THE TEXT-BOOK OF THE CONSTITUTION. MAGNA CHARTA, THE PETITION OF RIGHTS, AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS. WITH HISTORICAL COMMENTS, AND REMARKS ON THE PRESENT POLITICAL EMERGENCIES. BY E. S. CREASY, M. A., BARRISTER-AT-LAW; PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON; LATE FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 66 Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights, and the Bill of Rights form the code, which I call the Bible of the English Constitution."-LORD CHATHAM. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, BURLINGTON STREET, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty. 1848. [Price Half-a-Crown.] THE TEXT-BOOK OF THE CONSTITUTION. WHATEVER may be thought of the execution of this work, I have little fear of the chief portion of it being censured, so far as regards the design. An attempt to arrange in a simple form, and to place before the public, in a few easily accessible pages, the great principles of our Constitution, to prove their antiquity, to illustrate their development, and to point out their enduring value, will surely, in times like the present, not be discouraged as blameable; and, in the strange dearth of really useful treatises on this all-important topic, it will hardly be slighted as superfluous. I am aware that I assume a more questionable and difficult function in proceeding to consider what political measures should now be taken, in order that our Constitution may extend its benefits more amply, and more securely for the future. But this branch of the subject is intimately connected with the other; for, the same earnest and longcontinued studies which teach the historical inquirer to believe in and venerate the great principles of the English Constitution, also display to him the workings of its normal law of progress, its plastic power of self-amelioration and expansion, through which alone we may hope to see the exigencies of the present and of the coming time supplied, not only without danger, but with additional security to the fundamental institutions of ages past. It is in the first place necessary to have a clear idea of what we mean by the word "Constitutional." For, there are few terms in our language more laxly employed than this word and its converse in party political discussion. And so very vague are the ideas which many entertain of the English Constitution, that when the opponent of a particular measure or a particular system of policy cries out that it is unconstitutional, it generally means little more than that the matter so denounced is something which the speaker dislikes. Still, the term is susceptible of full and accurate explanation, though it may not be easy to set it lucidly forth without first investigating the archæology of our history, rather more deeply than may suit hasty talkers and superficial thinkers, but with no greater expenditure of time and labour than every member of a great and free state ought gladly to bestow, in order that he may rightly comprehend and appreciate the polity and the laws in which, and by which he lives, and moves, and has his civic being. B 2 WHAT IS THE CONSTITUTION? Some furious Jacobins, at the close of the last century, used to clamour that there was no such thing as the English Constitution, because it could not be produced in full written form like that of the United States, or like those with which Sièyes crammed the pigeonholes of his bureau, to suit the varying phases of the first years of the French Revolution. And, as the trade of Constitution-mongering is again thriving on the Continent, perhaps some who see that other nations are providing themselves with full written formulas of social and political rights and processes, in all the paraphernalia of article, section, supplement and proviso, while England is content with her old statute-book, and old traditional government and laws-may think that the term "English Constitution means nothing beyond the nomeaning of designating the actual state of things in the country at the particular moment when the phrase is used, and which, of course, is liable to vary with the varying hour. وو In order to meet these cavils, there is no occasion to resort to the strange dogma of Burke, that our ancestors, at the Revolution of 1688, bound, and had a right to bind, both themselves and their posterity to perpetual adherence to the exact order of things then established; nor need we rely solely on the eulogies which foreign as well as native writers, a hundred years ago, used to heap upon our system of government. Those panegyrics, whether exaggerated or not, were to a great extent supported by reasonings and comparisons, which are now wholly inapplicable. But, without propping his political creed on them, an impartial and honest investigator may still remain convinced that England has a Constitution, and that there is ample cause why she should cherish it. And by this it is meant, that he will recognise and admire, in the history, the laws, and the institutions of England, certain great leading principles, and fundamental political rules, which have existed from the earliest periods of our nationality down to the present time; expanding and adapting themselves to the progress of society and civilisation, advancing and varying in development, but still essentially the same in substance and in spirit. These great primeval and enduring principles are the principles of the English Constitution. And we are not obliged to learn them from conflicting speculations or suppositions; for they are imperishably recorded in the Great Charter, and in the Charters and Statutes connected with and confirmatory of Magna Charta, with which the volume of the laws of the land auspiciously commences. In Magna Charta itself, that is to say, in a solemn instrument deliberately agreed on by the king, the prelates, the great barons, the gentry, the burghers, the yeomanry, and all the freemen of the realm, at an epoch which we have a right to consider the commencement of our nationality, we can trace all these great principles, some in the germ, some more fully revealed. In the statute entitled Confirmatio Chartarum, which is to be read as a supplement to its great original, we discern these principles manifested with additional clearness. And thus, at the very dawn of the history of the present English nation, we behold the foundations of our great political institutions imperishably laid, and their essential forms proclaimed. |