History of Europe During the Middle Ages Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 Excerpt: ...nobility but the actual descent of a peerage. The sons of peers, as we well know, are commoners, and totally destitute of any legal right beyond a barren precedence. There is no part, perhaps, of our constitution so admirable as this equality of civil rights; this isonomia, which the philosophers of ancient Greece only hoped to find in democratical government. From the beginning our law has been no respecter of persons. It screens not the gentleman of ancient lineage from the judgment of an ordinary jury, nor from ignominious punishment. It confers not, it never did confer, those unjust immunities from public burdens, which the superior orders arrogated to themselves upon the continent. Thus, while the privileges of our peers, as hereditary legislators of a free people, are incomparably more valuable and dignified in their nature, they are far less invidious in their exercise than those of any other nobility in Europe. It is, I am firmly persuaded, to this peculiarly democratical character of the English monarchy, that we are indebted for its long permanence, its regular improvement, and its present vigor. It is a singular, a providential circumstance, that, in an age when the gradual march of civilization and commerce was so little foreseen, our ancestors, deviating from the usages of neighboring countries, should, as if deliberately, have guarded against that expansive force which, in bursting through obstacles improvidently opposed, has scattered havoc over Europe. This tendency to civil equality in the English law may, I think, be ascribed to several concurrent causes. In the first place the feudal institutions were far less military in England than upon the continent. From the time of Henry II. the escuage, or pecuniary commutation for personal service...