The Constitution of England

Chapter III

44 u c h a p t e r i i i u The Subject continued. The Representatives of the Nation, and of the whole Nation, were now admitted into Parliament: the great point therefore was gained, that was one day to procure them the great influence which they at present possess; and the subsequent reigns afford continual instances of its successive growth. Under Edward the Second, the Commons began to annex petitions to the bills by which they granted subsidies: this was the dawn of their legislative authority. Under Edward the Third, they declared they would not, in future, acknowledge any law to which they had not expressly assented. Soon after this, they exerted a privilege in which consists, at this time, one of the great balances of the Constitution: they impeached, and procured to be condemned, some of the first Ministers of State.1 Under Henry the Fourth, they refused to grant subsidies before an answer had been given to their petitions. In a word, every event of any consequence was attended with an increase of the power of the Commons; increases indeed but slow and gradual, but which were peaceably and legally effected, and were the more fit to engage the attention of the People, and coalesce with the ancient principles of the Constitution. Under Henry the Fifth, the Nation was entirely taken up with its wars against France; and in the reign of Henry the Sixth began the fatal contests between the houses of York and Lancaster. The noise of arms alone was 1. De Lolme refers to the parliamentary impeachment and conviction of Lord Latimer in 1377, which was conventionally treated as the first recorded instance of the impeachment process. chapter iii 45 now to be heard: during the silence of the laws already in being, nothought was had of enacting new ones; and for thirty years together, England presents a wide scene of slaughter and desolation. At length, under Henry the Seventh, who, by his intermarriage with the house of York, united the pretensions of the two families, a general peace was re-established, and the prospect of happier days seemed to open on the Nation. But the long and violent agitation under which it had laboured, was to be followed by a long and painful recovery. Henry, mounting the throne with sword in hand, and ingreatmeasureasaConqueror,hadpromises to fulfil, as well as injuries to avenge. In the mean time, the People, wearied out by the calamities they had undergone, and longing only for repose, abhorred even the idea of resistance; so that the remains of an almost exterminated Nobility beheld themselves left defenceless,andabandoned to the mercy of the Sovereign. The Commons, on the other hand, accustomed to act only a secondpart in public affairs, and finding themselves bereft of those who had hitherto been their Leaders, were more than ever afraid to form, of themselves, an opposition. Placed immediately, as well as the Lords, under the eye of the King, they beheld themselves exposed to the same dangers. Like them, therefore, they purchased their personal security at the expence of public liberty; and in reading the history of the two first Kings of the house of Tudor, we imagine ourselves reading the relation given by Tacitus, of Tiberius and the Roman Senate (a). The time, therefore, seemed to be arrived, at which England must submit , in its turn, to the fate of the other Nationsof Europe.Allthosebarriers which it had raised for the defence of its liberty, seemed to have only been able to postpone the inevitable effects of Power. But the remembrance of their ancient laws, of that great chartersooften and so solemnly confirmed, was too deeply impressed on the minds of the English, to be effaced by transitory evils. Like a deep and extensive ocean, which preserves an equability of temperature amidst all the vicissitudes of (a) Quanto quis illustrior, tanto magis falsi ac festinantes. [[“The more exalted the personage , the grosser his hypocrisy and his haste.” De Lolme cites the Annals, book 1, chapter 7, of the Roman historian Publius, or Gaius, Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 56–ca. 117 c.e.).]] 46 book i seasons, England still retained those principles of liberty which were so universally diffused through all orders of thePeople,andtheyrequiredonly a proper opportunity to manifest themselves. England, besides, still continued to possess the immense advantage of being one undivided State. Had it been, like France...