those who should cause a Roman citizen to be scourged and put to death. From a number of instances, posterior to this law, it appears that it was not better observed than those before it had been: Caius Gracchus, therefore, caused the Lex Sempronia to be enacted, by which a new sanction was given to it. But the second law did not secure his own life, and that of his friends, better than the Lex Porcia had done that of his brother, and those who had supported him: indeed, all the events which took place about those times rendered it manifest, that the evil was such as was beyond the power of any laws to cure. I shall here mention a fact which affords a remarkable instance of the wantonness with which the Roman magistrates had accustomed themselves to take away the lives of the citizens:-A citizen, named Memmius, having put up for the consulskip, and publicly canvassing for the same, in opposition to a man whom the tribune Saturnius supported, the latter caused him to be apprehended, and made him expire under blows in the public forum. The tribune even carried his insolence so far (as Cicero informs us) as to give to this act of cruelty, transacted in the presence of

Val. Max. book ii. ch. 7. This author does not mention the precise number of those who were put to death on this occasion: he only says, that they were executed, fifty at a time, on different successive days: but other authors make the number of them amount to four thousand. Livy speaks of a whole legion:- Legio Campana, que Rhegium occupaverat, obsessa, deditione factâ, securi percussa est.'Tit. Liv. lib. xv. Epit.-I have here followed Polybius, who says, that only three hundred were taken and brought to Rome.