ont Assent of the Lords of Parliament. It would be difficult to contend, that, in the sense here stated, this Dictum is not, at least in a great Measure, Law even at this Time. In like manner, the Parliament continued for some Time longer to remember, that the Law gave them no higher Authority than what the Terms of their Delegation conferred. Even so late as the reign of Henry the Fourth, we meet with the "Presentment," which the Commons,--Grand Inquest of the Nation,-made, by "Unanimity" of Voices, touching the Succession to the Crown. But the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, who concurred in the Presentment, though elected and returned only by some, affected to consider themselves as Procurators and Attornies for the whole people of the Kingdom; and they were so stiled in the Statute, which, upon their Presentment, was made, and was intended as a Legislative Enactment of, what was henceforward to be, the Constitution of the Legislature of this Realm.* The Old Legislative Constitution was already lost, when such Doctrines were enacted! Yet, not long previously, the same House of Commons had frequently declared it unsafe, for them to act in the absence of sundry Lords and Commoners of Parliament, and that they dared not consent, without consulting and advising with the Commons of their several Communities; and therefore they solicited and obtained such Respite of the Matters in Deliberation, as would give them Leisure to advise with such their Fellow Members and Constituents, touching the Grant of the Aid, and the Making of the Statute.+ But, in the Progress of Doctrine, even these Terms vanished. The Parliaments of Henry VI. not only de *Rot. Parl. Henr. IV. pp. 374-5. + Id. 6 Edw. III. p. 67. 13 Edw. III. p. 103. 20 Edw. III. p. 160. 27 Edw. III. p. 253. manded no special Powers from their several Communities, but, on the contrary, curtailed and remodelled the Numbers of their Constituents by their own good Pleasure, and, having done so, claimed the inherent and indefeasible Right to bind, not only their own Constituents, but those whom, having deprived of their own local Liberties, they had now deprived of the Right of voting at Elections to Parliament.* Contemporaneous and commensurate with the Decline of the old local Jurisdictions, must have been that of their Fiscal System. But here the same Difficulty meets uswhen we endeavour to assign the Epoch of each Change,as in tracing those Changes, which eventually absorbed the Courts of the Shire, Hundred, and Vill, in the King's High Court of Parliament. We cannot fix the Time, although we know that the Event happened. We know it; as we know what is passing around us; as we know what has been passing for the last four hundred Years; merely by its Results. But the Diary of the Decline we know not. Only here and there something is saved for History. It is recorded, how that a certain erroneous Parliamentary Computation, of the Number of Parishes in England, brought Edward the Third into much temporary Embarrassment, and made it necessary for him to consult with hisCouncil touching the Measures to be taken, for procuring such a Distribution and Assessment of the Grant of his last Parliament, as should enable him to raise the whole Sum of 50,000Z. there granted. On examining the Particulars of the Error, it appears that the Parliament, not limiting itself to a Grant, had proceeded to make the Assessment, according to which it was to be levied, and that too, not upon the Townships, or Vills, but upon the Parishes; at 22s 3d for every Parish.† * Stat. of the Realm, 8 Henr. 6. c. 7. 10 Henr. 6. c. 2. Rot. Parl. 25 Edw. III P. 303. This curious Illustration of the Progress of Centralising Doctrines, and, be it also observed, of the official Embarrassments, which Centralisation sometimes brings in its Train, derives further Light, from the subsequent Enactment of the 9 H. IV. c. 7., framed upon the Petition of the Commons. In the Reigns of earlier Monarchs, as we have seen, no general Rule or Method of Assessment was or could be adopted. It was left to the Taxors, or " Elisors," of each Shire, to make the Assessment upon the Hundreds and Townships, of which the Shire was composed; and to the Taxors, or Elisors, of these Inferior Localities, to ascertain the Individuals, among whom the Burthen ought to be shared, and the Proportion of each Man's Liability. This might well be done by means of Local Assessors, whilst it could never have been done by the direct Agency of Parliament and Exchequer. Uniformity is the utmost Result, that the best regulated System of Central