Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/577

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the Crown and from Jewish creditors, preserving the feudal cour1.-< from the invaaions of royal juatice, and securing the rights of baronial founders over monas- teriea. The cl^use^ enforcing let^l reforms were of more general interest, for Henfy II's "posscssoiy aSEizcs" were popular amoDK all classes, and all suf- fered from arbitrary amercements and from ineufli- ciently controlled officials. These assLzeu were to be held four times a year, and

.ed bv the oath

hood. _ _

great and very unpopular latitude, and many clauses of the charter were direcleliniil Laiiirton. ilBnOmgat the hiih »ltar. T^d out tlio (jnipoavl I'hnrter of Llbrrlin.

M'l|'ni-l''by™iScJoh?'5.121s' ""^

wer« not IlltofCl^lhcr ncjilceted. London and the other boroughs were to liavc their ancient liberties, and an effort was made tn secure unifomuly of weights and meusui-ex. The clause, however, which prot'ecicd foreign iiK-rclianla, was more to the advantage of the consumer than lo that of the English com- petitor.

There is little in the clwrter which can ly called a statement of cnnstitiitionid jirinciple; two articles have, however, Iiccti lifiited, not without reason, an Buch by succeeding geni'nitions. Cluptcr xii, whldi

declares thai n

itiige or aid shall be

impoxeil except by common counsel of the kingdr may Im' taken as an assertion of the principle " no ta.t- at ion without consent ". llow the coiinBetof the king- dom was to lie tiiken is expbineil in chapt4.>r xiv which descriliesthncmnpositionof theCrciit i'ouncil. Ohap- t«rxxxix pn-scribes that ■' no freeman shall be arrested ordetained in prison or deprivcil of his freehold. . . or in any wiiy molested, ,. unless by the Liwful judgment of bis pctTs :inil by the l:iw of the land".


 * 2 BUOHA

The chief object of this clause was to prevent execu- tion before trial, and bo far it is certainly the assertion of a far-reaching constitutional principle, but the last two phrases liave been the subject of much wild inter- pretation. "Judgment by his peers" was taken to mean "trial by jury", and "the law of the land" to mean "by due process of law"; as a matter of fact, both taken together expressed the preference of the barons for the older traiiitional and feudal forms of trial rather tlinn for judgment by the court of royal nominees instituted by Henry II and abused by John. The principle asserted b^ this clause was, therefore, of great constitutional importance, and nod a long future before it, but the actual remedy proposed was reactionary. The final chapter was in a sense the most important of all for the moment, for it was an effort to secure the execution of the charter by establishing a luronial committee of twenty-five with the admitted right to tnake war on the king, shoukl tbey consider that he had violated any of the liberties he had guar- antceil.

Two chief criticisms have been brought against the Magna Carta, that of being behind the times, reac- tionary, and that of being concerned almost entirely with the "selfish" interests of the baronage. Reao- tionary the charter certainly was: in many inspects it was a jtrotcst agamst the sp-stem established by Henrj- II, and, evini wlien it adopted some of the re- Hult-s of his reign such as tht' pi>s«es.sory asHises and the distinction between greater anu lesser barons, it neg- lcct(?d the latest constitutional developments. It said [lothing on taxation of personatt}' or of the spirituali- ties of the clergy; it ga\-c no hint of the introduction of the principle of representation into the Great Coun- cil: yet the early stages of all these financial and constitutional mca-surcs can !« found in the reign of

Bishop Stubbs expres.sed in a pregnant phrase this characteristic of the charter when he called it "the translation into the language of the thirteenth centurj- of the ideas of the eleventh, through the forms of the twelfth ". It is a reproach, howei-er, which it bears in good company, for all the constitutional documents of English history are in a sense reactionary; they are in the main statements of princiiiles or rights acmiired in the pa."!!, but recently violated. The dtorgc of " baro- nial selRshncss" is a more serious matter, for one of the merits claimed for the ctiartcr, even by its more solier admirers, is Ihat of being a nalioiial document. It must l>c ailmitte<l tJiat many of the clauses are directed solely to the grievances of the liarons; that some of the measures enforced, such as the revival of the baronial courts, would l)e injurious to tJie national interests; that, even whi'n the rights of freemen were protected, little sccuritv if any was given to the nu- merous villein class. Nor aiv these criticisms di»- allowed by ch.ipter Ix, which declares hi general tcrmB that lilicrties gruntcil by the king to his men eliall in turn be granteil by them to their vassals. Such a statement is so general that it need not mean much. It is more important to notice that all the numeroua clauses directed to the controlling of the royal officials would licncfit directl.v or indirectly all cla.-!»es, that after all what the comitri- hail been suffering from waa ro.val and not baronial tyranny, and that it was the barons and the clergy who had liceu, for the most part, the immediate victims. Finally the word "selfish" must lie xiKOil cautiously of an age when, \iy universal i^onS(een won from John at the swonl's point. It could not in any sense be lo«ikeil u|m>ii a.-) an act of legislation. He ha<l acccptt-d the Icrms detnHU(l<-<l by the barons, but he would ilo ."O only wi long as he was eomix'lled tii. He had already taken measures to aeijuire lioth juridical and phynieal weapons against