remained-the fundamental law of England. This time at least the people understood the meaning of the royal charter. The tyrannies of John had fortunately been so flagrant, so distinct, so universal among all classes of his subjects, that a bare recital of his acts, coupled with a prohibition of the like in time to come, was a complete protection to the people for the future. In the charter we find not one abstraction, theory, or maxim of government, but a distinct and sharp enumeration of things which the king shall and which he shall not do, that shows clearly both the wrongs he had committed and the rights he had denied. It is for this reason, doubtless that the charter has proved to be so good and fruitful. For having ever afterward been regarded as the root and ground of the whole English Constitution, the judges have from time to time applied to it for precedent as cases of a novel character arose; and in its multifarious clauses they have seldom failed to find one which contained a principle applicable to the cause in hand. To this directness, therefore, of the charter we must trace much of the equity and reason of the common law. A charter, however good, expressing abstract theories and maxims of laws or government, must inevitably have led to inextricable confusions: some judges straining the law to the utmost, and others restraining it to the least it could mean. But given as it was in direct application to existing facts, it became a chapter of judicial precedents from which there could be no escape, and being gradually developed in the course of ages only as new circumstances called for some new application of the principles of equity on which it was established, centuries have vindicated its claim to be known as the Great Charter of the Liberties of England.

As it is our purpose to give a translation of this venerable monument of freedom, with such copious notes as will make it perfectly intelligible to the ordinary reader, we shall not here enter largely into the provisions of the charter, but content ourselves with an enumeration of its chief heads. It granted, then, the freedom of the English church forever it mitigated the chief burdens of the feudal system, by decreasing the king's power over his immediate tenants or tenants in capite, and by extending these provisions to sub-feudatories; it did away, particularly, with the abuses of the feudal right of wardship and marriage, which had so oppressed the

helpless; it defined and limited the aids which might be lawfully assessed by lords upon their vassals, and provided that in case of any further taxation, a parliament must be summoned to grant and assess it; it protected trade. and commerce by a guarantee of safety to foreign merchants, and a recognition of the ancient rights, liberties, and free customs of all boroughs, towns, and cities; it provided for more regular administration of the laws by promising that the king's courts should henceforth be held at a fixed place, instead of following the royal person, thus at the same time removing judges from unwholesome influences; it declared that justice should neither be denied, sold, nor delayed to any man; that "NO FREEMAN SHOULD BE TAKEN, OR IMPRISONED, OR DISPOSSESSED, OR OUTLAWED, OR BANISHED, OR IN ANY WAY DESTROYED, BUT BY THE LAWFUL JUDGMENT OF HIS PEERS OR BY THE LAW OF THE LAND;" and that a writ of inquisition, equivalent in its effect to a writ of HABEAS CORPUS, SHOULD BE INSTANTLY AND GRATUITOUSLY GRANTED TO ACCUSED PERSONS WHO DESIRED A SPEEDY TRIAL; it provided that unlawful fines which had been levied by the king and his immediate predecessors should be remitted or repaid, that the new forests should be disforested, that is, restored to cultivation, and that the king's foreign mercenaries should be banished. It concluded with a general amnesty to all who had taken part against the king in the discord between him and his barons, and with a $OLEMN RECOGNITION OF THE RIGHT OF REBELLION if the king should violate the charter. Five and twenty barons were appointed to compel him to fidelity. In case he injured any man, complaint was to be made to any four out of the twenty-five, who were to make a solemn application for redress, and if redress were not given them, the five and twenty barons were to make war on the king, to harass and distress him in every way possible, by taking his castles, lands, and possessions, saving harmless only the persons of the royal family, till the wrong should be redressed according to their verdict, after which they were to return to their allegiance as before. In security of these things John delivered to the barons the custody of London, and to Langton the Tower of London, to be held till his concessions should have been

fulfilled. Never was humiliation more complete; never was victory more perfect; but the victory was that of freedom over despotism, and the humiliation was that of a tyrant before freemen whose rights he had contemned, whose firesides he had sought to violate, and over whom he had attempted to usurp unlimited and irresponsible authority."

Thus, by a great rebellion of the barons, England's worst and weakest monarch was compelled to grant a charter which declared rebellion lawful, and provided means for lawfully conducting it. No great step in the onward march of constitutional government has ever yet been made but by such righteous rebels as the barons of King John; and while it is a truth that an unjustifiable rebellion is a heinous crime, it is no less true that without rebellion constitutional freedom never could have been achieved in any country. Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution of these States, were all successively the offspring of rebellion; and if these States now abandon their free system to the hand of arbitrary power, the only hope for their posterity will be that they may follow the example of rebellion set them by our English and colonial ancestors.

