VIII. A. D. were predominant, though the thing itself was not CHAP. yet fully formed. The continual struggle of the clergy for the ecclesiastical liberties laid open at the same time the natural claims of the people; 1216. and the clergy were obliged to show some respect for those claims, in order to add strength to their own party. The concessions, which Henry the Second made to the ecclesiasticks on the death of Becket, which were afterwards confirmed by Richard the First, gave a grievous blow to the authority of the Crown; as thereby an order of so much power and influence triumphed over it in many essential points. The latter of these princes brought it very low by the whole tenour of his conduct. Always abroad, the royal authority was felt in its full vigour, without being supported by the dignity, or softened by the graciousness, of the royal presence. Always in war, he considered his dominions only as a resource for his armies. The demeans of the crown were squandered. Every office in the state was made vile by being sold. Excessive grants, followed by violent and arbitrary resumptions, tore to pieces the whole contexture of the government. The civil tumults, which arose in that king's absence, showed, that the king's lieutenants at least might be disobeyed with impunity. Then came John to the Crown. The arbitrary taxes, which he imposed very early in his reign, which offended even more by the improper use made NN 2 III. A. D. 1216. BOOK made of them than their irregularity, irritated the people extremely, and joined with all the preceding causes to make his government contemptible. Henry the Second, during his contests with the Church, had the address to preserve the barons in his interests. Afterwards, when the barons had joined in the rebellion of his children, this wise prince found means to secure the bishops and ecclesiasticks. But John drew upon himself at once the hatred of all orders of his subjects. His struggle with the Pope weakened him; his submission to the Pope weakened him yet more. The loss of his foreign territories, besides what he lost along with them in reputation, made him entirely dependant upon England; whereas his predecessors made one part of their territories subservient to the preservation of their authority in another, where it was endangered. Add to all these causes the personal character of the king, in which there was nothing uniform or sincere, and which introduced the like unsteadiness into all his government. He was indolent, yet restless in his disposition; fond of working by violent methods, without any vigour; boastful, but continually betraying his fears; showing, on all occasions, such a desire of peace as hindered him from ever enjoying it. Having no spirit of order, he never looked forward; content by any temporary expedient to extricate himself from a present difficulty. Rash, VIII. 1216. Rash, arrogant, perfidious, irreligious, unquiet, he CHAP. made a tolerable head of a party, but a bad king; and had talents fit to disturb another's A. D. government, not to support his own. A most striking contrast presents itself between the conduct and fortune of John, and his adversary Philip. Philip came to the crown when many of the provinces of France, by being in the hands of too powerful vassals, were in a manner dismembered from the kingdom; the royal authority was very low in what remained. He reunited to the Crown a country as valuable as what belonged to it before; he reduced his subjects of all orders to a stricter obedience than they had given to his predecessors. He withstood the papal usurpation, and yet used it as an instrument in his designs; whilst John, who inherited a great territory, and an entire prerogative, by his vices and weakness gave up his independency to the Pope, his prerogative to his subjects, and a large part of his dominions to the king of France. CHAP. IX. Fragment.-An Essay towards an History of the Laws of THE HERE is scarce any object of curiosity more rational, than the origin, the progress, and the various revolutions of human laws. Political CHAP. IX. III. BOOK and military relations are for the greater part accounts of the ambition and violence of mankind; this is an history of their justice. And surely there cannot be a more pleasing speculation than to trace the advances of men in an attempt to imitate the Supreme Ruler in one of the most glorious of his attributes; and to attend them in the exercise of a prerogative, which it is wonderful to find intrusted to the management of so weak a being. In such an inquiry we shall indeed frequently see great instances of this frailty; but at the same time we shall behold such noble efforts of wisdom and equity, as seem fully to justify the reasonableness of that extraordinary disposition, by which men, in one form or other, have been always put under the dominion of creatures like themselves. For what can be more instructive than to search out the first obscure and scanty fountains of that jurisprudence, which now waters and enriches whole nations with so abundant and copious a flood:-to observe the first principles of RIGHT Springing up, involved in superstition, and polluted with violence; until by length of time, and favourable circumstances, it has worked itself into clearness :-the Laws, sometimes lost and trodden down in the confusion of wars and tumults, and sometimes over-ruled by the hand of power; then victorious over tyranny, growing stronger, clearer, and more decisive by the violence they had suffered; enriched even by those foreign conquests; which IX. which threatened their entire destruction; softened CHAP. and mellowed by peace and religion, improved and exalted by commerce, by social intercourse, and that great opener of the mind, ingenuous science? These certainly were great encouragements to the study of historical jurisprudence, particularly of our own. Nor was there a want of materials, or help, for such an undertaking. Yet we have had few attempts in that province. Lord Chief Justice Hale's history of the Common Law is, I think, the only one, good or bad, which we have. But with all the deference justly due to so great a name, we may venture to assert, that this performance, though not without merit, is wholly unworthy of the high reputation of its author. The sources of our English law are not well, nor indeed fairly, laid open; the ancient judicial proceedings are touched in a very slight and transient manner; and the great changes and remarkable revolutions in the law, together with their causes, down to his time, are scarcely mentioned. Of this defect I think there were two principal causes; the first, a persuasion hardly to be eradicated from the minds of our lawyers, that the English Law has continued very much in the same state from an antiquity, to which they will allow hardly any sort of bounds. The second is, that it was formed and grew up among ourselves; that it is in every respect peculiar to this island; and that |