Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/389

] wealth are now become the principles of all peoples; and we may safely assert that those principles, though defeated for a time, are only delayed in their inevitable action.

The commonwealth also laid down the great maxim that all power proceeds from the people, even that of deposing and electing kings. It thus destroyed for ever the pernicious doctrine of the divine right of kings—the cornerstone of all oppressions and all official insolence; and though this great principle seemed again destroyed by the restoration, it survived, and was established permanently in the British constitution at the revolution of 1688, the bill of rights expressly recognising it; and William of Orange, though the grandson of Charles I., and married to the daughter of James II., was not received by hereditary right, but avowedly by the election of the people. These are great hereditary legacies of the commonwealth to as and to the world. France has adopted the same principle and acted on it repeatedly. The United States have exercised the same right against us, and have become a republic; and there is no principle now more extensively diffused amongst all thinking people as a perfectly common sense truism, and though outwardly ignored by kings, not forgotten by their subjects.

A Friend's Meeting. From an Engraving of the 17th Century.

During the commonwealth many improvements were introduced into Ireland under Ireton's administration, particularly that of changing provincial courts into county courts, greatly to the convenience and relief of the people. The system of lease and release came into use in this kingdom; the greater feudal services were abolished; and, to the especial honour of the commonwealth, torture was disused. This practice, which was totally opposed to the law of England, and had been used in every reign of the government, often with cruelty equal to that of the Spanish inquisition, was abandoned by the commonwealth, and never again was restored. How far the great men of the commonwealth were in advance of their age in this respect, Mr. Jardiue, in his treatise on the subject, has shown by reminding us that torture was not abolished in Scotland till 1708; in France till 1789; in Russia till 1801; in Bavaria and Würtemburg till 1806; in Hanover till 1812; and in Baden till 1832; and not even then in reality in the prisons of those German states, for cudgelling was still employed there, in menacing prisoners to compel confession, as may be seen in the trials recorded in the Neue Pitavel, and especially in the case of Wendt, the cabinet-maker at Rostock.

Whatever constitutional principles, therefore, were violated in the struggle which resulted in the commonwealth, whatever miseries were inflicted during its violent warfare, and however brief was the period of its existence, the advantages to us and to all mankind were incalculable in their amount, and eternal in their nature. By it the royal, mysterious, indefatigable, and protean power called prerogative, a law above all law, was struck down, and, if not destroyed, made subject to parliament; and the powers and jurisdiction of parliament, the great legislative and judicial authority, placed on a clear and immovable basis. Since