The provisions of the charter of King John involve, as Hume says, "all the chief outlines of a legal government, and provide for the equal distribution of justice and the free enjoyment of property; the great objects for which the people have a perpetual and inalienable right to rebel; and which no time, nor precedent, nor statute, nor positive institution ought to deter them from keeping ever uppermost in their thoughts." Neither Hume nor the heroes of Runnymede appear to have been very firm believers in the doctrine of “ unconditional loyalty." That article in the provisions of a constitutional government it was reserved for an American Republican to invent, in the year of grace-we had almost said disgrace-1863. We cannot better end the present chapter than with the following quotation from Hallam:

"In the reign of John, all the rapacious exactions usual to these Norman kings were not only redoubled, but mingled with other outrages of tyranny still more intolerable. These too were to be endured at the hands of a prince utterly contemptible for his

folly and cowardice. One is surprised at the forbearance displayed by the barons, till they took up arms at length in that confederacy which ended in establishing the great charter of liberties. As this was the first effort toward a legal government, so is it beyond comparison the most important event in our history, except that Revolution, without which its benefits would have been rapidly annihilated. The Constitution of England has indeed no single date from which its duration is to be reckoned. The institutions of positive law, the far more important changes which time has wrought in the order of society, during six hundred years subsequent to the great charter, have undoubtedly lessened its direct application to our present circumstances. But it is still the keystone of English liberty. All that has since been obtained is little more than a confirmation or commentary; and if every subsequent law were to be swept away, there would still remain the bold features that distinguish a free from a despotic monarchy. It has been lately the fashion to depreciate the value of the Magna Charta, as if it had sprung from the private ambition of a few selfish barons, and redressed only some feudal abuses. It is indeed of little importance by what motives those who obtained it were guided. The real characters of men most distinguished in the transactions of that time are not easily determined at present. Yet if we bring these ungrateful suspicions to the test, they prove destitute of all reasonable foundation. An equal distribution of civil rights to all classes. of freemen forms the peculiar beauty of the charter. In this just solicitude for the people, and in the moderation which infringed upon no essential prerogative of the monarchy, we may perceive a liberality and patriotism very unlike the selfishness which is sometimes rashly imputed to those ancient barons. And so far as we are guided by historical testimony, two great men, the pillars of our church and state, may be considered as entitled beyond the rest to the glory of this monument: Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, and William, earl of Pembroke. To their temperate zeal for a legal government, England was indebted during that critical period for the two greatest blessings that patriotic statesmen could confer: the establishment of civil liberty upon an immovable basis, and the preservation of national independence under the

ancient line of sovereigns, which rasher men were about to exchange for the dominion of France.

"But the essential clauses of Magna Charta are those which protect the personal liberty and property of all freemen, by giving security from arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary spoliation. 'No freeman' (says the 29th chapter of Henry III.'s charter, which, as the existing law, I quote in preference to that of John, the variations not being very material) 'shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor send upon him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or delay to any man justice or right.' It is obvious that these words, interpreted by any honest court of law, convey an ample security for the two main rights of civil society. From the era therefore of King John's charter, it must have been a clear principle of our Constitution, that no man can be detained in prison without trial. Whether courts of justice framed the writ of habeas corpus in conformity to the spirit of this clause, or found it already in their register, it became from that era the right of every subject to demand it. That writ, rendered more actively remedial by the statute of Charles II., but founded upon the broad basis of Magna Charta, is the principal bulwark of English liberty; and if ever temporary circumstances, or the doubtful plea of political necessity, shall lead men to look on its denial with apathy, the most distinguishing characteristic of our Constitution will be effaced."-HALLAM's Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 322 et seq.

NOTES.

1. The Former Charters.—" A charter of Henry I., the authenticity of which is undisputed, though it contains nothing specially expressed but a remission of unreasonable reliefs, wardships, and other feudal burdens, proceeds to declare that he gives his subjects the laws of Edward the Confessor, with the emendations made by his father with consent of his barons. The charter of Stephen not only confirms that of his predecessor, but adds, in fuller terms than Henry had used, an express concession of the laws and customs of Edward. Henry II.