PART I. 4 A SKETCH OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY THE REIGN OF EDWARD I. THE English nation is of distinctly Teutonic or German origin. The Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, who, according to Bede, furnished the mass of immigrants in the fifth century, were amongst those tribes of Lower Germany which had been the least affected by Roman influences. They entered upon a land whose defenders had forsaken it, and had carried away with them most of the adventitious civilisation which they had maintained for four hundred years; whose inhabitants were enervated and demoralised by long dependence, wasted by successive pestilences, worn out by the attacks of half-savage neighbours and by their own suicidal wars; whose vast forests and unreclaimed marsh-lands afforded to the new-comers a comparatively easy conquest, and the means of reproducing at liberty on new ground the institutions under which they had lived at home. This new race was the main stock of our forefathers sharing the primeval German pride of purity of extraction; still regarding the family tie as the basis of social organisation; migrating in groups of allied and kindred character, and commemorating the tribal identity in the names they gave to their new settlements; honouring the women of their nation, and strictly careful of the distinction between themselves and the tolerated remnant B of their predecessors. The variations of physical and mental characteristics which in the progress of fourteen hundred years have been developed between the English and North German types, may be amply accounted for by natural and political causes the natural ones, the air, food, water, and other almost imperceptibly efficient workings of the land on its inhabitants; the political ones, the total difference of history, and of mental and moral discipline. It is unnecessary to suppose that any general intermixture. either of Roman or of British blood has affected this national identity. Doubtless there were early intermarriages between the invaders and the natives, and probably in the west of England a large and continuous infusion of Celtic blood. But though it may have been locally or relatively great, it could only be in very small proportion to the whole. The language, the personal and local names, the character of the customs and common law of the English, are persistent during historic times. Every infusion of new blood since the first migration has been Teutonic; the Dane, the Norseman, and even the French-speaking Norman of the Conquest, serve to add intensity to the distinctness of the national identity. It is true that, as civilisation has advanced, the language and the legal system. have absorbed new elements, some of them peculiar, some of them common to all civilisation. The language, continuous in its perfect identity from the earliest date, unchanged in structure and tenacious in vocabulary, has drawn in from the Latin services of the Church, and from the French of the Courts, new riches of expression; as it has become the literary language of a free people, it has received from the common sources of all literature new forms, which, as the nation has educated itself, have been thoroughly incorporated with the older ones. It is true, in the same way, that from the scientific study of law, somewhat of Roman forms, and somewhat more of Roman principles, have entered into a combination with the elder and more purely developed institutions of the race; but neither the growth of modern English as a literary language, nor that of English law in its composite form, can be made to synchronise in any stage with any possible infusion of foreign blood. They bear the marks of a rapid civilisation assimilating new elements, not of a much mixed race retaining fragments of earlier and shattered systems. But were the evidences of intermixture of race much stronger and more general than they are, to the student of constitutional history they are without significance. From the Briton and the Roman of the fifth century we have received nothing. Our whole internal history testifies unmistakably to our inheritance of Teutonic institutions from the first immigrants. The Teutonic element is the paternal element in our system, natural and political. The first traces, then, of our national history must be sought not in Britain but in Germany: in the reports given by Caesar and Tacitus of the tribes which they knew. In these reports we have, it is true, a somewhat indistinct picture: so indistinct that it has been interpreted in many and even in contradictory ways; but one which is certainly capable of being interpreted by the clearer history of the later stages of the institutions which are common to the race; and which so interpreted does give a probable and consistent representation. We have in the Germans of the first century a family of tribes whose common political characteristics are these: : They have in the time of Tacitus ceased to be pastoral and unsettled races: they occupy fixed seats instead of annually changing their pastures and hunting-grounds, as they were said to do when Caesar wrote; but they are not so far settled as to have divided the land amongst individuals. The several communities allot annually their arable lands among the freemen: these have their own several homesteads; but the pasture lands are not only held but used in common, and the whole land of the settlement belongs to the community. The community, the vicus of Tacitus, is joined with others of the same tribe, and the aggregate is the pagus: an aggregation of pagi is a civitas or populus. The vici and pagi are governed by principes appointed by the nation in its popular assembly. These principes administer justice, but with the aid of a hundred companions or assessors in each district. Out of them probably are chosen the duces or leaders of the host in war, to whose force each district contributes its hundred fighting men, but whose authority over the allied chieftains is based on personal prowess, not on delegated or otherwise vested right. These principes have the privilege of being attended by a train of comites, who fight for them in battle, wait on them in peace, and regard the honour of association with them as more than a compensation for such diminution of freedom as the relation of patron and dependent involves. Some of the tribes are led by their principes only: others have adopted royalty possibly in imitation of neighbouring polities; possibly as a relic of a patriarchal stage, in which the family tie was not merely the chief but the only bond of organisation, and the head of the race possessed a priestly character or represented a semi-divine descent; possibly as a centre and symbol of unity among confederated tribes, desiring to embody their own identity in a common hereditary monarchy. In connexion with this royalty we read of nobiles, in blood more dignified, but with no rights other than those enjoyed by all the freemen of the tribe. The king is chosen on the ground of noble descent; but his royalty does not, if we take the simple words of Tacitus, imply much authority: the communities are governed by their principes chosen in the national assembly; and in war they are led by the duces whose prowess exacts their respect: the whole business of the nation is transacted by the Councils of the nation. In these Councils, held at stated times and attended by all the freemen of the tribe, who by admission to the use of arms have added to their character of members of the family that of full membership of the civitas, the principes form a separate body which has authority to determine minor business and to prepare agenda for the larger gathering. The whole people meet in that larger gathering, and treat of and decide on measures of higher import. In the several administrations the rule of the magistrate is limited by the advice of his assessors: the dux cannot punish without the assistance of the priests: the |