3.

TICAL

A SHORT COMPARATIVE SKETCH OF OUR PRACCONSTITUTION IN ANCIENT TIMES

HAVING closed my letter respecting the political description, and at least possible views, of the leading gentlemen who are called Reformers (views which I have derived from their public conduct, hitherto neither explained nor palliated by them or their friends), I shall proceed to examine, as far as the ambiguity of the language used by them or those friends will permit me, what are the rights possessed by our ancestors which we of the present day are deprived of, and in what sense the constitution can be considered as having lost its original purity.

Now, these gentlemen would have acted more candidly (and therefore, I think, more wisely), if they had told us what are these rights which we have lostat what time they existed--and during what period of our history this superior purity is to be discovered.

But as this requisite information is withheld, I feel that I can do little more than make a very vague speculation in my attempt to discover a meaning, when the parties, amidst all their zeal and virulence of declamation, have probably none sufficiently defined.

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Now, I conclude that these gentlemen will scarcely resort to the period immediately subsequent to what is called the Conquest, for their precedents of right, or their examples of purity; the government of those days being neither more. nor less than feodal, or - military, with all the vexations and oppressions of military tenure; for a description of which I will refer you generally to that very learned antiquary, Sir Henry Spelman. I will, however, mention one, by way of example to the rest. He tells us,--

"It was an ordinary custom, that the lords might "take (not only of their tenants, but of all the country thereabout) victuals and other necessaries for fur"nishing their castles, which how grievous it was may "well enough be conceived."

By way of description of the then government, he says, that "in making laws of the kingdom, the "common people were not consulted with, but only "the barons, and those who held in capite, who were "then called conciliam regni."

These barons, and others, we know from every record extant, consisted of those only who were expressly summoned by the King by name to these councils.

I conclude I may leave this part of the subject, as I think that there will not be found in this period any rights on the part of the people which they would wish to regain, or any original purity that they will desire to

I think, also, that no man will regard with great 'envy the period of establishing the rights which our ancestors obtained by the Great Charter. The rights themselves are unquestionably most important, and worthy the struggle that was made to obtain them; but it will appear from Blackstone's History of the Great Charter, that, during a period of one hundred years, the articles it contains were at one time neg

lected, at another confirmed, just as the power of the Crown or the Barons happened to preponderate.

No regular, uniform system of liberty, confirmed and supported by universal opinion, was then established; the people were free only in proportion to the accidental power of the Great, or the relative weakness of the Crown. Here I beg leave to remark, that when I mention the word people, I mean that part of the population only which could be said to have any political character and existence.

This state of uncertain and indefinite rights, as I before mentioned, continued during a period of nearly a century, to 28 Edw. I.; the Great Charter having in the interval, as Sir Edward Coke says, been established, confirmed, and commanded to be put in execution, by two-and-thirty several Acts of Parliament ;--a circumstance that could not possibly have taken place, if the relative privileges of the people, and the prerogatives of the Crown, had ever been settled on a sound basis, well defined, and equally understood and acknowledged by the King and his subjects.

But I shall certainly, my dear Sir, decline the useless task of comparing, reign by reign, year by year, the privileges of the people and the prerogatives of the Crown, at the several successive periods of our history, with those established in our days. Certain it is, that Parliaments, in the form of the present, were established from the 49th of Henry the Third: but they seem to have been summoned, in ordinary cases, only for the purpose of ascertaining what burthens the public could bear, and of passing such acts as were necessary for conducting the domestic concerns of the kingdom; but in affairs of state, or the disposal of the public revenue, or in controuling its expenditure, they were seldom consulted, except on the condition of granting supplies: and the rights of election, as well as the duties of a member of parliament (if they be considered com

paratively with reference to the notions and usages of the present times), were deemed to be of very trivial importance-a circumstance, by the bye, which affords no uncertain criterion by which the rights and privileges of the people in those days, as compared with the power of the Crown, may be duly estimated.

The manner in which Parliaments were treated by the Tudors, is too well and generally known to make a statement of any specific instance of their degradation necessary.

Of the general state of the Parliaments in the time of James the First, I shall say as little: I shall content myself with only mentioning, in this place, that I shall hereafter notice one precedent from this reign, which has been claimed by Sir F. Burdett, as tending to promote his views and opinions, and is recorded in his speech on Parliamentary Reform at the close of the session 1809. I here mention it as reported in Mr. Cobbett's Register, which I met with out of my own house; and on such an occasion I will consider it as good authority.

I conclude our reformers will not claim any benefit from the precedents in the time of Charles the First, when the Parliament erected itself into a pure Government by representation, and, to use the word of the late Dr. Price, "cashiered" the House of Lords, and then dethroned and put their Sovereign to death.

I shall pass by the two subsequent reigns, as dis graceful periods in the page of our history.

I think I need scarcely argue, that no comparison can be made between the constitution of the country in the before-mentioned periods, and that under which we live at present. By the word Constitution, as used in this place, I mean the prerogative, power, and influence of the Crown, as compared with the rights and privileges enjoyed by the subject; not forgetting, what is not the least of all, the general administration of

justice, whether between party and party, or between the crown and the subject.

I next come to the Revolution in 1688. I do not mean to speak much of that event; as I think it has no immediate connexion with my subject; but I cannot refrain from declaring, that no man admires the transactions of those days, or is more sensible of the benefits derived from them, than myself. It was, indeed, a great and glorious event; for it was brought to pass without violence, tumult, or injustice, by the generous, the high-minded, and the wise! But I can never consider it as a precedent in the light in which it has been exhibited to our view by Dr. Price. Mr. Burke gives us a true and striking picture of the event in his celebrated Letter, which contains more sagacity, wisdom, display of talents, and I may add, sound morals, than any political work that ever came into my possession.

I am wholly unable to make a detailed statement of the comparative merits of the practical constitution as exhibited in the reign of William the Third, and that of the succeeding reigns, and as we enjoy it at present. I know of no superior purity, either in the election of members, or in the conduct of Parliament. Both periods, in respect of these points, have their imperfections, no doubt; and both, as unquestionably, have their merits; and in both periods there have been those, who have learnt to be dissatisfied and to complain.

I am not aware of any precedent of rights then enjoyed by the people that they do not enjoy equally now, (except the alleged right to triennial Parliaments be quoted, of which I shall speak hereafter.) I am sensible that I have, by stating so generally my opinion respecting the practical constitution in the time of King William, afforded ample room for disputation. The question is sufficiently large to admit of every possible subtilty of argument, of every possible latitude in the

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