order to gain, if possible, the compensating advantages of clearness and simplicity. Whether the experiment has succeeded it will be for the reader to judge. The Constitutional History of Dr. Stubbs has, with his permission, been taken throughout as the foundation of the work; and references to it, therefore, have not been inserted. To the kindness of Dr. Stubbs in looking over the proofs of this volume, and to his ready sympathy and help accorded to them in their undertaking, the authors wish to express their deep obligation. They are sensible how much of what there may be of value in the following pages is due to his suggestion and criticism. OXFORD, September, 1886. IN preparing a Second Edition for the press, little alteration has been found necessary except in the first Essay, on the subject of which a good deal of light has been thrown by recent research. The wide and accurate knowledge of the Rev. A. H. Johnson, Tutor of Merton University and Trinity Colleges, has been of great assistance in the revision of this part of the work, and requires special recognition and thanks. OXFORD, January, 1891. CONTENTS W. J. ASHLEY, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA ESSAY I. THE EARLY ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. towards THE Constitutional History of the English General differs essentially from that of the other Euro- tendency pean nations. It differs, yet it is not without feudalism. points of resemblance. In England before the Conquest, as in the other countries of Europe, there was a tendency towards that state of society and government which we call feudalism; and that tendency was neither weak nor ineffective. It worked with such energy as to convert a constitution founded on personal relations into one permeated from pinnacle to base with territorialism. And yet, although this was so, between the England of the eleventh century and the France of the eleventh century there existed an essential difference. For in England there were certain forces hostile to feudalism which, owing to the circumstances of early English history, retained their vitality, and operated as a check on the triumphant tendency of the age. The deep divisions of the B 2. 10 VIMU AMMOTLIAD The Early English polity. 2 The Early English Constitution. English, stereotyped, so to say, by the circumstances of the conquest of Britain, manifested themselves in perpetual inter-tribal wars, in continuous struggles against the supremacy of any one kingdom, in the local isolation which handed the country over as a prey to the northern invaders. The northern invaders themselves projected into a half-feudalized society, a society kindred, indeed, but more primitive, personal, and free. Beneath all and through all the Teutonic spirit worked with unique purity, with unique liberty. These are the great forces antithetical to feudalism, which operated as such in the first six centuries of English history. They are not the dominant forces. The triumphant tendency of the age is towards feudalism; but they act as checks on that tendency. The feudalism which is developed naturally on English soil, the feudalism which the Norman knights and lawyers remodel into a more ordered form, is a half-feudalism, a feudalism. awkwardly elevated on a sub-structure of free institutions and immemorial customs. The machinery by which a barbarous tribe governs itself is necessarily of a very simple. description. It involves an anachronism to bestow on such primitive arrangements the name of a constitution. It is only when the |