of these Juries, made their presentments before the King and his Council. The Leets of the boroughs either concurred in the inquests and delegations of the shires, or they answered before the King and his Council in severalty, as they had answered in the Shire-moot. Magistrates in their own sokes, they transmitted the complaints of the people, of whom they were both the governors and the representatives, unto the Great Council of the kingdom.

Of this Council, as constituted anterior to the Conquest, we know little more than the name. But the unity of the members of the Constitution is such, that the composition of the greater Burghmotes cannot fail to reflect the image of the paramount jurisdiction. A most important branch of the Engla ræed gifan probably consisted of Aldermen possessing individual powers of jurisdiction-some appointed by the King, others by the courts of the Commons; some holding office for life, or for a specified term; others invested with equal authority by right of property and inheritance. At a period of our history, which, though less remote, is equally obscure, there is reason to suppose that the Barons sat in Parliament as representatives of the jurisdictions appendant to their lands.

Whatever weight may be ascribed to the proofs upon which our arguments must rest, the theory involved in our inferences is consistent with the principles of the Constitution. In the Grand Jury of the present age, much as it has varied from its pristine form, uniting to the magistrates, the representatives of the King's Thanes, we still recognise the assembly of the States of the Shire; whilst the House of Commons retains the active functions of the Grand Inquest of the community.

Our ancient Constitution is more than an object of curiosity. We have long boasted, that the liberties of which every Eng'lishman is inherited,' are derived from our ancestors. And, as the muniments by which we deduce our title to that inheritance, we must sedulously study the dusty record and the mildewed charter. From them alone can we collect the precedents of the spirit of the Constitution. The ancient polity of England allowed the powers of Government to bear as lightly on the people as was consistent with the good order of the State. It was, in truth, a home government,-a government in which each individual took as great a share as he was worth in the community. The internal balance of power was fairly poised. Justice, according to our familiar phrase, was brought home to every man's door. Such was the Constitution of Old England; but we have already stated, that we have commenced these investigations with a very sedate, sober, and archaic tone of mind: And as we

really feel that we have no concern to side with any of the parties which have battled in this country since the death of Simon of Montfort, we shall not enter into any practical exposition of the maxims of former days, beyond a few general observations, which must have been anticipated by such of our readers as have continued awake unto this our fiftieth page.

6

An inspection of the Rolls of Parliament during the reigns of our earlier monarchs, in which all ranks of society are seen crowding into the Painted Chamber, for the purpose of delivering their complaints into the hands of the Receivours des 'petitions d'Engleterre, Gales, Irland et Ecosse, de Gascoigne, et des autres terres et pais par de la mer et des isles,'will induce an opinion, that the right of applying to the Legislature for the redress of all real or imaginary grievances, is not a modern innovation; the greater innovation is the discouragement of this right, even though it may not be always exercised with judgment or discretion. Parliament, when exerting its remedial jurisdiction, is in nowise disturbing the established distribution of judicial authority; but its inquisitorial functions are ancillary to the ordinary Courts of Justice, which are embraced within it as the primary sphere. A counteravailing force, repressing the undue extension of the remedial attributes of Parliament, will be found in the nature of our Parliamentary representation, which is and ought to be essentially aristocratic. It is composed of the natural depositaries of the strength and power of the people. In other countries, whose ancient constitutions were nearly analogous to our own, the people lost their rights, because all the jurisdictions possessed by the mesne magistracy, whether feudal or municipal, gradually merged in the Crown. The Sovereign then delegated the authority which he had so acquired, to a dependant magistracy, created by his will, and whose importance was derived only from their stations. No jealousy was excited amongst the multitude by this transition. Slight inconveniences, when present, are more irksome than the contemplation of remote, though greater, dangers. Baronial sway vexed and irritated the wealthy vassal. The simple Burgher looked spitefully at the haughty Echevin. They forgot that the village received protection from the frowning dungeon-tower; and that the gates where they reluctantly paid the toll and the tenth penny to the crabbed city sergeant, could be shut against forced loans and benevolences. Hence the people, unapprehensive of futurity, rejoiced when the Monarch struck down the battlements of the castle, and seized the keys and maces of the corporation. They assisted in sweeping

away every barrier which the older institutions had interposed between them and the Throne.

Such was the fate of the Continental nations. But this evil destiny fell not upon England. Providence produces the greatest effects, in the moral as well as in the physical world, by the simplest means. In the first year of the reign of King Edward III., the Commons prayed, that good men and true might be assigned in every county to keep the peace, and that they might have power to chastise offenders according to law and reason. Edward assented; the petition became the law; and to this statute we probably owe the preservation of our limited monarchy. The country required a renovation of its internal frame. The seignorial franchises of the Barons had become insufficient for the preservation of the public tranquillity. Adapted to a simple race of husbandmen, the frankpledge was broken and dislocated by the expansion of the community. And the system of the Anglo-Saxon municipal government, founded upon the frankpledge, was no longer manageable or effective. At this juncture, a confederacy of the powerful landholders against the body of the English people, might have given them an overweening sway. They might have asserted, that an extension of their feudal rights was needed for the purpose of repressing the disorders of the kingdom: and the legislature might have granted to them a more summary and uncontrolled jurisdiction. Every manorial domain would then have been converted into an honour palatine; and England would have been parcelled out into petty principalities like Germany. Had the people, on the contrary, cooperated either actively or passively with the Crown in disfranchising the aristocracy, on the pretence that their territorial rights and privileges were incompatible with the quiet and wellbeing of the State; if they had complained, that the rich and wellborn were already formidable to the Throne and oppressive to the cottage,-then this country, like France, would have become a levelled field of despotism. We avoided these extremes by the creation of Justices of the Peace. The lawful authority which was becoming mischievous and debilitated in the hands of its ancient owners, received a new apportionment amongst the order to which it belonged. The class received a compensation for the authority which was lost by the individual.

