590 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gifts went along with the transaction of public business, judicial as 

 well as military just as, in our own ancient shire-moot, local govern- 

 ment, including the administration of justice, was accompanied by 

 the furnishing of ships and the payment of " a composition for the 

 feorm-fultum, or sustentation of the king " so when, with successful 

 resistance to excess of royal power, there came assemblies of nobles 

 and representatives summoned by the king, there reappeared on a 

 higher platform these simultaneous demands for money on the one 

 side and for justice on the other. We may assume it as certain that, 

 with an average humanity, the conflicting egoisms of those con- 

 cerned will be the main factors ; and that on each side the aim will 

 be to give as little, and get as much, as circumstances allow. France, 

 Spain, and England yield examples which unite in showing this. 



"When Charles V of France, in 1357, dismissing the States-General 

 for alleged encroachments on his rights, raised money by further de- 

 basing the coinage, and caused a sedition in Paris which endangered 

 his life, there was, three months later, a reconvocation of the states, 

 in which the petitions of the former assembly were acceded to, while 

 a subsidy for war purposes was voted. And, of an assembled States- 

 General in 1366, Hallam writes, " The necessity of restoring the coin 

 is strongly represented as the grand condition upon which they con- 

 sented to tax the people, who had been long defrauded by the base 

 money of Philip the Fair and his successors." Again, in Spain the 

 incorjDorated towns, made liable by their charters only for certain pay- 

 ments and services, had continually to resist unauthorized demands ; 

 while the kings, continually promising not to take more than their 

 legal and customary dues, were continually breaking their promises. 

 In 1328 Alfonso XI " bound himself not to exact from his'people, or 

 cause them to pay, any tax, either partial or general, not hitherto 

 established by law, without the previous grant of all the deputies con- 

 vened to the Cortes." And how little such pledges were regarded is 

 shown by the fact that, in 1393, the Cortes who made a grant to 

 Henry III annexed the condition that 



he should swear before one of the archbishops not to take or demand any 

 money, service, or loan, or anything else of the cities and towns, nor of individ- 

 uals belonging to them, on any pretense of necessity, until the three estates of 

 the kingdom should first be duly summoned and assembled in Cortes according 

 to ancient usage. 



Similarly in England during the time when parliamentary power 

 was being established. While, with national consolidation, the royal 

 authority had been approaching to absoluteness, there had been, by 

 reaction, arising that resistance which, resulting in the Charter, sub- 

 sequently initiated the prolonged struggle between the king trying 

 to break through its restraints and his subjects trying to maintain 

 and strengthen them. The twelfth article of the Charter having 



