CHAPTER II.

:-it

A second advantage England had over France :— formed one undivided state.

It 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

• Amongst others, the law of the Curfeu.-It might be matter of curious discussion to inquire what the AngloSaxon 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-Saxons

came.

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 im. perfectly, its appearance.

But these causes, which had worked but silently and slowly under the two Henries, 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 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 pro

mises 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 Runing-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

Anno 1215..

than by judgment of his peers, 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, 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

• Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, vel dissesiatur de libero tenemento suo, vel libertatibus, vel liberis consuetudinibus suis; aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, 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 Charta, cap. xxxix. xl.

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

• 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 piéces justificatives annexed to the Mémoires de Philippe de Comines.