WHAT WAS MAGNA CARTA?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19061, 4 July 1925, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHAT WAS MAGNA CARTA?

A RE-READING OF HISTORY.

BY MATANCA.

The habit of giving tho Great Charter of King John's reign special honour as the legal basis of British citizen-liberty was manifest in the recent spectacular pilgrimage to Runnymede. Seven thousand people participated, their share including a recitation of tho following To Deum: • Wo praiso Tbee, O God, for this great deed ot 700 years ago. whereby tho laws and liberty of this realm were defended against tyranny and victory was won for freedom and justice.

Whoever else was present, it is certain that Professor A. E. Pollard, ex-President of the Historical Association and an editor of its otlicial publication, was not there; or, if he were, he suffered many things m silence. For his researches have shaken Magna Carta's reputation and givea the popular view of it some shrewd and damaging blows. If he be right-—and other historians of proved scholarship, Mai t land and Edward Jenks and Vinogradoff, to wit, are with bun—there is less wairant for giving the (.barter the reveience that the pugi uuago implied than we have customaiuy thought. Carta has been a proud piece of hustings stage-property for centuries. I'rial by jury, tiu taxation without representation, ami even the poor man's i igtit to his beer, have been vaiorously defended with its aid. But it did not secure to Britishers tho democratic device that enables them to try or bo tried by their fellow-sinners. It really had nothing to do with either taxation or representation. Instead of fostering the growth of general liberty, it positively checked progiess in such enfranchisement; and, as to its enduring validity, it was never the law of the land save lor a few weeks prior to a royal repudiation of it. "flow came it to fictitious renown ? Tho blame belongs to Sir Edward Coke, tho crotchety jurist of Cavalier days who made himself so unpleasant to certain Stuart kings by feeding them with very unpalatable constitutional physic. That, maybe, should be reckoned to him for righteousness, but he did not stick at tntles in his treatment of them. They gave him a hard pillow in tho Tower in return for his making their crowned heads so* uneasy at nights, but he was up and at them again as soon as be got his hands free. In Ins brushes with them and their

" divine right " he needed a stiff cudgel, for monarchs had an advantage over lawyers, professional as well as amateur, in those dark days; and the citation of the Charter served him well enough. Tho days being dark, they could not get so clear a sight of his weapon as we have, seeing it now lie quietly m state in the national museum; but there is a likelihood that the wily old fighter who whirled it then knew .that his use of it was open to objection, and there were no Queensberry rules to govern the contest. But that by tho way. A Bulwark of Monopoly.

Of course Magna Carta, even when all the truth is known, was not without importance. It asserted well the principle that royalty's power must be limited and lawful. Tho doctrine is older than the document, and a salutary doctrine it is for all the centuries —tor iron kings and woollen kings and muscld kings as well as those who grace thrones and don a crown upon occasion. Yet what were asserted against royalty in John's day were not the commoners' rights, and the abolition of privilege for dominating parties was not in view.

Tho great things traditionally traced to the Charter were not there. Take the current notion that it is a bulwark for "the liberty of the subject." In the thirteenth century "liberty" meant something very different from the idea wo associate with it. The "libertas of Magna Carta—it was written in Latinwas a privilege to enslave, not a protection from slavery. A petition sent by Parliament to Edward 111. implored the King to grant no more liberties, as those already bestowed had contributed ' to the great hindrance and weakening of tho common law and to the great oppression of the people." A "liberty" was not then anything democratic. It was a kind of monopoly, a local and personal monopoly of power over inferiors. It was really a license to tyrannise, a liberty so far its holder went, but a bondage for those for whoso subjection ho possessed ir>. It consisted commonly/' to quote Professor Pollard, " in the unchecked power which the lorci exercised over his tenants in the manorial courts, and the object of Magna Carta was largely to prevent the Royal judges from encroaching on these private preserves and drawing jurisdiction into tho national courts of justice. The Barons' Grievance. Splendid old filibusters, those barSns at Eunnymede, making secure their licenses as pirates and highwaymen under special permit. So Magna Carta was a piece of class legislation. It emancipated not a single toiler. The freedom it gave was of the sort bestowed by an Acclimatisation Society's license, and the luckless villein's regard for it would naturally be that of pheasants and trout at the height of the shooting and fishing seasons. It is not otherwise with the clauses alleged to ensure " no taxation without representation." There is practically nothing about taxation m the Chai ter. The barons' grievance was personal, not national; and, in a time of rising land values, they were bent on opposing tho King's exaction of further rents and services from them as their landlord. Theirs was a sort of "no rent revolt, in a day when there was virtually no national taxation and certainly no national representation. As to trial J>y jury, thero was then nothing comparable to it. After the trial by ordeal and combat, the. crude tests of earliest Plantagenet ,times, there came the swearing by "recognitors" for and against the accused, and the side first obtaining twelve such dalliers with oaths won the case. There was precious little "trial" in this. Trial by combat, indeed, survived after 1215. Freedom for a Class. Even the Charter's declaration that no "free" man was to be arrested, imprisoned, dispossessed or outlawed except by the lawful judgment of his equals, was meant, for the barons solely—a denial to the King's judges of power to condemn them. Ail that was meant was that "recognitors" should not be beneath the status of the accused. So arose the trial of Peers on criminal charges in the House of Lords, but others than the small class of "free" .men then existent got no gain. Tho Charter had a short lifo and a merry one. King John repudiated it in ;i few weeks; civil war put an end to civil law; and, when order was restored at tho accession of Henry 111., there was a new Charter. This had revisions in his reign, and when Edward I. "confirmed tho Charter" three years before the end of the thirteenth century it was not Magna Carta that was named, but the Charter made "in the time of King Henry our father." On that document, much more than upon Magna Carta, England's legal and constitutional freedom depends, for it severely limited tho privileges exacted in their own interests by the barons from King John. Happily, British liberties are not wrapped in musty parchments, nor bound up with foreign phrases. Thus little of value is lost by the destruction of Magna Carta's reputation. Tho pilgrimage to Runnymede, for all the falsity of its assumption of the Charter's value, may have led many to prizo more highly their modern freedom, and perhaps to enlarge their capacity lor fraternal citizenship. If so, its misreading of history may bo all the more cordially; forgiven.