Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/117

xcix ARAGON. xcix It had a right to be consulted on all matters of im- section portance, especially on those of peace and war. . No law was valid, no tax could be imposed, without its consent ; and it carefully provided for the ap- plication of the revenue to its destined uses. ^^ It determined the succession to the crown ; removed obnoxious ministers ; reformed the household, and domestic expenditure, of the monarch ; and exer- cised the power, in the most unreserved manner, of withholding supplies, as well as of resisting what it regarded as an encroachment on the liberties of the nation.^ The excellent commentators on the constitution The General Privilege. of Aragon have bestowed comparatively little at- tention on the developement of its parliamentary history ; confining themselves too exclusively to mere forms of procedure. The defect has been greatly obviated by the copiousness of their general historians. But the statute-book affords the most unequivocal evidence of the fidelity with which the guardians of the realm discharged the high trust reposed in them, in the numerous enactments it ex- hibits, for the security both of person and property. Almost the first page which meets the eye in this venerable record contains the General Privilege, 4' Fueros y Observancias, fol. 6. tian subjects were wont to serve tit. Privileg. Gen. — Blancas, Com- him with their persons, and it was mentarii, p. 371. — Capmany, Prac- only for Jews and Moors to serve tica y Estilo, p. 51. — It was an- him with money." Blancas, Modo ciently the practice of the legisla- de Proceder, cap. 18. ture to grant supplies of troops, but ^ See examples of them in Zu- not of money. When Peter IV. rita, Anales, tom. i. fol. 51, 263 ; requested a pecuniary subsidy, the tom. ii. fol. 391, 394, 424. — Blan- cortes told him, that "such thing cas, Modo de Proceder, fol. 98,106. had not been usual : that his Chris-