Administration can ever hope to accomplish; to bring all Things, namely, to one dull Level, over which nothing must pass! In the present Instance, it was assumed that, upon all Towns, within the Meaning of the Statute, a Sum always certain was chargeable, in respect of every Tenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, or other Subsidy, granted by Parliament. In was then enacted, that the Liability of Goods, to answer for the Owner's Contribution towards that Sum certain, should be computed, not by the Domicile of the Owner, nor by the Place, where the Goods were usually deposited, nor where they were at the Date of the Levy; but by the Place, where they happened to be lying, on the Day when the Grant was made in Parliament. No Discretion was, by this Statute, allowed to the Taxors, to qualify, in any Case, the Letter of the Statute; nor was any Provision made for the Possibility of Hardship. Equally absurd and far more iniquitous, was the celebrated Poll Tax, which the Commons, in the fourth Year of Richard the Second,-foiled in their Attempts upon Church Property,-granted to the King. The Tax was to be levied on all Lay People, Male and Female, of the Age of Fifteen Years, "very Beggars only excepted."* But, if the Assessment were thus uniform, the Resistance to it was, perhaps, equally so. The Insurrection of Wat Tyler grew out of it. Indeed, from the beginning of the Reign of Edward the Third, Wretchedness and Famine, with their Attendant Discontent, were already becoming too familiar to the People. In the King's own Presence, the Distress of the Country more than once was the Subject of Speech in Parliament. Pestilence, Scarcity of Money, Dearness of Corn, Decline of Husbandry, Turbulence, Riot, and Plunder, these were the frightful Warnings, that testified, to Edward and his Commons, of the Usurpations of Authority, and the Triumphs of Centralisation. It is now the nineteenth Century, and the Warnings are disregarded still. Risings of the Populace in former Times had been scarcely known. They were henceforward to furnish the chief Matter of England's History at Home. The Lowest Class has ever been the last to be perverted. The People's own Institutions are not to be taken away without a Struggle, and the Traditions of such, when they have utterly died out among the Successors of those who usurped them, continue to survive amongst the Populace. Owen Glyndwr had no hereditary Claims to the Obedience of the Wallishry, but he came among them the Reformer of Abuses, and the Restorer of a violated Constitution, and he was heard. The Assembly which he summoned to Harlech, for Redress of Grievances,-and which in contemporary Records is, in the Language of the Day, styled Parliament," was constituted of Four of the most Sufficient Men from every Commote, or Township, under his *Id. 4 R. II. p. 90. Obedience.* The Yeomen of the North, headed by Sir Robert Aske, rose up as one Man, against the Maladministration of Henry the Eighth, against the Usurpation of local Franchises, and against the Dishonor which a Council, studiously composed of the Base, Vile, and Ignoble, had brought upon the Realm. Force failed to put them down. The King treated with them, listened to their Demands, and granted them. But, when they had disbanded and gone home, the perjured King annulled the Treaty, and seized the contracting Parties, and put them to Death.† The Commons of East Anglia renewed the Contest, in the Reign of Edward the Sixth, headed by one of a more plebeian Character. Kett the Tanner was their Leader, Lawgiver, and Judge. His Moots were assembled beneath the famous Oak of Mousehold Heath, where many a Moot had been held in Days of Yore, and he called it the Oak of Reformation. There he administered Justice, held his Courts, and enacted his Laws, with the Help and Advice of Two Deputies from every Hundred; after the Manner, as Palgrave has remarked, of the more celebrated Convention of Malcontent Norman Peasantry, in a former Age. But the Insurrection had no happier Issue than that of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and Warwick's Troopers slaughtered the Insurgents, and hanged the bodies of their Ringleaders, upon the very Oak under which they were wont to assemble. Those ill-fated Men had a true Perception of their Grievances; and, if the Remedy they sought was violent and doubtful, it was, beyond all Comparison, sounder and better, than any which modern Demagogues have devised. The Traditions of England were at that time still current amongst the Populace. But * Ellis's Letters. Second Series, Vol. I. p. 43. |