Commonwealth of England

“ The nation began to apprehend that they intended to establish themselves as a perpetual legislature, and to confine the whole power to sixty or seventy persons, who called themselves the parliament of the commonwealth of England. ”

“ What with us is lacking is the whole class which in England carries on politics, the class of gentlemen who are well-to-do and therefore Conservative, who are independent of material interests and whose whole education is directed towards making them English statesmen, and the object of whose life is to take part in the Commonwealth of England. ”

“ When the motion for the abolition of the house of lords, as ‘useless and dangerous,’ was being discussed, he proposed to substitute the words ‘useless but not dangerous.’ On another occasion, it is said, in drawing up a republican document, he spoke of ‘England being restored to its ancient government of commonwealth,’ and in answer to an objection that a commonwealth never before existed in England, quoted a text which had always puzzled him, where a man blind from his birth was said to be ‘restored’ to the sight he should have had. ”

“ There were the workshops in which the political creed of England was fashioned, where the notion of a free commonwealth with the three estates of king, lords, and commons holding by common consent their several authority, was proved and tested till it became the mere commonplace, the vulgar property of every Englishman. ”

“ This King, moreover, has impressed his mark deeply on English life; to this day justice is administered in England under forms established by him.
The will of destiny cannot be gainsaid. Just as Germany without its connexion with Italy, so England without its connexion with France, would never have been what it is. More than all, the great commonwealth of the western nations, whose life pervades and determines the history of each separate state, would never have come into existence. ”

“ A true republic exists only where the questions of government are fairly and honorably submitted to the whole population, with a universal disposition to acquiesce peaceably in the decision of the majority, when that is ascertained. There probably has never been any such state of things as this in any country of Europe since the Christian era. There certainly was no such state of things in England in the time of the Commonwealth. ”

“ Philip de Comines, the minister and historian of France, after enumerating the miseries and the exactions of the people of that country, of Italy, and Germany, Says, "In my opinion, of all the states of the world that I know, England is the country where the commonwealth is best governed, and the people least oppressed."
The Government of Scotland received some marked improvements during this century. When James I. returned from his long captivity in England, he found his kingdom overrun with abuses, and the common people in particular groaning under the oppressions of the nobles. ”

“ The rigour and independence which punished the tyranny of Charles I., and created the Commonwealth, though they seemed to recede in Charles II.'s reign, again displayed themselves under James II., and driving away the impracticable Stuarts, established an elective monarchy, the Bill of Rights, and religious freedom. In that period philanthropy became united with manufacturing and commercial enterprise, whence have sprung the glory and greatness of England ”

“ These are great hereditary legacies of the commonwealth to as and to the world. France has adopted the same principle and acted on it repeatedly. The United States have exercised the same right against us, and have become a republic; and there is no principle now more extensively diffused amongst all thinking people as a perfectly common sense truism, and though outwardly ignored by kings, not forgotten by their subjects. ”

“ The rest politically to be put into a commonwealth, first distributed among all the towns in England in sums according to the quantity and number of the occupiers and where most need is, and all the towns to be bound to the king so that he may have the money at his extreme need to serve him, he rendering it again. ”

“ The commonwealth also laid down the great maxim that all power proceeds from the people, even that of deposing and electing kings. It thus destroyed for ever the pernicious doctrine of the divine right of kings—the cornerstone of all oppressions and all official insolence; and though this great principle seemed again destroyed by the restoration, it survived, and was established permanently in the British constitution at the revolution of 1688, the bill of rights expressly recognising it ”

“ By such transfer, and the use made of the charter in New England, what was intended to be a mere trading company, similar to those which had preceded it, became transformed into a self-governing commonwealth, whose rulers treated the charter as if it were the constitution of an independent state. Such an interpretation could not legally be carried beyond a certain point, and the attempt was bound to break down under the strain. ”

“ After a careful preamble, in which the danger of divisions and false opinions, the peril both to the peace of the commonwealth and the souls of those who were ensnared by heresy, were elaborately dwelt upon, the king, the two houses of parliament, and the convocations of the two provinces declared themselves, after a great and long, deliberate and advised disputation, to have adopted the following conclusions: [468] —
The real presence. ”

“ To act thus is indeed to perfect the union and make all the inhabitants of Great Britain acknowledge, with gratitude and with joy, that they are subjects of the same well-regulated kingdom, and governed with the same impartial affection by the sovereign and father of the whole commonwealth. ”

“ The British constitution in theory and in the present administration of it in general comes nearest the idea of perfection of any that has been reduced to practice; and if the principles of it are adhered to it will, according to the infallible prediction of Harrington, always keep the Britons uppermost in Europe till their only rival nation shall either embrace that perfect model of a commonwealth given us by that author or come as near it as Great Britain is. ”

“ But their greatest achievement, I suggest, is the Commonwealth itself, and that owes much to all of them. Thus formed, the Commonwealth bears no resemblance to the Empires of the past. It is an entirely new conception, built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty and the desire for freedom and peace. ”

