POLITICAL RIGHTS OF PERSONS. CHAPTER I. CHARACTER OF ENGLISH FREEDOM. The Common Law the Groundwork of Freedom.-Its Antiquity.-Rights and Duties. -Principle of Self-government.-The Three Fundamental Laws according to Blackstone. WHOSOEVER Contemplates England in the outward form of her government merely, remains unconscious of the informing spirit that quickens the entire system. Sir John Fortescue, in his famous work De laudibus legum Angliæ, written while an exile in France, during the reign of Edward IV., regards the Saxon, i.e. the common law, as the mainstay of English liberty. He takes pride in the guardians thereof, in its judges and jury, which he styles the strong rock of the nation's liberty. To the question wherefore this latter institution thrives in England only and nowhere else, he thus gives answer,-"That his country is richer far than other lands, that it bears the burthen of taxes on its free estates, imposing them of its own accord without being thereto compelled; that all classes, the knight, the squire, free commoner, and villein, are equal before the law, and that it never occurred to the mind of any one of its kings to wish his people as poor as other nations are, to be thereby able, as absolute master, to rule unchecked."* English freedom, so far as certain cardinal principles are involved, finds its ancient family-tree spreading far beyond the conquest;† in this historic land the Great Charter itself is but a re-quickening of Saxon freedom. 29. * De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, c. ix. + It has a pedigree and illustrious ancestors; it has its bearings and ensigns armorial; it has its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its records, evidences and titles. (Burke.) Few popular rights are there, and few enactments against arbitrary power, which may not safely be referred back at least to the Plantagenet period.* The "petition of right" itself was nothing but an enforcement or re-assertion of privileges at least three centuries old.† The Act of Parliament 12 and 13 William III., c. 2, called " the Act of Settlement," declares, "that the laws of England are the birthright of the people thereof," exactly in the spirit in which some seventy-four years later the North Americans contended for rights" clearly" inherent in all men. Never have Englishmen known rights, however, without their corelative duties towards the State, as Fortescue in simple and plain language, has abundantly shown. During the Middle Ages the greater portion of the land was held in England by the respective owners under a strictly military tenure, and "the entire community resembled a disciplined army."§ By 12 Charles II. c. 24, military tenures were abolished, and all lands thenceforth were held in free and common socage. Knight services practically survived, however, in the "county," "the jury," the duty of" keeping the king's peace," and the general obligation incumbent on all classes to contribute to the common burthens. The entire scheme of continental internal administration prevails in England, and, during the Middle Ages, civil government in the island kingdom was under even stricter control than in France; as contrasted with the continent, however, the internal government is almost wholly entrusted to local bodies, conducting their proceedings under judicial forms, and always under survey of the common law courts. || All municipal rights being under their protection, the local courts cannot carry out anything which is against judicial ruling, and in no essential points are their decisions withdrawn from the control of the common law courts.¶ The State guarantees to corporations a protection similar with that accorded to individuals; by the action of the common law courts, both individuals and the State are protected against the encroachments of corporations.** Blackstone enumerates, as the fundamental rights of every * Hallam, M. A., iii. 203. + Forster, Debates on the Grand Re monstrance, p. 3 Froude, Hist. Eng. i. 11. § Froude, Hist. Eng. i. 13. Cox, Brit. Com., 351. |