Beacon Lights of History, Volume 11 | Page 5

be
given to those brave and industrious people who redeemed their
morasses from the sea, who grew rich and powerful without the natural
advantages of soil and climate, who fought for eighty years against the
whole power of Spain, who nobly secured their independence against
overwhelming forces, who increased steadily in population and wealth
when obliged to open their dikes upon their cultivated fields, who
established universities and institutions of learning when almost driven
to despair, and who became the richest people in Europe, whitening the
ocean with their ships, establishing banks and colonies, creating a new
style of painting, and teaching immortal lessons in government when
they occupied a country but little larger than Wales. Civilization is as
proud of such a country as Holland as of Greece itself.
With all this, I still believe that it is to England we must go for the
origin of what we are most proud of in our institutions, much as the
Dutch have taught us for which we ought to be grateful, and much as
we may owe to French sceptics and Swiss religionists. This belief is
confirmed by a book I have just read by Hannis Taylor on the "Origin
and Growth of the English Constitution." It is not an artistic history, by
any means, but one in which the author has brought out the recent
investigations of Edward Freeman, John Richard Green, Bishop Stubbs,
Professor Gneist of Berlin, and others, who with consummate learning
have gone to the roots of things,--some of whom, indeed, are dry
writers, regardless of style, disdainful of any thing but facts, which they
have treated with true scholastic minuteness. It appears from these
historians, as quoted by Taylor, and from other authorities to which the
earlier writers on English history had no access, that the germs of our
free institutions existed among the Anglo-Saxons, and were developed
to a considerable extent among their Norman conquerors in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when barons extorted charters from
kings in their necessities, and when the common people of Saxon origin
secured valuable rights and liberties, which they afterwards lost under
the Tudor and Stuart princes. I need not go into a detail of these. It is

certain that in the reign of Edward I. (1274-1307), himself a most
accomplished and liberal civil ruler, the English House of Commons
had become very powerful, and had secured in Parliament the right of
originating money bills, and the control of every form of taxation,--on
the principle that the people could not be taxed without their own
consent. To this principle kings gave their assent, reluctantly indeed,
and made use of all their statecraft to avoid compliance with it, in spite
of their charters and their royal oaths. But it was a political idea which
held possession of the minds of the people from the reign of Edward I.
to that of Henry IV. During this period all citizens had the right of
suffrage in their boroughs and towns, in the election of certain
magistrates. They were indeed mostly controlled by the lord of the
manor and by the parish priest, but liberty was not utterly extinguished
in England, even by Norman kings and nobles; it existed to a greater
degree than in any continental State out of Italy. It cannot be doubted
that there was a constitutional government in England as early as in the
time of Edward I., and that the power of kings was even then checked
by parliamentary laws.
In Freeman's "Norman Conquest," it appears that the old English town,
or borough, is purely of Teutonic origin. In this, local self-government
is distinctly recognized, although it subsequently was controlled by the
parish priest and the lord of the manor under the influence of the
papacy and feudalism; in other words, the ancient jurisdiction of the
tun-mõt--or town-meeting--survived in the parish vestry and the
manorial court. The guild system, according to Kendall, had its origin
in England at a very early date, and a great influence was exercised on
popular liberty by the meetings of the various guilds, composed, as
they were, of small freemen. The guild law became the law of the town,
with the right to elect its magistrates. "The old reeve or bailiff was
supplanted by mayor and aldermen, and the practice of sending the
reeve and four men as the representatives of the township to the
shire-moot widened into the practice of sending four discreet men as
representatives of the county to confer with the king in his great council
touching the affairs of the kingdom." "In 1376," says Taylor, "the
Commons, intent upon correcting the evil practices of the sheriff,
petitioned that the knights of the shire might be chosen by common

election of the better folk of the shires, and not nominated by