“ Tis therefore the Grand Interest of New-England to remain subject to the Crown of England, and by their dutiful Behaviour to merit the Removal of those few Hardships and Inconveniences they complain of; no other Power can, or will protect them, and next to their own, tis impossible their Religion and Civil Liberties should be in better Hands than in a Parliament of England. ”

“ It then became evident that a new power had entered the House of Commons. From that date the nation has fully realized that although England is a monarchy in name, yet it is a republic in fact. The slow progress of time has at length given to the British people— English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish—the great gift of practical liberty ”

“ If a new constitution was to be formed for the whole British dominions, and a supreme legislature coextensive with it, upon the general principles of the English constitution, an equal mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, let us see what would be necessary. England has six millions of people, we will say; America had three. England has five hundred members in the house of commons, we will say; America must have two hundred and fifty. ”

“ Instead of bringing all the authorities into one, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a house of representatives, a council, a governor, because England has a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They undertake to balance these different authorities, as if the same equilibrium of powers which has been thought necessary to balance the enormous preponderance of royalty, could be of any use in republics, formed upon the equality of all the citizens ”

“ Yea, and all other laws used in the realm, when they halt, or are defective in any point, they may, in every parliament, be set to rights. Whereupon it may be rightly concluded, that the laws of England are the best in the world, either actually or potentially, since they can easily be brought into act or being. To the performance whereof, as often as equity so requires, every King is bound by an oath solemnly taken at the time of receiving his crown. ”

“ The history of England during the hundred and seventy years which have elapsed since the House of Commons became the most powerful body in the state, her immense and still growing prosperity, her freedom, her tranquillity, her greatness in arts, in sciences, and in arms, her maritime ascendency, the marvels of her public credit, her American, her African, her Australian, her Asiatic empires, sufficiently prove the excellence of her institutions. ”

“ In the case of the Union, independent States voluntarily relinquished a portion of their sovereignty to secure national unity, and entrusted the guardianship of that unity to a representative body chosen by themselves. Such a union was based on contract, and could only be constructed by communities which claimed to be independent. Far different have been the circumstances under which England has developed itself into the British Empire. England began as a sovereign power, having its sovereignty vested at first solely in the Sovereign, but gradually in the Sovereign and Parliament. ”

“ So national are our institutions, so completely have they arisen from the temper and adapted themselves to the character of the people, that when for a season they were apparently annihilated, the people of England voluntarily returned to them, and established them with renewed strength and renovated vigour.
The constitution of England is again threatened, and at a moment when the nation is more prosperous, more free, and more famous than at any period of its momentous and memorable career. ”

“ England was the first western country to attain political unity with a territory substantially the same as at the present day; and the determination of the English kings that in the more important matters justice should be done throughout the land in the king's name, either by his courts at Westminster or by judges sent by him to the counties, secured the formation of an English Common Law which left comparatively little play for local custom, and which at an early time became strong enough to resist attempts to introduce foreign law. ”

“ Our ancestors in their emigration to this country brought with them the common law of England as their birthright. They adopted its principles for their government so far as it was not incompatible with the peculiarities of their situation in a rude and unsettled country. Great Britain then having the sovereignty over the colonies, possessed undoubted power to regulate their institutions, to control their commerce, and to give laws to their intercourse, both with the mother and the other nations of the earth. ”

“ A true Whig is not afraid of the Name of a Commonwealthsman, because so many foolish People, who know not what it means, run it down: The Anarchy and Confusion which these Nations fell into near Sixty Years ago, and which was falsly called a Commonwealth, frightning them out of the true Construction of the Word. But Queen Elizabeth, and many other of our best Princes, were not scrupulous of calling our Government a Commonwealth, even in their solemn Speeches to Parliament. ”

“ Under one of which race of princes [k] , we find it declared in parliament, "that the law of the crown of England is, and always hath been, that the children of the king of England, whether born in England, or elsewhere, ought to bear the inheritance after the death of their ancestors. Which law, our sovereign lord the king, the prelates, earls, and barons, and other great men, together with all the commons, in parliament assembled, do approve and affirm for ever." ”

“ As a former antagonist of those who are now its comrades in arms, General Smuts can criticize the British commonwealth—as he calls it in preference to empire—with something of detachment. ... Throughout his speeches he stresses the fact that Great Britain is a congeries of separate nations. He says the federal principle, as elaborated by us for instance, cannot work. Liberty and complete local sovereignty can alone hold the commonwealth together. ”

“ It provided for various limitations of the royal prerogative; among its provisions being that the sovereign should be a member of the Church of England; that Great Britain should not be called upon to defend any territories not being British territory, without the consent of Parliament; that the sovereign should not quit the realm; that no person born out of the realm should be capable of holding office under the Crown, and that no person holding office or enjoying a pension should sit in the House of Commons. ”