nation to Confirma rum; parliament; from that time their representation has been continuous, or nearly so.1 In the parliament of 1295 the three estates appeared in person or by representatives: the lay and spiritual baronage represented themselves, the inferior clergy and the commons, each as an estate of the realm, appeared through their chosen representatives. Two years after the national assembly was thus constituted, the long struggle of right of the the nation for the right to tax itself was closed at the end of tax itself the "Barons' War" by the Confirmatio Cartarum, wherein settled by Edward I. was made to promise the clergy, the barons, and tio Carta"all the commonalty of the land, that for no business, from henceforth will we take such manner of aids, tasks, nor prizes, but by the common assent of the realm, and for the common profit thereof, saving the ancient aids and prizes due and accustomed." Under that saving clause the crown attempted for a time to talliage the cities and towns upon the royal demesnes, without parliamentary authority; but after 1332 that effort was abandoned.2 Thus before the close of the reign of Edward III. the exclusive right of parliament to authorize every form of direct taxation was fully and finally established, not only in principle but in practice. In that reign it was that even the right of each estate to assent separately in parliament to the quota of the general contribution to be borne by it passed out of view.3 The financial pro- transitions ceedings which took place in the parliament of Edward I. in from local 1282-83 marked "the point of final transition from the system assent, and of local to that of central assent to taxation; "4 the giving up to national by the estates in the reign of Edward III. of the right of separate assent in parliament finally transformed the older feudal taxes resting upon the theory of personal consent into the new national taxes resting upon the fact of general consent.5 While the principle was thus becoming settled that the the customs crown could impose no kind of direct taxes not even talliage upon ancient demesnes - without parliamentary author 1 Vol. i. pp. 465-469. 2 Ibid., pp. 423, 487, 488. 8 Ibid., p. 490. 4 Select Charters, p. 460. 5 "The time for merely granting special privileges by charter and for relying on occasional contributions from particular groups of tenants was now over, and the day had come when the to central from feudal taxation; revenue; origin; Charter; ity, the royal right to impose indirect taxes became subject to the same limitation. Although the historical origin of the its probable customs is very obscure, their beginnings may be traced with reasonable certainty to the ancient right of the Old-English kings to impose a tax or toll directly upon each ship upon its entry into the harbor, as the equivalent from the merchant for the right to bring his goods into the realm and to trade under the king's protection. It is likely that the duties on imports are thus older than those on exports, which did not become important until wool, skins, and leather became subjects of exportation. Whatever may have been the origin of the customs, it is clear that prior to the date of the Great Charter the levy of tolls at the ports had become customary at fixed amounts or rates.2 To secure the foreign merchant against all additional exactions imposed by the king's officers, article article 41 of 41 of the Great Charter, after denouncing the same as evil or the Great unjust tolls, provided that merchants entering and leaving the realm should pay only the ancient and just customs.3 The next memorable effort to limit the customs occurred in the reign of Edward I. after the export tax on wool and leather, the principal products of the kingdom, had become an important item in the royal revenue. After these tempting commodities had been for a long time subject to all kinds of irregular seizures and exactions, the export tax upon them was definitely settled upon a legal basis by the parliament of 1275, which gave to Edward a custom of half a mark on each sack of wool, three hundred woolfells, and a mark on the last of leather. As Edward's reign drew to a close, he departed from the settlement thus made by exacting from the merchants in 1294 an additional toll on wool, woolfells, and leather; and by the seizure of all the wool in their hands in 1297, in order to enforce a toll of 40 s. the sack. This last exaction led to the provision in the Confirmatio Cartarum which, after denouncing the new demand of 40 s. the sack on wool, provided that the royal right of taxing wool should not be exercised "without their common assent and good will; saving to us and our 1 Vol. i. p. 299. As to the character of the evidence touching the existence of a customs revenue during the century and a half which follows the Conquest, see Hubert Hall, A History of the Custom-Revenue of England, pp. 56-59. 2 Dowell, History of Taxation, p. 76. 8 "Sine omnibus malis toltis, per antiquas et rectas consuetudines." magna great and ancient cus small cus poundage; heirs the custom of wools, skins, and leather granted before by the commonalty aforesaid." A return was thus made to the tolls as fixed by the parliament of 1275, which were known henceforth as the great and ancient custom et antiqua custuma.1 In 1302 Edward made a final assault tom of upon the foreign merchants by offering to commute his pris- 1275; age on wine (the right to take from each English or foreign wine ship one cask out of every ten) for a fixed duty or rate, provided they would agree to certain additional duties on wool and other goods. In view of certain advantages promised for their trade the foreign merchants accepted the offer and conceded the further duties, which came to be known as the new or small custom nova or parva custuma· as opposed to new or the magna et antiqua custuma of 1275.2 In the commuta- m tion then made of prisage at the rate 2 s. the tun on wine we 1302; find the origin of butlerage or tonnage; in the tax of 3 d. on origin of the pound value of all goods and merchandise not enumerated, tonnage and exported and imported by the foreign merchants, we find the origin of poundage. When the attempt was made to induce the native merchants to assent to the new arrangement they refused, and continued to pay prisage. "Such was the