English Bill of Rights

“ From the moment when its sole right to tax the nation was established by the Bill of Rights, and when its own resolve settled the practice of granting none but annual supplies to the Crown, the House of Commons became the supreme power in the State. ”

“ The right of the people through its representatives to depose the king, to change the order of succession, and to set on the throne whom they would, was now established. All claim of Divine Right or hereditary right independent of the law was formally put an end to by the election of William and Mary. Since their day no English sovereign has been able to advance any claim to the crown save a claim which rested on a particular clause in a particular Act of Parliament. William, Mary, and Anne, were sovereigns simply by virtue of the Bill of Rights. ”

“ Bill of Rights were directly embodied by the Americans in their lists.
And yet a deep cleft separates the American declarations from the English enactments that have been mentioned. The historian of the American Revolution says of the Virginia declaration that it protested against all tyranny in the name of the eternal laws of man's being: "The English petition of right in 1688 was historic and retrospective; the Virginia declaration came directly out of the heart of nature and announced governing principles for all peoples in all future times." ”

“ But it makes no change in the constitution of the Assembly itself. The greater Barons were to be summoned personally; the lesser tenants in chief, the representatives of the landsittende menn of Domesday, were to be summoned by a general writ (36) . The Great Charter in short is a Bill of Rights; it is not what, in modern phrase, we understand by a Reform Bill. But, during the reigns of John and Henry the Third, a popular element was fast making its way into the national Councils in a more practical form. The right of the ordinary freeman to attend in person had long been a shadow ”

“ There was no want of complaints of corruption, proposals to exclude placemen from parliament and the like; and in the days of Wilkes, Chatham, and Junius, when the first symptoms of democratic activity began to affect the political movement, the discontent made itself audible and alarming. But a main characteristic of the English reformers was the constant appeal to precedent, even in their most excited moods. They do not mention the rights of man; they invoke the 'revolution principles' of 1688; they insist upon the 'Bill of Rights' or Magna Charta. ”

“ In Great Britain, when the king attempts to usurp the rights of the people, the declaration and bill of rights are a guard against him. A bill of rights would be necessary here to guard against our rulers. I wish to have a bill of rights, to secure those unalienable rights, which are called by some respectable writers the residuum of human rights, which are never to be given up. At the same time that it would give security to individuals, it would add to the general strength. ”

“ That we claim all the benefits secured to the subject by the English Constitution, and particularly that inestimable one of Trial by Jury.
That we hold it essential to English liberty, that no man be condemned unheard, or punished for supposed offences, without having an opportunity of making his defence.
That we think the Legislature of Great Britain is not authorized by the Constitution to establish a Religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets, or to erect an arbitrary form of Government in any quarter of the globe. These rights we, as well as you, deem sacred ”

“ But all vagueness ceases when the Charter passes on to deal with the rights of Englishmen at large, their right to justice, to security of person and property, to good government. "No freeman," ran a memorable article that lies at the base of our whole judicial system, "shall be seized or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way brought to ruin: we will not go against any man nor send against him, save by legal judgement of his peers or by the law of the land." "To no man will we sell," runs another, "or deny, or delay, right or justice." ”

“ No country has been more distinguished for these principles than Great Britain, since the Revolution. I take it every subject has a right to give his sentiments to the public, of the utility or inutility of any act whatsoever, even after it is passed, as well as while it is pending. The equity and justice of a bill may be questioned with perfect submission to the legislature. ”

“ This new, and hitherto unheard of, bill of rights, though made in the name of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their faction only. The body of the people of England have no share in it. They utterly disclaim it. They will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws of their country, made at the time of that very Revolution which is appealed to in favour of the fictitious rights claimed by the society which abuses its name. ”

“ In the early days of English history, without theorizing much upon the subject, the Anglo-Saxons began to work out their political institutions along the line expressed in our Declaration of Independence, that the individual citizen has certain inalienable rights—the right to life, to liberty, to the pursuit of happiness, and that government is not the source of these rights, but is the instrument for the preservation and promotion of them. ”

“ But it must not be forgotten in construing our constitutions that in many particulars they are but the legitimate successors of the great charters of English liberty whose provisions declaratory of the rights of the subject have acquired a well understood meaning which the people must be supposed to have had in view in adopting them. ”

“ The British Parliament can do every thing they please. Their bill of rights is only an act of Parliament, which may be, at any time, altered or modified, without a violation of the constitution. The people of Great Britain have no constitution to control their legislature. ”

“ With the memory of tyranny fresh in their minds, the members of the First Congress of the United States proposed constitutional amendments known as the Bill of Rights, making explicit and forever protecting our Nation's cherished freedoms of religion, speech, press, and assembly.
But human rights have never been solely a domestic concern. Americans have always sought to share these rights with oppressed people around the world. ”

“ The first great Reform Bill of 1832 was the starting point of successive legislative enactments, enlarging the franchise, calling to the exercise of political rights various classes of the people, bringing up the British electorate to the glorious standard of being one of the freest, the most enlightened, and most independent in the world. ”

“ In their most solemn declarations of rights, they admitted themselves bound, as British subjects, to allegiance to the British crown; and, as such, they claimed to be entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities, of free-born British subjects. ”

“ I know not when, but I fear they will soon do it, unless, as your worthy brother in Virginia in a letter I yesterday received from him expresses himself, "we make one uniform, steady effort to secure an explicit bill of rights for British America." Let the executive power and right on each side be therein stipulated, that Britain may no longer have a power or right to make laws to bind us, in all cases whatsoever. While the claim is kept up, she may exercise the power as often as she pleases ”

“ Many of these articles of the Bill of Rights in England, without a due attention to the difference of the cases, were eagerly adopted when our constitutions were formed, the minds of men then being so warmed with their exertions in the cause of liberty as to lean too much perhaps towards a jealousy of power to repose a proper con360fidence in their own government. ”

“ The Bill of Rights guarantees that no American shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This promise lies at the heart of our free society and reflects our reverence for impartial justice and the rule of law. ”

“ All claimed to set forth, with new strength, it might be, and with new clearness, those rights of Englishmen which were already old. In all our great political struggles the voice of Englishmen has never called for the assertion of new principles, for the enactment of new laws ”

“ No Englishman, who cherishes in his heart a love of freedom, and who is at all conversant with the history of his country from its earliest era down to the period of the revolution, can be insensible of the acquisitions procured at that eventful period,—of the accumulation of strength gained by the popular branch of the constitution, the limitation to the power of the crown, and the extension of the admitted and declared rights of the people. ”

“ Her courts are modelled on those at Westminster, and administer the English Common Law, while most of the statutes affecting civil rights are the same. But, as men have often pointed out, there are in times of agitation two laws, and two governments, in the country; on one side the English law, administered by the English government through its officials, and on the other a hostile system resting upon very different principles, and applied by an extra-legal political organisation, but in fact more vigorously enforced than the first, and often more in harmony with the popular sense of justice. ”

“ We have it in our power to secure our liberties and happiness on the most unshaken, firm, and permanent basis. We can establish what government we please. But by that paper we are consolidating the United States into one great government, and trusting to constructive security. You will find no such thing in the English government. The common law of England is not the common law of these states. I conceive, therefore, that there is nothing in that Constitution to hinder a dismemberment of the empire. ”