from first to last, as a rule, the soul of civil procedure; even the infringements upon the common liberty which rulers like Eliza beth indulged in, serving but to confirm the rule. Whenever monarchy stands forth so pre-eminently as under the last Tudor queen, the people regard their rights with less jealousy than when they have to deal with royal dullards. The parliaments, however, even during Elizabeth's sway, upheld manfully their confirmed rights, and upon the money question were especially tenacious. "The word liberty," says an American historian,* "was never musical in Tudor ears, yet Englishmen had blunt tongues and sharp weapons, which rarely rusted for want of use. In the presence of a parliament and the absence of a standing army, a people accustomed to read the Bible in the vernacular, to handle great questions of religion and government freely, and to beat arms at will, was most formidable to despotism."

To appreciate aright political relations under the Tudors, the aspect of things in England should be compared with the cotemporaneous condition of France.

To the states-general of 1576 the village of Blaigny, probably Bleigny le Carreau, in the department of the Yonne, presented a bill of plaints and grievances.† The electors therein pray :

Que les seigneurs ayant justice auront juges, capables et gardes de justice, comme il avoit été ordonné par les ordonnances, et deffenses d'avoir juges fermiers, à peine de reunion de leur justice au domaine du roy."

In England, on the contrary, patrimonial jurisdiction, save in certain unimportant particulars, had disappeared; the royal courts, although in part composed of the local gentry, determining almost all legal differences that arose. While in England the national militia was the army of the people, and nothing was known of the molestation of a soldiery; thus do they complain in the same bill:

"Et comme il ne peut pis advenir au pauvre laboureur que la mort, qui ne mettra fin aux malheurs, oppressions et tyrannies que les gens guerre ont exercé envers eux, remontre le pauvre

peuple :

de

"Qu'il est très nécessaire, se présentant la guerre à l'avenir,

*Motley, Hist. of the United Nether

lands.

Augustin Thierry, Essai sur l'His

toire du Tiers Etat, 417.

que

les gens de guerre soient élus par les provinces, et que les chefs qui en auront charge enrôleront les soldats par leur noms, surnoms, et demeurance, dont ils délivreront acte signé de leurs mains, ou autrement approuvé aux gouverneurs des pays sans que allant par pays, ils puissant changer leur noms, à peine d'être de même tous condamnables à mort."

Whilst in England the keeping of the peace was cared for by local officials without any trouble to the community, the French document thus sets forth :

"Que les anciennes ordonnances sur le fait de la gendarmerie seront observées et les seigneurs et les gentilshommes honorés des places que plusieurs autres occupent par faveur, et appetent les dites places pour ruiner le pauvre peuple, allant et venant par le pays, sans qu'en temps de nécessité ils ayent moyen de faire un service au roy, et se mettre en tel équipage qu'il est requis."

The taxes in England were, as a rule, very moderate, the monopolies alone being oppressive; arbitrary imposts were got rid of by means of the sword. The French, on the other hand, pray :

"Que les surcharges extraordinaires imposées sur le peuple, mêmement les huitièmes, vingtièmes et impositions, vins entrants, gabelles de sel, et autres subsides seront abolis, et le pauvre peuple remis en l'etat et liberté tel qu'il étoit au temps de ce grand roi Louis XII., sans que à l'avenir il s'en puisse donner, ni faire emprunt sans le consentement du peuple. Que ceux qui ont manié les finances du roy, en rendront compte, et à l'avenir ceux qui seront introduits en telles charges, seront élus avec le peuple pour éviter à tous concussions."

Finally, while in England, the lord and the country squire had to bear the main burthen of taxation, the modest petition. of the French communes goes no farther than this :

"Aussi toutes personnes non nobles seront contribuables aux tailles ordinaires, et encore les nobles qui tiendront en roture, à ce que le pauvre peuple soit soulagé."

When we reflect that at the period in question the German peasant, by means of legal sophisms and lordly domination, was reduced to the condition of a serf; that in Spain, under Philip II., monarchical despotism was established and the population sifted by the Inquisition; that sanguinary civil wars, which imparted new energy to the absolute monarchy, were then desolating France;

England, under Tudor sway, both as regards the increase of power in the citizen class and of the kingdom at large, stood forth as one of the most thriving countries in Europe.

On failure of the Tudor stock, a kingly race, asserting still vaster monarchical pretensions, but devoid of all monarchical initiative and corresponding sense of obligations, ascended the throne. The commons, who had grown prosperous under the Tudors, were indisposed to recognize in a learned pedant like James I., or in a faithless trimmer like Charles I., any specially favourable manifestations of "the kingdom by the grace of God," whereon the Stuarts based their reliance. The "kingdom by the grace of God," as apprehended by the Stuarts, had been depicted by Bracton :-"The king, to wit, as God's representative, should not be able or dare to do any wrong, that is, nothing in contravention of law." The Stuarts, however, meant much more than this by their divinely-constituted kingdom, namely, that the king's will and caprice "should be law," and that all the rights of the people were mere concessions from the king, and revocable at his pleasure.*

