[Illustration: THE BOSTON TEA PARTY]
From the fall of the Roman Empire to the French Revolution--a space of
thirteen centuries--the only real republican governments were mountain
peoples and independent trading cities, in which again the voting class
was in small proportion. The only factors that ardently strove for
liberty were the knights and noblemen, who did their best to weaken
the power of the kings, so that they might have the more authority
over their own vassals. The Middle Ages and even the period of the
Restoration, with its appeal to the right to choose one’s own religion
and to achieve one’s own salvation, did little to relieve the serf, the
peasant, and the poor workman.
[Illustration: TABLET CELEBRATING THE BOSTON TEA PARTY
The inscription reads: “Here formerly stood Griffin’s wharf, at which
lay moored on December 16, 1773, three British ships with cargoes of
tea. To defeat King George’s trivial but tyrannical tax of three pence
a pound, about ninety citizens of Boston, partly disguised as Indians,
boarded the ships, threw the cargoes, three hundred and forty-two
chests in all, into the sea, and made the world ring with the patriotic
exploit of the Boston Tea Party.”]
_English Liberty_
Against this gloomy background rose the wondrous structure of English
liberty. At first the English people under their Norman kings were no
freer than other peoples: England contained serfs and even slaves.
The only people that had a share in the government were the Norman
nobles who were sometimes consulted on the making of laws, and they
were not different from the nobles that tried to divide power with
the sovereigns of France and Sweden and the Germanic countries. The
difference was that the dukes and counts and barons in most parts of
Europe lost ground before the growth of an arbitrary royal power, while
the English lords banded together successfully to secure pledges from
their kings. In 1215 they wrung from King John the magnificent Magna
Charta, including the glorious privileges that: “No freeman shall be
taken or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or any way
destroyed, nor will we pass upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless
by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will
sell to no man, we will not deny or delay to any man, either justice or
right.”
[Illustration: Original painting by Peter Frederick Rothermel (born
1817)