A

structed on system. In rude societies power of pardoning and the power the progress of government resembles of legislating seem to fade into the progress of language and of versifi- each other, and may easily, at least cation. Rude societies have language, in a simple age, be confounded. and often copious and energetic lan- penal statute is virtually annulled if guage: but they have no scientific the penalties which it imposes are grammar, no definitions of nouns and regularly remitted as often as they are verbs, no names for declensions, moods, incurred. The sovereign was undoubttenses, and voices. Rude societies have edly competent to remit penalties withversification, and often versification of out limit. He was therefore competent great power and sweetness: but they to annul virtually a penal statute. It have no metrical canons; and the might seem that there could be no minstrel whose numbers, regulated serious objection to his doing formally solely by his ear, are the delight of what he might do virtually. Thus, with his audience, would himself be unable the help of subtle and courtly lawyers, to say of how many dactyls and trochees grew up, on the doubtful frontier which each of his lines consists. As eloquence separates executive from legislative exists before syntax, and song before pro-functions, that great anomaly known sody, so government may exist in a high as the dispensing power. degree of excellence long before the limits of legislative, executive, and judicial power have been traced with precision.

It was thus in our country. The line which bounded the royal prerogative, though in general sufficiently clear, had not everywhere been drawn with accuracy and distinctness. There was, therefore, near the border some debatable ground on which incursions and reprisals continued to take place, till, after ages of strife, plain and durable landmarks were at length set up. It may be instructive to note in what way, and to what extent, our ancient sovereigns were in the habit of violating the three great principles by which the liberties of the nation were protected.

No English King has ever laid claim to the general legislative power. The most violent and imperious Plantagenet never fancied himself competent to enact, without the consent of his great council, that a jury should consist of ten persons instead of twelve, that a widow's dower should be a fourth part instead of a third, that perjury should be a felony, or that the custom of gavelkind should be introduced into Yorkshire. But the King had the power of pardoning offenders; and there is one point at which the

This is excellently put by Mr. Hallam, in the first chapter of his Constitutional History.

His powerful

That the King could not impose taxes without the consent of Parliament is admitted to have been, from time immemorial, a fundamental law of England. It was among the articles which John was compelled by the Barons to sign. Edward the First ventured to break through the rule; but, able, powerful, and popular as he was, he encountered an opposition to which he found it expedient to yield. He covenanted accordingly in express terms, for himself and his heirs, that they would never again levy any aid without the assent and goodwill of the Estates of the realm. and victorious grandson attempted to violate this solemn compact: but the attempt was strenuously withstood. At length the Plantagenets gave up the point in despair: but, though they ceased to infringe the law openly, they occasionally contrived, by evading it, to procure an extraordinary supply for a temporary purpose. They were interdicted from taxing; but they claimed the right of begging and borrowing. They therefore sometimes begged in a tone not easily to be distinguished from that of command, and sometimes borrowed with small thought of repaying. But the fact that they thought it necessary to disguise their exactions under the names of benevolences and loans sufficiently proves that the authority of the great constitutional rule was universally recognised.