Territorial jurisprudence was not abolished by a sweeping law. No sudden alteration shook and jarred the State. Infangthief and outfangthief, bloodwite and leirwite, were still retained in the charter, as the appurtenances of the manor. But these harsh-sounding Saxon terms now required a glossary. The Lord forgot to claim his antiquated powers. He

allowed them to fall into desuetude, whilst, with his brethren of the quorum, he sat on the bench, where he resumed an equivalent for his hereditary rights, by virtue of the commission which had issued under the King's broad seal: The Crown was not jealous of the share of power which it appeared! to bestow. Equal content was given to the people, who requir ed the immediate protection of the magistracy. Villainage was wearing out. The yeoman and the franklin knew that the knight and the squire were commoners like themselves: and they submitted, without murmuring, to a jurisdiction which seemed as an emanation from the supreme executive authority; although they might now have been ill inclined to allow such preeminence to their equal in the State, if he had claimed it as an inherent sovereignty. Feudal authority, matured into real political power, thus became again reunited to property; and the energetic and benign influence exercised by the English Gentleman, was settled and confirmed.

The State derives all its stability, power, and energy, from nobility, industry, and talent. In the words of King Canute, these are the Pillars of the Throne; and if any one of them is broken asunder, the Throne will fall. But they must be coordinate, and they must not rise against each other. Aristocracy, founded only upon birth, is hateful to the other ranks of society. An aristocracy composed only of the rich, debases its members no less than the people at large. France, according to the old regime, exhibited the effects produced by a ruling caste: and America may one day deplore the polity which leaves no substantial ascendency, but to the purse. An Utopian community might create an aristocracy, for which the sole qualification should be talent, or the reputation of talent. As far as the multitude are concerned, the coin and the counterfeit are just the same. Revolutionary France, and the ancient republics, exhibit some approximation to such an aristocracy; and their examples prove, that the ascendency of mere mind, unchecked by the habits of action acquired by familiar honour and respectability, would become more intolerant, pitiless, and tyrannical, than any of the forms of misrule beneath which the earth has groaned. In England, the heterogeneous elements of our constitution have forced the three kinds of aristocracy into combination with each other. From their union results another species, the aristocracy which is founded upon character, a term so completely our own, as to be untranslatable into any other language. It is to the aristocracy of character that the Parliament owes its supremacy over the Crown and the Kingdom. If deprived of it, the Lords and Commons would become theatrical pageants. They

might retain the Woolsack and the Mace, the Black Rod and the Chair; but they could neither command respect nor enforce obedience.

We live at the beginning of one of the great cycles of the world. The empire of feudality has fallen for ever; and the states which composed it must assume a new organization. At ro very distant period, their polity will be nearly uniform in its structure; and the principles which will rule them, will cause their governments to approximate to the form of the government of England. It is in vain that Emperors and Kings assemble in secret conclave to avert this revolution. The doom is sealed, the decree has gone forth, the judgment is passed. They must be content to reign according to the Constitution. Their prerogatives must be defined; the rights and privileges of their subjects must be secured. If this euthanasia of feudality is to be retarded, it will be so, not by the stubborn opposition of Sovereigns and Cabinets, but by the ignorance and political fanaticism of the people. The privileges of the commonwealth can never be protected, if we violate the rights belonging to any of its members. If the priesthood are disposed to pay too ready an obedience to the ruling powers, we shall not add to their independence by despoiling them of their lands, and converting them into the salaried servants of the State, or into eleemosynary dependants upon the bounty of their hearers. An established church is an essential portion of a constitutional Monarchy. Its endowment is the property of the people. When they pillage the altar, they rob themselves. We should open as many paths as possible between the lower and upper orders of society. Every advocate of popular liberty ought to cherish an ecclesiastical constitution, by which the son of the peasant may acquire unchallenged rank and independence. The cardinal's cap and the episcopal mitre fall often on the humblest brow. Men of transcendant talents may force their way through tracks of their own. The difficulty consists in providing for the regular progress of men whose talents entitle them to distinction, though not to command. When the church cannot be acceptable to the individuals belonging to this class of society, those to whom it would have afforded a competent provision are without resource, unless they become soldiers or lawyers, who devour the flock which the pastor tends, or they increase the locust swarms of employés and gens du bureau.

A representative government cannot exist in a monarchy without inequality of rank. Some classes must have a greater share of political power than the rest, in order that they may be enabled to support the popular representatives by their influence.