The mixture now existing in the government of England--this concert
between the commons, the lords, and the king--did not exist always.
England was long a slave. She was so to the Romans, the Saxons, Danes,
and French. William the Conqueror, in particular, ruled her with a
sceptre of iron. He disposed of the properties and lives of his new
subjects like an Oriental despot; he prohibited them from having either
fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock at night, under pain
of death: his object being either to prevent nocturnal assemblies among
them, or merely, by so capricious and extravagant a prohibition, to
show how far the power of some men can extend over others. It is true,
that both before as well as after William the Conqueror, the English had
parliaments; they made a boast of them; as if the assemblies then called
parliaments, made up of tyrannical churchmen and baronial robbers, had
been the guardians of public freedom and happiness.
The barbarians, who, from the shores of the Baltic poured over the rest
of Europe, brought with them the usage of states or parliaments, about
which a vast deal is said and very little known. The kings were not
despotic, it is true; and it was precisely on this account that the
people groaned in miserable slavery. The chiefs of these savages, who
had ravaged France, Italy, Spain, and England, made themselves monarchs.
Their captains divided among themselves the estates of the vanquished;
hence, the margraves, lairds, barons, and the whole series of the
subaltern tyrants, who often contested the spoils of the people with the
monarchs, recently advanced to the throne and not firmly fixed on it.
These were all birds of prey, battling with the eagle, in order to suck
the blood of the doves. Every nation, instead of one good master, had a
hundred tyrants. The priests soon took part in the contest. From time
immemorial it had been the fate of the Gauls, the Germans, and the
islanders of England, to be governed by their druids and the chiefs of
their villages, an ancient species of barons, but less tyrannical than
their successors. These druids called themselves mediators between God
and men; they legislated, they excommunicated, they had the power of
life and death. The bishops gradually succeeded to the authority of the
druids, under the Goth and Vandal government. The popes put themselves
at their head; and, with briefs, bulls, and monks, struck terror into
the hearts of kings, whom they sometimes dethroned and occasionally
caused to be assassinated, and drew to themselves, as nearly as they
were able, all the money of Europe. The imbecile Ina, one of the tyrants
of the English heptarchy, was the first who, on a pilgrimage to Rome,
submitted to pay St. Peter's penny--which was about a crown of our
money--for every house within his territory. The whole island soon
followed this example; England gradually became a province of the pope;
and the holy father sent over his legates, from time to time, to levy
upon it his exorbitant imposts. John, called Lackland, at length made a
full and formal cession of his kingdom to his holiness, by whom he had
been excommunicated; the barons, who did not at all find their account
in this proceeding, expelled that contemptible king, and substituted in
his room Louis VIII., father of St. Louis, king of France. But they soon
became disgusted with the new-comer, and obliged him to recross the sea.
While the barons, bishops, and popes were thus harassing and tearing
asunder England, where each of the parties strove eagerly to be the
dominant one, the people, who form the most numerous, useful, and
virtuous portion of a community, consisting of those who study the laws
and sciences, merchants, artisans, and even peasants, who exercise at
once the most important and the most despised of occupations; the
people, I say, were looked down upon equally by all these combatants, as
a species of beings inferior to mankind. Far, indeed, at that time, were
the commons from having the slightest participation in the government:
they were villeins, or serfs of the soil; both their labor and their
blood belonged to their masters, who were called "nobles." The greater
number of men in Europe were what they still continue to be in many
parts of the world--the serfs of a lord, a species of cattle bought and
sold together with the land. It required centuries to get justice done
to humanity; to produce an adequate impression of the odious and
execrable nature of the system, according to which the many sow, and
only the few reap; and surely it may even be considered fortunate for
France that the powers of these petty robbers were extinguished there by
the legitimate authority of kings, as it was in England by that of the
king and nation united.
Happily, in consequence of the convulsions of empires by the contests
between sovereigns and nobles, the chains of nations are more or less
relaxed. The barons compelled John (Lackland) and Henry III to grant the
famous charter, the great object of which, in reality, was to place the
king in dependence on the lords, but in which the rest of the nation
was a little favored, to induce it, when occasion might require, to
range itself in the ranks of its pretended protectors. This great
charter, which is regarded as the sacred origin of English liberties,
itself clearly shows how very little liberty was understood. The very
title proves that the king considered himself absolute by right, and
that the barons and clergy compelled him to abate his claim to this
absolute power only by the application of superior force. These are the
words with which Magna Charta begins: "We grant, of our free will, the
following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and
barons, of our kingdom," etc. Throughout the articles of it, not a word
is said of the house of commons; a proof that it did not then exist, or
that it existed without power. The freemen of England are specified in
it, a melancholy demonstration that there were men who were not free. We
perceive, from the thirty-seventh article, that the pretended freemen
owed service to their lord. Liberty of such a description had but too
strong a similarity to bondage. By the twenty-first article, the king
ordains that henceforward his officers shall not take away the horses
and ploughs of freemen, without paying for them. This regulation was
considered by the people as true liberty, because it freed them from a
greater tyranny. Henry VII., a successful warrior and politician, who
pretended great attachment to the barons, but who cordially hated and
feared them, granted them permission to alienate their lands. In
consequence of this, the villeins, who by their industry and skill
accumulated property, in the course of time became purchasers of the
castles of the illustrious nobles who had ruined themselves by their
extravagance, and, gradually, nearly all the landed property of the
kingdom changed masters.
The house of commons now advanced in power every day. The families of
the old nobility became extinct in the progress of time; and, as in
England, correctly speaking, peers only are nobles, there would scarcely
have been any nobles in the country, if the kings had not, from time to
time, created new barons, and kept up the body of peers, whom they had
formerly so much dreaded, to counteract that of the commons, now become
too formidable. All the new peers, who compose the upper house, receive
from the king their title and nothing more, since none of them have the
property of the lands of which they bear the names. One is duke of
Dorset, without possessing a single foot of land in Dorsetshire; another
is an earl under the name of a certain village, yet scarcely knowing
where that village is situated. They have power in the parliament, and
nowhere else.
You hear no mention, in this country, of the high, middle, and low
courts of justice, nor of the right of chase over the lands of private
citizens, who have no right to fire a gun on their own estates.
A man is not exempted from paying particular taxes because he is a
noble or a clergyman. All imposts are regulated by the house of commons,
which, although subordinate in rank, is superior in credit to that of
the lords. The peers and bishops may reject a bill sent up to them by
the commons, when the object is to raise money, but they can make no
alteration in it: they must admit it or reject it, without restriction.
When the bill is confirmed by the lords, and assented to by the king,
then all the classes of the nation contribute. Every man pays, not
according to his rank--which would be absurd--but according to his
revenue. There is no arbitrary _faille_ or capitation, but a real tax on
lands. These were all valued in the reign of the celebrated King
William. The tax exists still unaltered, although the rents of lands
have considerably increased; thus no one is oppressed, and no one
complains. The feet of the cultivator are not bruised and mutilated by
wooden shoes; he eats white bread; he is well clothed. He is not afraid
to increase his farming-stock, nor to roof his cottage with tiles, lest
the following year should, in consequence, bring with it an increase of
taxation. There are numerous farmers who have an income of about five or
six hundred pounds sterling, and still disdain not to cultivate the land
which has enriched them, and on which they enjoy the blessing of
freedom.