LEADERS OF THE SENATE. INTRODUCTORY. the laws of the land more justly administered, and the evils arising from a civil or military despotism more crushingly controlled, than among the English people. Yet the acquisition of these privileges was no sudden or fleeting triumph snatched from an oppressive oligarchy or from the tyranny of prerogative, but was the slow and gradual outcome of the opposition to all high-handed proceedings, which century after century had been raised by the representatives of the people. The liberties of England are the proud rewards gained by the House of Commons. True it is that in the earlier stages of our history it was to the barons that we are indebted for Magna Charta and its successive confirmations, and that it was to the active co-operation of the peers we owe the clauses of the Petition of Right and the independent position occupied by the judicial bench; yet it is the House of Commons, battling reign after reign against tyranny, oppression, and political slavery, which has been the chief conqueror in the struggle, and it is to its efforts that the rights and privileges which we now enjoy must be attributed. THERE are few studies more interesting to the historical inquirer than to watch the slow but gradual evolutions of civilization which result in political freedom. How a people emerges from its native barbarism, first fencing itself round with those safeguards which society demands for its protection; then, when physical security has been established, turning its thoughts to the advancement of education, and with such advancement releasing itself from those disabilities which hamper its political progress inquiries of this nature are ever fraught with some useful purpose. They prove, if nothing else, that if "freedom broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent," the constitutional liberties of a nation are never fixed on such a firm basis as when they have been acquired by the tardy yet cautious triumph of toleration and compromise over the restrictions of prejudice and bigotry. The constitutional history of our own country-the model of all constitutional governments in Europeis the most complete testimony we possess to the truth of this remark. Slow and calculating as has been our development from barbarism into feudalism, from feudal- From the days when the haughty Simon ism into the exclusiveness of prerogative, de Montfort, earl of Leicester, first gave a and from prerogative into the enlightened decisive direction to the early development toleration of parliamentary government, of parliamentary government in England there is yet no nation where the liberty-by issuing, in the winter of 1264, the of the subject is more jealously protected, memorable writs summoning the first VOL. I. 1 complete Parliament which had ever met | was, that it fell within the right of the House in England-to the present time, is a long interval, replete with conflicts between might and right, prejudice and compromise, bigotry and toleration, restriction and emancipation. A glance at the past is no unfitting preparation for the study of political biography, and may perhaps help us the better to appreciate and understand the lives of those Leaders of the Senate whose acts we are about to record. During the earlier years of its existence, after having made its first appearance as a legislative assembly, the House of Commons played a very secondary part in conducting the affairs of the country. Its members occupied the lower end of the chamber-for in those days Parliament was held in one chamber-in which the mitred abbots and armed barons sat, and had no voice in the conduct of public business; they voted as they were bidden; they consented to the imposition of taxes, since they dared not resist; and unlike the present day, when every vacant seat in the House is eagerly contested by a crowd of competitors, every member essayed all his arts to avoid election and escape from his parliamentary duties. In the next reign-that of our first Edward-the faithful Commons had so far asserted themselves that a statute was passed enacting that for the future "no tax should be levied without the joint assent of the Lords and Commons." To the enrolment of this statute must be attributed the power which the Lower House subsequently attained. A few years afterwards the Commons separated from the Lords, and held their deliberations in a special chamber allotted to them. In the reign of Edward III. the power of the House of Commons had so far developed that through its influence three great constitutional principles were laid down. The first was, that it was "illegal for the sovereign to raise money without the consent of Parliament;" the second, that it was "necessary for the alteration of any law to have the concurrence of the Lords and Commons ;" and the third of Commons "to inquire into public abuses and to impeach the ministers of the crown.' Not without reason, therefore, is the reign of Edward III. considered one of the most important in the annals of our history. Constitutional principles acquired still further developments when Henry IV. sat on the throne, for the celebrated maxims. were then laid down, that "the Commons possess an exclusive right of originating all money bills," and that the sovereign should not "take cognizance of any matter pending in Parliament." During the period of the Wars of the Roses, and in the days when the Tudor dynasty wielded the sceptre, the progress of constitutionalism was arrested. The Commons shifted in their policy according as either Yorkist or Lancastrian became dominant, and were content, for the acquisition of their own selfish interests, to degrade themselves into the ready and pliant instruments of the will of the crown. Under Henry VIII. and his daughters this servility on the part of the representatives of the people increased; Parliament was awed by the prerogative; and hence by degrees the constitution suffered from the inroads of arbitrary power, from the establishment of the odious court of Star Chamber, the decisions of which were in defiance of the jurisprudence of the country, and from the illegal taxes which, under the mask of loans and benevolences, were freely raised. Another cause tended to strengthen this despotism. The result of the Reformation had been to increase the power of the crown by creating the sovereign head of the church as well as of the state. Henry VIII. and his immediate successors held all but unlimited sway over the destinies of their subjects, and exacted from the nation at large a degree of submission which had not been paid to any monarch since the days of the Conquest. Nearly all the old nobility, who in times of peril would have presented a barrier against the encroachments of arbitrary power, had been swept away during the civil wars. The constitution of the |