Introductory-Montesquieu quoted-Rome and England compared-Freeman quoted-Governments-Limited Monarchy -Austin quoted-From Cæsar to Hastings-Thanes and Ceorls-Slaves-Townships-Sac and Soc-HundredsCourt of the Hundred-The Shire Court-The Witanagemot -The Clergy—The Towns-Trial by Jury-Bushell's Case -Frank pledge-Bocland and Folcland.

Ir is our intention in the following pages to endeavour to trace the growth and progress of the British Constitution through the many centuries of its gradual development. For most, if not for all men, the study of history possesses great and varied attractions, but that portion of it which treats of the history of the institutions under which we have the good fortune to live, is, for Englishmen, at once the most interesting and the

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most important. Montesquieu says, "as Rome, Lacedæmon and Carthage perished, so England will perish when the legislative power shall have become more corrupt than the executive." England, however, differs both in its structure and resources from all those with which history makes us acquainted-her free institutions have been ever growing, and her constitution has had within itself the means of effecting reforms, without bringing about a revolution in the form of government. Rome, of all ancient states, most resembled England, but the Roman people in the later ages of the commonwealth were not a people of citizens but conquerors; Rome was not a state, but the head of a state. By the immensity of her conquests she became only an accessory part of her own empire; her wealth was boundless, and all possible enemies being defeated she ceased to be an army, and thence dates the era of her corruption. Rome, in a word, was destined to lose her liberty when she lost her empire, and she was destined to lose her empire whenever she began to enjoy it.

In England all liberty and power is not accumulated in one point. The same laws and the same interests prevail everywhere; the whole nation equally concurs in the framing of the government; no one part has therefore need to fear that another part will supply the necessary forces to destroy it.

The ruin of Rome may be in a great measure traced to the exorbitant power which several of its citizens succeeded in attaining; in England the power of the crown has effectually prevented this.

Such a violent establishment of monarchical power as that which took place in Rome after the death of Julius Cæsar cannot take place in England. Here that kind of power has existed for ages, it is circumscribed by fixed laws, and established upon regular and well-laid foundations; nor is there any great danger that this power may, by means of those legal prerogatives it already possesses, assume others, and at last openly make itself absolute.

The power of granting supplies is vested in the nation; let the prerogatives be as great as they will, the people of England have the power of preventing the exercise of them. The most singular government upon earth, and which has carried farthest the liberty of the individual, was in danger of total destruction when Bartholomew Columbus was on his passage to England to teach Henry VII. the way to Mexico and Peru. Freeman says: "On the Teutonic mainland the Freeman. old Teutonic freedom, with its free assemblies, national and local, gradually died out before the encroachments of a brood of petty princes. In the Teutonic island it has changed its form from age to age; it has lived through many storms; it

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has withstood the attacks of many enemies, but it has never utterly died out. The continued national life of the people, notwithstanding foreign conquests and internal revolutions, has remained unbroken for 1,400 years. At no time has the tie between the present and the past been wholly rent asunder; at no time have Englishmen sat down to put together a wholly new constitution in obedience to some dazzling theory. step in our growth has been the natural consequence of some earlier step; each change in our law and constitution has been, not the bringing in of anything wholly new, but the development and improvement of something that was already old. Our progress has in some ages been faster, in others slower; at some moments we have seemed to stand still or even to go back, but the great march of political development has never wholly stopped; it has never been permanently checked since the day when the coming of the Teutonic conqueror began to change Britain into England. New and foreign elements have from time to time thrust themselves into our law; but the same spirit which could develop and improve whatever was old and native has commonly found means, sooner or later, to cast forth again whatever was new and foreign. The lover of freedom, the lover of progress, the man who has eyes keen enough to discover real identity under a garb of outward unlikeness, need never shrink from tracing