years ago, this check was applied. I the harvest of the year, and in the The people have long unlearned the simple buildings inhabited by the peouse of arms. The art of war has been ple. All the furniture, the stock of carried to a perfection unknown to shops, the machinery which could be former ages; and the knowledge of that found in the realm was of less value art is confined to a particular class. than the property which some single A hundred thousand soldiers, well dis- parishes now contain. Manufactures ciplined and commanded, will keep were rude; credit was almost unknown. down ten millions of ploughmen and Society, therefore, recovered from the artisans. A few regiments of house-shock as soon as the actual conflict was hold troops are sufficient to overawe over. The calamities of civil war were all the discontented spirits of a large confined to the slaughter on the field of capital. In the meantime the effect of battle, and to a few subsequent executhe constant progress of wealth has tions and confiscations. In a week the been to make insurrection far more peasant was driving his team and the terrible to thinking men than malad- esquire flying his hawks over the field ministration. Immense sums have of Towton or of Bosworth, as if no exbeen expended on works which, if a traordinary event had interrupted the rebellion broke out, might perish in a regular course of human life. few hours. The mass of movable wealth More than a hundred and sixty years collected in the shops and warehouses have now elapsed since the English of London alone exceeds five-hundred- people have by force subverted a gofold that which the whole island con- vernment. During the hundred and tained in the days of the Plantagenets; sixty years which preceded the union and, if the government were subverted of the Roses, nine Kings reigned in by physical force, all this movable England. Six of these nine Kings were wealth would be exposed to imminent deposed. Five lost their lives as well risk of spoliation and destruction. as their crowns. It is evident, therefore, Still greater would be the risk to public that any comparison between our ancredit, on which thousands of families cient and our modern polity must lead directly depend for subsistence, and to most erroneous conclusions, unless with which the credit of the whole com-large allowance be made for the effect mercial world is inseparably connected. of that restraint which resistance and It is no exaggeration to say that a civil the fear of resistance constantly imwar of a week on English ground would posed on the Plantagenets. As our now produce disasters which would be ancestors had against tyranny a most felt from the Hoangho to the Missouri, important security which we want, they and of which the traces would be discern- might safely dispense with some securiible at the distance of a century. In such ties to which we justly attach the highest a state of society resistance must be importance. As we cannot, without regarded as a cure more desperate than the risk of evils from which the imagialmost any malady which can afflict nation recoils, employ physical force as the state. In the middle ages, on the a check on misgovernment, it is evicontrary, resistance was an ordinary dently our wisdom to keep all the conremedy for political distempers, a re-stitutional checks on misgovernment in medy which was always at hand, and the highest state of efficiency, to watch which, though doubtless sharp at the with jealousy the first beginnings of moment, produced no deep or lasting ill encroachment, and never to suffer irreeffects. If a popular chief raised his gularities, even when harmless in themstandard in a popular cause, an irregu-selves, to pass unchallenged, lest they army could be assembled in a day. acquire the force of precedents. Four Regular army there was none. Every hundred years ago such minute vigilman had a slight tincture of soldier-ance might well seem unnecessary. A ship, and scarcely any man more than nation of hardy archers and spearmen a slight tincture. The national wealth might, with small risk to its liberties, consisted chiefly in flocks and herds, in connive at some illegal acts on the part

lar

English

aristo cracy.

of a prince whose general administra- | the restraints imposed on the royal tion was good, and whose throne was prerogative that England was Peculiar not defended by a single company of advantageously distinguished character regular soldiers. from most of the neighbour- of the Under this system, rude as it may ing countries. A peculiarity appear when compared with those ela- equally important, though less borate constitutions of which the last noticed, was the relation in which the seventy years have been fruitful, the nobility stood here to the commonalty. English long enjoyed a large measure There was a strong hereditary arisof freedom and happiness. Though, tocracy: but it was of all hereditary during the feeble reign of Henry the aristocracies the least insolent and exSixth, the state was torn, first by fac- clusive. It had none of the invidious tions, and at length by civil war; though character of a caste. It was constantly Edward the Fourth was a prince of receiving members from the people, and dissolute and imperious character; constantly sending down members to though Richard the Third has gene- mingle with the people. Any gentlerally been represented as a monster of man might become a peer, the younger depravity; though the exactions of son of a peer was but a gentleman. Henry the Seventh caused great repin- Grandsons of peers yielded precedence ing; it is certain that our ancestors, to newly made knights. The dignity under those Kings, were far better go- of knighthood was not beyond the reach verned than the Belgians under Philip, of any man who could by diligence surnamed the Good, or the French and thrift realise a good estate, or who under that Lewis who was styled the could attract notice by his valour in a Father of his people. Even while the battle or a siege. It was regarded as wars of the Roses were actually raging, no disparagement for the daughter of a our country appears to have been in a Duke, nay of a royal Duke, to espouse happier condition than the neighbour- a distinguished commoner. Thus, Sir ing realms during years of profound John Howard married the daughter of peace. Comines was one of the most Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk. enlightened statesmen of his time. He Sir Richard Pole married the Countess had seen all the richest and most highly of Salisbury, daughter of George Duke civilised parts of the Continent. He of Clarence. Good blood was indeed

had lived in the opulent towns of Flan-held in high respect: but between good ders, the Manchesters and Liverpools blood and the privileges of peerage of the fifteenth century. He had visited there was, most fortunately for our Florence, recently adorned by the mag-country, no necessary connection. Pedinificence of Lorenzo, and Venice, not grees as long, and scutcheons as old, yet humbled by the confederates of were to be found out of the House of Cambray. This eminent man deliber-Lords as in it. There were new men ately pronounced England to be the who bore the highest titles. There best governed country of which he had were untitled men well known to be any knowledge. Her constitution he descended from knights who had broken emphatically designated as a just and holy thing, which, while it protected the people, really strengthened the hands of a prince who respected it. In no other country, he said, were men so effectually secured from wrong. The calamities produced by our intestine wars seemed to him to be confined to the nobles and the fighting men, and to leave no traces such as he had been accustomed to see elsewhere, no ruined dwellings, no depopulated cities.

