Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/632

 620 ENGLAND the purchase system by royal warrant issued July 20, 1871. A commission was appointed the same year to settle the Alabama claims and the questions growing out of the fisheries on the coast of the eastern provinces of Brit- ish North America. The commission met in Washington, where a treaty was signed May 8, which was quickly ratified by both governments. This treaty referred the Alabama claims to a board of arbitration to meet in Geneva, the northwestern boundary question to the em- peror of Germany, and the other questions to a joint commission of three. The Geneva ar- bitration, after throwing out the claims of the United States for indirect damages, awarded an indemnification of $15,500,000, which was finally paid at Washington in September, 1873. The emperor of Germany decided the boundary question according to the claim of the United States. In the great war between France and Germany in 1870-'71 England took no part. English Constitution. The English consti- tution is not any formal instrument, adopted by a convention, but is the growth of all English history. Its commencement must be looked for in the time of the Roman occupa- tion, which not onjy was a grand civilizing agency, but had its effect on those Germanic conquerors whom we call Anglo-Saxons. The Saxons, while destroying the male Britons, probably spared and married their women. This gave to England an important Celtic ele- ment. The invaders probably occupied the Roman towns. The conversion of the Anglo- Saxons to Christianity was an important step toward their civilization, and developed their characteristic ideas of order and law. They were gradually forming a Christian state, when the arrival of the Danes brought in a new ele- ment, favorable to the production of a free state. Both the aristocratic and the demo- cratic element entered into the Saxon polity, the former attaining a decided predominance. The free classes were divided into thanes and ceorls, the former being nobles and gentry, and the latter the mass of the people. The possession of property determined the position and rights of the freemen. The thralls or slaves do not appear to have been very numer- ous. The local organizations regulated for the most part their own affairs. The country was divided into counties, the counties into hun- dreds, the hundreds into tithings. The county courts, and those of the hundreds, were popu- lar tribunals. The witenagemote was the highest assembly, and was thoroughly aristo- cratic. The king presided in it, and it met by his summons. The earls, nobles by birth, as the thanes were from possession of property, attended it, and so did bishops and abbots. The thanes, too, had the right to sit in it. The local magistrates are supposed to have been occasionally present. The common people had no part in it, and were not represented. It made laws, and voted taxes when they were needed. It controlled the king, and could elect him from among the members of the royal line. It was the highest court in all cases. The clerical influence in it was great, as it was throughout the country. The witenagemote had some of the elements of parliament, and its existence was not without effect in helping to form the polity that now exists. The Saxon aristocracy increased their power as time went on. The higher earls were fast becoming rulers of the state, when they and the people, Saxon and Danish, were all subdued by the Normans, another northern race, which had materially changed its character by a long residence in France. The conquest effected great changes in England. William I. introduced the feudal system into England, but with such modifica- tions as prevented the sovereign from being enslaved by the nobility. The theory that the king of England is the supreme lord of all the land was established by the conqueror. This supremacy was directly and solemnly admitted by all the landed men of England in 1086, in an assembly at Salisbury. The lands which the king conferred on his followers were scat- tered over the country, so that it was impossi- ble for his tenants in capite to increase into territorial potentates, as in France and else- where on the continent. He kept up the Saxon courts, but withdrew from the county courts cognizance of ecclesiastical matters. These popular courts he made more popular. This judicial system tended to keep down the ba- ronial courts, which, like the barons themselves, never attained such consequence in England as they did elsewhere. Half the people were slaves, living in villeinage. Those attached to the soil, like the late Russian serfs, were villeins regardant, while the others, who could be sold away from the land, were villeins en gros. The number of the latter was not large. This was the result of the Norman rule, the English peasants being reduced to the condi- tion of those of Normandy. In the reign of Henry II. the work of redemption began. Ju- dicial interpretation was favorable to the en- slaved classes. At the beginning of the 13th century there was a class of free laborers in England, small in numbers, but embracing the humbler people of the towns, and some of the peasants. The free peasant, no mat- ter how complete his poverty, was compelled to be enrolled in the decenna, or subdivision of the hundred to which he belonged, and per- formed certain local political duties. He could act on inquests or juries. The landowners were tenants in chivalry, or holders by military tenure, and included the barons and other great men holding immediately of the crown, whose burdens were as great as their honors ; tenants in free socage, who have been com- pared with the modern yeomanry, and whose condition was as good as that of any class of men in that time ; and tenants in villeinage, men who had been emancipated, and who con- tinued to reside on their old places, rendering their old services, or freemen who had taken