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 strength. The independence of the nobles on the one hand, the ignorance and weakness of the people on the other, were still 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 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 full. They had no thoughts of entering into a general combination; still less of changing the form of the government, and laying a regular plan of public liberty.

archiepiscoporum, episcoporum, comitum, baronum, militum, burgensium, & aliorum liberorum hom' de regno nostro."Stat. An. 24 Ed. I.

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 bonhomme (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."

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 uncontrouled 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 en joyment 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, re-united to the crown: Dauphiny, Champagne, and part of Guyenne, were soon to follow: France was doomed at length to see the reign of Lewis the 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

m 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, and formed the Spanish monarchy. At this era, 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

Germany, where an elective crown prevented the reunions," 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 suddenly broken in like a flood, had deposited, and still continued to deposit, the noble seeds of the spirit of liberty, union, and sober resistance. So early as the times of Edward, the tide was seen gradually to subside; the laws which protect the person and property of the individual, began to make their appearance; that admirable constitution, the result of a threefold power, insensibly arose; and the eye might even then discover the verdant summits of that fortunate region, which was destined to be the seat of philosophy and liberty, which are inseparable companions.

last in which the three orders met, that is, the grandees, the ecclesiastics, and the deputies of the towns."-See Ferrera's General History of Spain.

n 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, as it exists at present, and also existed at that time: but the imperial crown of Germany having, through a conjunction of circumstances, continued elective, the German emperors, though vested with more highsounding 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 them a sufficient power to protect themselves, as well as the lesser lords, against the power of the crown.

"Now, in my opinion," says Philipe de Comines, in times not much posterior to those of Edward the first, and with the simplicity of the language of his times, "among all the sovereignties I know in the world, that in which the public good is best attended to, and the least violence exercised on the people, is that of England."-Memoires de Comines, tom. 1. lib. v. chap. xix

CHAP. III.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

THE representatives of the nation, and of the whole nation, were now admitted into parliament: the great point therefore was gained, that was one day to procure them the great influence which they at present possess; and the subsequent reigns afford continual instances of its successive growth.

Under Edward the second, the commons began to annex petitions to the bills by which they granted subsidies: this was the dawn of their legislative authority. Under Edward the third they declared they would not, in future, acknowledge any law to which they had not expressly assented. Soon after this, they exerted a privilege in which consists, at this time, one of the great balances of the constitution: they impeached, and procured to be condemned, some of the first ministers of state. Under Henry the fourth, they refused to grant subsidies before an answer had been given to their petitions. In a word, every event of any consequence was attended with an increase of the power of the commons; increases indeed but slow and gradual, but which were peaceably and legally effected, and were the more fit to engage the attention of the people, and coalesce with the ancient principles of the constitution.

Under Henry the fifth the nation was entirely taken up with its wars against France; and in the reign of Henry the sixth began the fatal contests between the houses of York and Lancaster. The noise of arms alone was now to be heard: during the silence of the laws already in being, no thought was had of enacting new ones; and for thirty years together, England presents a wide scene of slaughter and desolation.

At length, under Henry the seventh, who, by his intermarriage with the house of York, united the pretensions of the two families, a general peace was re-established, and the prospect of happier days seemed to open on the nation. But the long and violent agitation, under which it

had laboured, was to be followed by a long and painful recovery. Henry, mounting the throne with sword in hand, and in great measure as a conqueror, had promises to fulfil, as well as injuries to avenge. In the mean time, the people, wearied out by the calamities they had undergone, and longing only for repose, abhorred even the idea of resistance; and the remains of an almost exterminated nobility thus beheld themselves left defenceless, and abandoned to the mercy of the sovereign.

The commons, on the other hand, accustomed to act only a second part in public affairs, and finding themselves bereft of those who hitherto had been their leaders, were more than ever afraid to form, of themselves, an opposition. Placed immediately, as well as the lords, under the eye of the king, they beheld themselves exposed to the same dangers. Like them, therefore, they purchased their personal security at the expence of public liberty; and reading the history of the two first kings of the house of Tudor, we imagine ourselves reading the relation given by Tacitus of Tiberius and the Roman senate.a

The time, therefore, seemed to be arrived, at which England must submit, in its turn, to the fate of the other nations of Europe. All those barriers which it had raised for the defence of its liberty, seemed to have only been able to postpone the inevitable effects of power.

But the remembrance of their ancient laws, of that great charter so often and so solemnly confirmed, was too deeply impressed on the minds of the English, to be effaced by transitory evils. Like a deep and extensive ocean, which preserves an equability of temperature amidst all the vicissitudes of seasons, England still retained those principles of liberty which were so universally diffused through all orders of the people, and they required only a proper opportunity to manifest themselves.

England, besides, still continued to possess the immense advantage of being one undivided state.

Had it been, like France, divided into several distinct dominions, it would also have had several national assemblies. These assemblies, being convened at different times and places, for this and other reasons, never could have

a Quanto quis illustrior, tanto magis falsi ac festinantes.