Whilst that the barons, the bishops, and the popes, all laid waste England, where all were for ruling the most numerous, the most useful, even the most virtuous, and consequently the most venerable part of mankind, consisting of those who study the laws and the sciences, of traders, of artificers, in a word, of all who were not tyrants—­that is, those who are called the people:  these, I say, were by them looked upon as so many animals beneath the dignity of the human species.  The Commons in those ages were far from sharing in the government, they being villains or peasants, whose labour, whose blood, were the property of their masters who entitled themselves the nobility.  The major part of men in Europe were at that time what they are to this day in several parts of the world—­they were villains or bondsmen of lords—­that is, a kind of cattle bought and sold with the land.  Many ages passed away before justice could be done to human nature—­before mankind were conscious that it was abominable for many to sow, and but few reap.  And was not France very happy, when the power and authority of those petty robbers was abolished by the lawful authority of kings and of the people?

Happily, in the violent shocks which the divisions between kings and the nobles gave to empires, the chains of nations were more or less heavy.  Liberty in England sprang from the quarrels of tyrants.  The barons forced King John and King Henry III. to grant the famous Magna Charta, the chief design of which was indeed to make kings dependent on the Lords; but then the rest of the nation were a little favoured in it, in order that they might join on proper occasions with their pretended masters.  This great Charter, which is considered as the sacred origin of the English liberties, shows in itself how little liberty was known.

The title alone proves that the king thought he had a just right to be absolute; and that the barons, and even the clergy, forced him to give up the pretended right, for no other reason but because they were the most powerful.

Magna Charta begins in this style:  “We grant, of our own free will, the following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, priors, and barons of our kingdom,” etc.

The House of Commons is not once mentioned in the articles of this Charter—­a proof that it did not yet exist, or that it existed without power.  Mention is therein made, by name, of the freemen of England—­a melancholy proof that some were not so.  It appears, by Article XXXII., that these pretended freemen owed service to their lords.  Such a liberty as this was not many removes from slavery.

By Article XXI., the king ordains that his officers shall not henceforward seize upon, unless they pay for them, the horses and carts of freemen.  The people considered this ordinance as a real liberty, though it was a greater tyranny.  Henry VII., that happy usurper and great politician, who pretended to love the barons, though he in reality hated and feared them, got their lands alienated.  By this means the villains, afterwards acquiring riches by their industry, purchased the estates and country seats of the illustrious peers who had ruined themselves by their folly and extravagance, and all the lands got by insensible degrees into other hands.