A Concise History of the Common Law. Theodore F. T. Plucknett
the contract and is therefore bound by no limitations. Consequently it is impossible to talk about a sovereign having broken his contract with the nation (which was a common argument in the seventeenth century), for no such contract existed. Nor is there any justification for resistance to the sovereign. We seem to see in these theories a deep impatience with the turmoils of the Stuart period. Neither the antiquarianism of Parliament nor the mysticism of divine right had any meaning to the dry, penetrating, but narrow mind of Hobbes. The troubles of the Commonwealth, deeply involved as they were with religion, are reflected in his treatment of the Church. His own position seems to be that of a deist. He recommends that there be but one Church in a State, and that under the absolute control of the sovereign leviathan; he even asserts that the sovereign necessarily has full authority to preach, baptise and administer the sacraments, and that the clergy only perform these functions by delegation from the State, whose will is the source of both temporal and spiritual law. It is only natural that a century which was so animated by sincere religious dissension should either neglect or revile a thinker at once so original and so cynical.1
JOHN LOCKE AND THE REVOLUTION
If Hobbes represents the desperate longing for an omnipotent peaceful State which was natural in the midst of the darkest hours of the seventeenth century, it is in John Locke (1632-1704) that we find, after the storm had passed, a quiet summary of achievement full of the spirit of compromise. In the nineteenth century when it seemed that the leviathan had indeed come to life, Hobbes was to receive due recognition, but in the eighteenth century it was rather John Locke’s influence which was paramount, for it was he who discovered a reasonable philosophical basis for the whole of seventeenth-century history, and more particularly for the Revolution of 1689. John Locke learned from history something that Hobbes refused to consider. He made a great plea for religious toleration and embodied it in the “Fundamental Constitution” of Carolina, which he drafted in 1669 on the invitation of the proprietors of the province, and his example was to be improved by William Penn in his form of government for Pennsylvania. It is to John Locke that we owe a reasonable theory of limited monarchy which was to become the creed of the Whig party. Locke’s view of the contract was much less extreme than that of Hobbes. In his thought every individual conveys to society as a whole his right of executing the law of nature; all other natural rights he retains. Locke, therefore, brings us back to the old idea that the powers of the State are limited to certain purposes. It is his discussion of the mode in which those powers are exercised which has the greatest interest at the present day. His theory of reserved natural rights leaves a large place for religious toleration, while the limitations he places upon the State are more in accordance with history than is the absolute leviathan which Hobbes conceived. Where Hobbes had considered law to be the command of the State, Locke returned to the notion of natural law—a conception which was easily reconciled with the mediaeval view of law as the will of God. Where Hobbes had made law the tool of the State, Locke regarded it as the guardian of liberty.
Locke declared that the legislature is the supreme power in the State, and from this he deduced certain maxims of constitutional practice which, in fact, were the historical settlement reached at the end of the seventeenth century. And so beginning from general philosophical and theoretical considerations, Locke proceeds to give a philosophical defence of such very practical measures as the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, parliamentary control over taxation, and the whole machinery of limited monarchy.
It seems that Locke was the first modern theorist to propound a doctrine of the separation of powers. He observed that legislation is (or in his day was) an intermittent function, while the executive, on the other hand, must never cease its activity. Consequently, the two are better assigned to different bodies, which, he observes, is almost universally the practice—and here we seem to see an example of that comparative study of institutions which had been prominent in England ever since the days of Fortescue, Sir Thomas Smith and others. In his discussion of the relations between the legislature and the executive, Locke very clearly is thinking of current politics although his treatment is confined to scrupulously general terms. How close this theory was to current practical politics can be seen where he urges the separation of legislature from executive; this object would have been achieved through the passage we have just quoted from the Act of Settlement excluding ministers from the House of Commons, which was passed only four years before the death of Locke.1 Locke’s suggestions on the separation of powers were obviously derived from his observation of contemporary English practice; indeed, the easy way in which he seems to take the situation for granted is an indication that he felt it too obvious to need very detailed theoretical treatment. It is only a century later that his work will be used as a basis for a rediscovery by the great philosopher Montesquieu of a general theoretical doctrine of the separation of powers such as Aristotle and Marsiglio had suggested in ancient and mediaeval times.
John Locke, therefore, may be regarded as expressing to a peculiar degree the compromise and settlement which the nation had reached when the expulsion of the Stuarts and the accession of William III had enabled political passions to die down. His summary of the results of the great conflict remained for many years the justification on philosophical grounds of the compromise which practical politics had reached, and with his work the tumultuous drama of the seventeenth century fittingly ends on a quiet and hopeful note.1
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
SUMMARY
AGRICULTURE
The eighteenth century is the great dividing line in English economic development between mediaeval and modern times. The central point in its history is usually referred to as the industrial revolution, which was rather, in point of fact, a long and slow process which began to accelerate towards the middle of the century. Its results were to change the face of England completely; its mode of life, its source of wealth, even its colonial possessions were all radically changed as an outcome of this movement. So far the structure of the nation had been essentially mediaeval; so, too, had been its law. If we are to seek the fundamental notes of this mediaeval policy we shall find that they were based upon the fact that the normal occupation of the bulk of the inhabitants was agriculture. The great source of wealth was the land, and such capitalism as existed looked mainly to the land for its profits. The social structure of society was built upon this idea. The legal aspect of all this is clearly visible. Land was the principal form of wealth, and therefore the principal source of power, and the law had to take account of this situation. First of all the King’s Court assumed complete control over the land—and thereby over the landowners. The law of land was rapidly developed to an astonishing degree, and every means was adopted of protecting landed property to the fullest extent. It was only natural that the land should therefore be the symbol of economic and social permanence, and that efforts should be made to perpetuate the social system founded upon it.
Even in the middle ages, however, there were the beginnings of other forms of wealth, and as time proceeds commerce takes an increasing place in national