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There are three documents that are rarely mentioned today that we need to recognize as we begin this year of study of the Constitution of the United States. Throughout the world today most of the people still do not have the freedom or the protection of their God given rights that the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution made part of the fundamental law of the United States of America.
The first of those three documents, the Magna Carta[1] was written in England in 1215 AD, almost eight hundred years ago. It was a written response to the disastrous governance of the worst and most disliked king in British history - King John, who ruled from April 1199 to October 1216. King John was so disliked that he has been the subject of many plays, including Wm. Shakespeare's "The Life and Death of King John." [2]
Winston Churchill said of King John's reign as king, "When the long tally is added, it will be seen that the British nation and the English-speaking world owe far more to the vices of John than to the labours of virtuous sovereigns". John's loss of British power, property and prestige, his personal immoral behavior his battles with the Pope and his excommunication, and, finally, his doubling of heavy taxation to pay for a series of war finally prompted the English barons to meet, write the Magna Carta and in effect forced King John to sign it.
The years it took to upset the English people enough to actually DO something about tyranny in their government is a reminder of Thomas Jefferson's line in the Declaration of Independence: "All experience hath shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by altering forms to which they are accustomed."[3]
The first provision of the Magna Carta, the earliest of the documents about our liberty states:
"GRANTED TO GOD, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired. " It also required King John to "at once restore to any man whom we have deprived or disposed of lands, castles, liberties or rights, without lawful judgment of his equals" and prohibited government officials from taking "movable goods" from citizens. "
The second English document that was known to the founding fathers was England's Habeas Corpus Act[4], which was passed by the English parliament in 1679 to end a practice of false arrests without legal authority.[5] Public pressure on the English Parliament caused them to adopt this act. In 1787, when the US Constitution was passed in the Constitutional Convention, Habeas Corpus protection was written in Article 1 Section 9 Clause 2.[6]
The third English document the founding fathers referred to and felt parliament and King George III were ignoring was the English Bill of Rights of 1689[7], which enumerated "their ancient rights and liberties" as follows:
1. That the pretended power of suspending the laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal;
2. That the pretended power of dispensing with laws or the execution of laws by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal;
3. That the commission for erecting the late Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes, and all other commissions and courts of like nature, are illegal and pernicious;
4. That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal;
5. That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal;
6. That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law;
7. That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;
8. That election of members of Parliament ought to be free;
9. That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament;
10. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted;
11. That jurors ought to be duly impaneled and returned, and jurors which pass upon men in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders;
12. That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void;
13. And that for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently.
On October 14, 1774, the First Continental Congress passed the Declaration and Resolves[8] that was drafted and introduced by John Sullivan[9], delegate from New Hampshire. Sullivan later became a General in the Revolution. He wrote:
"The good people of the several colonies of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North- Carolina and South-Carolina, justly alarmed at these arbitrary proceedings of parliament and administration, have severally elected, constituted, and appointed deputies to meet, and sit in general Congress, in the city of Philadelphia, in order to obtain such establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties, may not be subverted: Whereupon the deputies so appointed being now assembled, in a full and free representation of these colonies, taking into their most serious consideration, the best means of attaining the ends aforesaid, do, in the first place, as Englishmen, their ancestors in like cases have usually done, for asserting and vindicating their rights and liberties, DECLARE,
"That the inhabitants of the English colonies in North-America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following RIGHTS:
Resolved, N.C.D. 1. That they are entitled to life, liberty and property: and they have never ceded to any foreign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent.
Resolved, N.C.D. 2. That our ancestors, who first settled these colonies, were at the time of their emigration from the mother country, entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural- born subjects, within the realm of England.
Resolved, N.C.D. 3. That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those r rights, but that they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them, as their local and other circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy.
Resolved, 4. That the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council: and as the English colonists are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances, cannot properly be represented in the British parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed: But, from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interest of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British parliament, as are bonfide, restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members; excluding every idea of taxation internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects, in America, without their consent.
Resolved, N.C.D. 5. That the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law.
Resolved, N.C.D. 6. That they are entitled to the benefit of such of the English statutes, as existed at the time of their colonization; and which they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several local and other circumstances.
Resolved, N.C.D. 7. That these, his Majesty's colonies, are likewise entitled to all the immunities and privileges granted and confirmed to them by royal charters, or secured by their several codes of provincial laws.
Resolved, N.C.D. 8. That they have a right peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the king; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory proclamations, and commitments for the same, are illegal.
Resolved, N.C.D. 9. That the keeping a standing army in these colonies, in times of peace, without the consent of the legislature of that colony, in which such army is kept, is against law.
Resolved, N.C.D. 10. It is indispensably necessary to good government, and rendered essential by the English constitution, that the constituent branches of the legislature be independent of each other; that, therefore, the exercise of legislative power in several colonies, by a council appointed, during pleasure, by the crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous and destructive to the freedom of American legislation.
In effect, John Sullivan described a government, which he and others believed, was totally out of touch with its citizens and was ignoring the rights Englishmen had enjoyed for hundreds of years by 1774.
[1] http://www.bl.uk/treasures/magnacarta/translation/mc_trans.html - Magna Carta
[2] http://shakespeare.mit.edu/john/john.1.1.html - The Life and Death of King John - Shakespeare
[3] http://www.constitution.org/usdeclar.htm - Declaration of Independence
[4] http://www.constitution.org/eng/habcorpa.htm - Habeas Corpus Act of 1679
[5] http://www.lectlaw.com/def/h001.htm - Legal Definition of Habeas Corpus
[6] http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section9 - Article 1 Sec 9 US Constitution
[7] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp - English BIll of Rights 1689
[8] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolves.asp - Declaration and Resolves
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sullivan - John Sullivan - bio
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