It was not only by the efficiency of

the Saxon ranks at Hastings, and scaled the walls of Jerusalem. There were Bohuns, Mowbrays, De Veres, nay, kinsmen of the House of Plantagenet, with no higher addition than that of Esquire, and with no civil privileges beyond those enjoyed by every farmer and shopkeeper. There was therefore here no line like that which in some other countries divided the patrician from the plebeian. The yeoman was not inclined to murmur at dignities to which his own children might rise.

The grandee was not inclined to insult a class into which his own children must descend.

ment of

trary than that of the Plantagenets. Personal character may in some Governdegree explain the difference; men After the wars of York and Lan- for courage and force of will Tudors. caster, the links which connected the were common to all the men and nobility and the commonalty became women of the House of Tudor. They closer and more numerous than ever. exercised their power during a period The extent of the destruction which of a hundred and twenty years, always had fallen on the old aristocracy may with vigour, often with violence, somebe inferred from a single circumstance. times with cruelty. They, in imitation In the year 1451 Henry the Sixth sum- of the dynasty which had preceded moned fifty-three temporal Lords to them, occasionally invaded the rights Parliament. The temporal Lords sum- of the subject, occasionally exacted moned by Henry the Seventh to the taxes under the name of loans and gifts, Parliament of 1485 were only twenty- and occasionally dispensed with penal nine, and of these several had recently statutes: nay, though they never prebeen elevated to the peerage. During sumed to enact any permanent law by the following century the ranks of the their own authority, they occasionally nobility were largely recruited from took upon themselves, when Parliament among the gentry. The constitution of was not sitting, to meet temporary the House of Commons tended greatly exigencies by temporary edicts. It was, to promote the salutary intermixture of however, impossible for the Tudors classes. The knight of the shire was to carry oppression beyond a certain the connecting link between the baron point: for they had no armed force, and the shopkeeper. On the same and they were surrounded by an armed benches on which sate the goldsmiths, people. Their palace was guarded by drapers, and grocers, who had been re- a few domestics whom the array of a turned to Parliament by the commer- single shire, or of a single ward of cial towns, sate also members who, in London, could with ease have overany other country, would have been powered. These haughty princes were called noblemen, hereditary lords of therefore under a restraint stronger manors, entitled to hold courts and to than any which mere law can impose, bear coat armour, and able to trace under a restraint which did not, inback an honourable descent through deed, prevent them from sometimes many generations. Some of them were treating an individual in an arbitrary younger sons and brothers of lords. and even in a barbarous manner, but Others could boast of even royal blood. which effectually secured the nation At length the eldest son of an Earl of against general and long continued Bedford, called in courtesy by the se- oppression They might safely be cond title of his father, offered himself tyrants within the precinct of the as candidate for a seat in the House of court: but it was necessary for them Commons, and his example was followed to watch with constant anxiety the by others. Seated in that house, the temper of the country. Henry the heirs of the great peers naturally be- Eighth, for example, encountered no came as zealous for its privileges as any opposition when he wished to send of the humble burgesses with whom Buckingham and Surrey, Anne Boleyn they were mingled. Thus our democracy and Lady Salisbury, to the scaffold. was, from an early period, the most But when, without the consent of aristocratic, and our aristocracy the Parliament, he demanded of his submost democratic in the world; a pecu-jects a contribution amounting to one liarity which has lasted down to the pre- sixth of their goods, he soon found it sent day, and which has produced many necessary to retract. The cry of hunimportant moral and political effects. dreds of thousands was that they were The government of Henry the English and not French, freemen and Seventh, of his son, and of his grand-not slaves. In Kent the royal comchildren was, on the whole, more arbi-missioners fled for their lives.

In