origin summary; of (1) the ancient or great customs on wool, woolfells, and leather; (2) the new or small customs payable, in addition to the ancient or great customs, by the foreign merchants; (3) prisage on wine imported by denizens; (4) butlerage or tonnage on wine, payable in lieu of prisage by the foreign merchants; and (5) the poundage on goods inwards and outwards, payable by the foreign merchants."4 Early in the reign of Edward II. the new customs on wine and merchandise were declared illegal by the Ordainers, and their collection was suspended in 1311; but after the king's victory in 1322 they were promptly reëstablished. In the year which followed the accession of Edward III. the customs, as reëstablished in 1322, were after 1322 confirmed, and from that time they became a part of the per- a part of manent revenue of the crown, and as such they received the the permasanction of parliament in the Statute of Staples, enacted in enue; 1353.5 To the permanent and ordinary revenue thus composed the customs nent rev the 23d of Edward III.; subsidies granted for life to of the "ancient customs" and of the "new or small customs" were added, during the reign of Edward III., three distinct and additional separate kinds of customs revenue in the form of extraordinary subsidies; subsidies granted by parliament to the king for the time being, as opposed to the crown in perpetuity. They consisted (1) of export duties on wool, skins, and leather, with a complementary duty on exported cloth; (2) of tonnage, an import duty on the tun of wine; and (3) of poundage, an ad valorem duty on goods custom and not specially enumerated, exported, or imported.1 "From the subsidy twenty-third year of Edward III. the custom and subsidy, levied after levied as it was henceforth with scarcely any intermission, amounted on an average to some 33 per cent. in the case of denizens, and 40 per cent. in that of aliens, upon the gross value of the commodity." 2 When the new sources of customs revenue known as the subsidies were granted in 1397 to Richard II. for life, it was with the express proviso that the grant Richard II., "should not be made a precedent in the time of his successors. While in obedience to that principle no life grant of the subsidies was made to Henry IV., such grants were made to Henry V. in 1415, and to Henry VI. in 1453.5 Thus before the fall of the house of Lancaster parliament had definitely secured, in addition to its other sovereign attributes, the exclusive control of every form of direct or indirect taxation. With its powers and privileges thus organized and consolidated, it did appear as if in the assembly of estates the English nation had at last found a defender strong enough and constant enough to maintain its liberties against the monarchy in all the years of struggle and of change that were yet to come. And yet the fact remains that the parliamentary system, whose too rapid growth had resulted in a premature development, gave way when it was subjected for the first time to the crucial test in the storm and stress of civil war. Henry V., and Henry VI. The fall of the house of Lancaster synchronizes with the collapse of the parliamentary system. While the parliament 1 See Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, vol. i. p. 165. 2 Hubert Hall, Hist. of the CustomRevenue, p. 74. 8 Par. Rolls, iii. 114, 368. In a prior renewal in 1381 a week was permitted to intervene," lest the king by continual possession of the said subsidy might claim it of right and custom." — Ibid., 104. 4 Ibid., v. 64. 5 Ibid., v. 228, 229. Like grants were made to Richard III., to the Tudor sovereigns, and to James I. See Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, vol. i. pp. 172177, 182. the imma system; tion of the IV.; did not then cease to exist, its authority, during a long period Collapse of of time, suffered a very serious diminution. With the acces- ture parliasion of the house of York began that prolonged period of mentary reaction which reached its highest point under the house of Tudor, during whose sway the monarchy, released from the fetters with which the patriots and statesmen of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had hedged it about, resumed in substance if not in form the exercise of that system of royal autocracy it had wielded before the charters were won. The emancipation of the monarchy from the restraints which the emancipagrowth of the law courts and the parliament had put upon monarchy it was the work of Edward IV., the prime object of whose by Edward policy it was to restore to the crown all of the despotic powers originally wielded by the king in council. The short reign of Richard III., so far as constitutional history is concerned, is a mere episode. The real successor of Edward IV., in a constitutional sense, is Henry VII. The despotic policy which Edward founded was continued by Henry and his successors, by whom it was systematized and enforced as a permanent system of government. The tide of reaction which thus set overthrow in in England was but a part of a general tendency that char- mentary inof parliaacterized the politics of the sixteenth century. With the close stitutions of the Middle Ages every effort which had been made in the tinent; direction of representative government upon the continent of Europe was brought to an end. Then it was that the free constitutions of Castile and Aragon were overthrown by Charles V. and Philip II.; then it was that the States-General of France met for the last time (1614) before their final meeting (1789) upon the eve of the French Revolution. Such were the results of the formation in the French and Castilian monarchies of great military establishments - indispensable perhaps to their safety and dignity-without any new safeguards in favor of liberty.1 With the accession of the house of York the English character national assembly fairly began that prolonged struggle with gle in Engthe growing despotism of the monarchical system which upon Jand; the Continent proved strong enough either to sweep away or to reduce to empty forms all parliamentary institutions for nearly 1 Upon this whole subject, see Robertson's Charles V., vol. iii. p. 434; Watson's Philip II., vol. iii. p. 223; Prescott's Philip II., first chapter of book vi.; Sismondi, vol. xiii. p. 342; on the con of the strug. |