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And a people, to be united, must possess a balanced constitution, in which no class possesses absolute and independent power, none is powerful enough… - William Stubbs
" "And a people, to be united, must possess a balanced constitution, in which no class possesses absolute and independent power, none is powerful enough to oppress without remedy. The necessary check on an aspiring priesthood and an aggressive baronage, the hope and support of a rising people, must be in a king too powerful to yield to any one class, not powerful enough to act in despite of all, and fully powerful only in the combined support of all. Up to the year 1295 Edward had these ends steadily in view; his laws were directed to the limitation of baronial pretensions, to the definition of ecclesiastical claims, to the remedy of popular wrongs and sufferings. The peculiar line of his reforms, the ever perceptible intention of placing each member of the body politic in direct and immediate relation with the royal power, in justice, in war, and in taxation, seems to reach its fulfilment in the creation of the parliament of 1295, containing clergy and people by symmetrical representation, and a baronage limited and defined on a distinct system of summons.
English
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About William Stubbs
William Stubbs HonFRSE (21 June 1825 – 22 April 1901) was an English historian and Anglican bishop. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford between 1866 and 1884. He was Bishop of Chester from 1884 to 1889 and Bishop of Oxford from 1889 to 1901.
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Additional quotes by William Stubbs
Nor shall I be going so far as to anticipate what I shall have to lay before you by and by if I say now that I do trace in the old Teutonic system more germs of real liberty than I can in the Celtic system, so far as we know it, or in the Sclavonic, or in the Roman itself, with respect, be it said, to all those who find nothing in civilisation that is not Roman. I do think that in the free tenure of land, the fixed obligations of allodialism, the relation of the freeman to history as the impersonation of the race, the combination of the frankpledge, nay, I will add the compurgation and the ordeal and the wergild, is to be found a more likely basis of freedom than in the community of land, the close tie of patriarchal or family unity, the enormous and disproportionate estimate of blood nobility, and the clannish spirit that one finds in the Highland Scot and Irishman, or in the Pole or Hungarian.
National character may be regarded as the result of national history, or national history as the development of national character; either way we cannot fail to recognise the closest connection between the two. Now, of all the evidence that can be taken, and that we shall attempt to take in this course, of the actual origin of each nation and of the persistence of the original character, by far the most clear and decisive are the customs of common law. These customs spring out of the first movements of the race towards social and civilised life; although not recorded in books, they are the most ancient portion of its lore, but they are not the earliest monuments of its literature.
There are no constitutional revolutions, no violent reversals of legislation; custom is far more potent than law, and custom is modified infinitesimally every day. An alteration of law is often the mere registration of a custom, when men have recognised its altered character. The names of offices and assemblies are permanent, whilst their character has imperceptibly undergone essential change.
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