The doctrine of passive obedience was forthwith broached, and the creatures of Charles I. declaring in parliament-"That the liberties of parliament should only be accorded by way of sufferance from the king, and that the king might rule at pleasure, either by means of special ordinances or according to the tenor of the laws." The royal signature to the "Petition of Right," was scarcely dry when the king violated it anew, and during a long intermission governed in a wholly absolute manner, without opposition and without the aid of parliament. when urgent necessity induced the king to summon parliament anew, the respective relations had already grown so antagonistic that the commons necessarily sought for fresh safeguards, which lay partially beyond the region of actual order as by law established. Above all things, however, the Long Parliament adjusted the authority of the courts of law by enacting :

But

"That neither the king nor his council should have any jurisdiction, power, or authority by bill, petition, article, libel, or in any other arbitrary way whatsoever, to try, call in question,

In the debate on the "Petition of Right," Mr. Pym exclaimed: "There is no authority apart from the law,

neither in Magna Charta nor in any other statute. Whence should we deduce it, in order to agree to it ?"

с

determine or dispose of any estate, possession, goods, or moveable things of any subject whatsoever, but that all disputes concerning the same should be determined by the ordinary courts of the realm, and according to the ordinary course of law."

Thereby all the rights of the citizens are placed under protection of the courts and of the forms of ordinary civil procedure; a wall of separation is erected between the law of the State and administrative despotism, thus steering clear of the "conflicts of jurisdiction" and other continental shoals.* By such principles, which the omnipotence of parliament alone in after ages succeeded in obscuring, the freedom of England was secured, so far as legislative action could secure it. The omnipotence of parliament was the forced consequence of a rule like that of the Stuarts; any compromise whatever with it was impossible; it could only annihilate parliament, or must itself be trampled down by the parliament. Behind the lower house stood up the great body of the nation; in the towns, and with the majority of the small freeholders, the revolt against Charles was popular. The men of parliament who stood up against Charles I., history has ranged amongst the greatest names of all time, and even for their deeds of violence, in consideration of the pressure of events, has tendered a bill of indemnity. "Every argument which can be adduced in favour of the Revolution of 1688 may be employed with no less vigour in favour of the so-called great Rebellion.”—Macaulay. The end of Charles assimilated with his beginning; from passages in the Bible his father and he had deduced the right to wear upon their brow the absolute crown of a David and a Solomon; on the strength of other passages from the Bible the fanatical puritans and independents tore from the king both crown and head.†

Mr. Hyde says, touching the discretionary power of the Star Chamber in 1641: "Such confusion has the notion of discretionary' power evoked, that some folks regard it as an urging to violence and vengeance. In consequence of the spread and extension of this dis cretionary' power, have the poor people concluded that this same is the quicksand which has engulphed their property and their liberty."

The wrong done to Charles I. was afterwards made use of in order to glorify him. The Whigs of the 18th cen

tury thought far otherwise about the "Royal Martyr." Chesterfield, writing to his son (Lett. i. 214), says "The execu tion of Charles has been strongly blamed but had it not taken place our liberties would have been lost." Junius writes, in his 12th letter, to the Earl of Grafton :"Charles I. lived and died a hypocrite. Charles II. was a hypocrite of another sort, and should have died on the same scaffold." Horace Walpole (Earl of Oxford) had a copy of Charles I.'s sentence to death, hung up in his mansion, with the inscription, "Major Charta."

The internal political arrangements of the republic have passed away, but the genius of Cromwell had, during its continuance, elevated England once more to the rank of a power of the first class. Yet the republic only bequeathed to Englishmen an abhorrence for the very name, and a hatred of standing armies. Though the nation welcomed Charles II. with enthusiasm, still not a single one of the conquests which the Long Parliament had achieved did it relinquish. The parliament remained the highest power in the state; the courts maintained their competency, and the king was only able to exercise a lasting influence over the lower house by recourse to bribery. With the disappearance of the small freeholders the local institutions fell into decay, and the nation gradually got accustomed to see its liberties specially cared for by the parliament.

With James II. ended the struggle between the Stuarts and Parliament; he suspended the statutes in favour of his co-religionists, and was driven forth by the Dutch, who, in consequence of a conspiracy among the higher nobility, hurried to their rescue. under the command of his son-in-law, William of Orange.

The principles of the mutual right of king and people, which were the starting-point of the Revolution, are still at the present day in the ascendant. In the "Memorial" addressed to the Prince of Orange (1688), inviting him to come to England, it is said:"The truly noble monarchy was founded on equal freedom, and the civil government of England was always of right truly free, because no laws or authorities ever bound the persons and properties of the kingdom, save only those wherein the kings and all the subjects freely agreed; every subject's free consent being deemed by our laws to be given personally, as by his deputies, to the enacting and repealing of every law."

During the Revolution, parliament exercised the dictatorial power of a "National Convention." It assumed that James II. had broken the original contract between prince and people, and had, by his flight, "abdicated." The establishment of William and Mary on the throne was no less revolutionary than the exclusion of the heirs of James II. This act becomes comprehensible, however, on bearing in mind the general belief which obtained, that the Prince of Wales was a supposititious child. His having been educated as a Catholic was a further obstacle in his path. The Revolution preserved withal its strongly conservative and aristocratic character,