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CHARLES AND HIS SUBJECTS. 



THE causes which led to the memorable " revolution" of 1648, the 

 calamities which marked its untoward progress, the almost uninter- 

 rupted success of the " PEOPLE" and their parliamentary and inter- 

 national advocates, during- the unhappy contest between Charles and 

 his subjects, together with the singular and melancholy issue of the 

 struggle, are so well known as to render unnecessary any more than 

 a mere reference, to that frightful period of history. 



From the concurrent testimony of the ablest authorities, it is 

 clearly established that the English government was founded on 

 principles of " liberty," even in the earliest times of the Saxons ; 

 and that William the Conqueror made no ostensible innovation in 

 their practical administration is evident from the recorded observa- 

 tion of Lord Chief Justice Coke, who says: "The grounds of our 

 common laws at this day are beyond the memory or register of any 

 beginning, and the same which the Norman conqueror then found 

 within this realm of England ; and those laws he swore to observe, 

 which are good and ancient." 



England, it must be allowed, was ever distinguished from the states 

 of the continent by various statutes, still existing on the rolls of Parlia- 

 ment, and manifesting the attachment of the English to the lex terrte, 

 in the collection of the best of the Murcian, West-Saxon, Danish, 

 and King Edgar's laws, made by Edward the Confessor. 



If any particular period, therefore, could be selected by me in 

 just preference, to place in juxtaposition, as fostering the " righteous 

 growth" of the Commons in the state, it was during the stormy 

 and turbulent reign of Henry III., when the inordinate ambition of 

 Leicester enabled him, with the popular assistance of the COUNTRY, 

 to seize on the supreme power, of which also he most probably 

 would have retained the possession, had he not met with a 

 powerful antagonist in Prince Edward. Notwithstanding the aspect 

 of the Times amid all these struggles, the cause of " popular free- 

 dom" was strengthened, as appears, from among numerous proofs 

 especially in two instances, in the reign of Richard II. The first 

 occurred in the sixth of this monarch's reign, when a certain ob- 

 noxious statute, having passed without the assent of the Commons, 

 was, on their (the people's) petition to the crown, agreed to be re- 

 pealed. The second fact arises in the 21st of the same reign, when 

 Richard, having accomplished the downfal of the Duke of Glouces- 

 ter and his party, was not content with the signature of the chief 

 prelates and nobles to the various instruments passed, but absolutely 

 called on the "faithful commons and people'' at large, then present, 

 to assent to the same, by holding up of hands. 



It may, in this place, with some advantage to the people of Eng- 

 land, be observed, that the wars of York and Lancaster, by breaking 

 the power of the great barons (not the borough-mongering and 



