ABSTRACT
In the long run, England was to make the most successful adjustment in the Old World, but not without a continuous struggle and recurrrent crises of violence, over five centuries. The first crucial effort of the English to set the foundations of an enduring structure is marked by Magna Carta, exacted from King John by his rebel subjects. The provisions of this great document are seldom mentioned today, excepting the sentence: “To none will we sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay right or justice.” Certainly this is admirable, defining abstractly the essential purpose for which government is instituted; but given merely as a promise from the chief executive, the king, it was unlikely to be observed unless the whole organization was designed to work that way against the king’s will. Now even without the contemporary context, the practical features of the Charter still reveal what were the existing bases and the forces in motion. The static political structure was feudal. The larger towns, having obtained their “liberties,” contributed to the national treasury through various money taxes, direct or indirect, and levied somewhat irregularly, therefore liable to dispute. The church was in a dangerous intermediate position, being interlocked with feudalism by the system of land tenure on its immense properties, while in doctrine it asserted and protected the primary principle of contract by which trade was carried on. Necessarily also the long energy circuit of the church, its connection with Rome, was maintained in money, funds remitted to Rome; this could not have been done any other way.
