Читать книгу Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John. With an Historical Introduction онлайн

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Dr. Gneist is of the same opinion. “Magna Carta was a pledge of reconciliation between all classes. Its existence and ratification maintained for centuries the notion of fundamental rights as applicable to all classes in the consciousness that no liberties would be upheld by the superior classes for any length of time, without guarantees of personal liberties for the humble also.”^[203]

“The rights which the barons claimed for themselves,” says John Richard Green,^[204] before proceeding to enumerate them, “they claimed for the nation at large.” The testimony of a very recent writer, Dr. Hannis Taylor,^[205] may close this series. “As all three orders participated equally in its fruits, the great act at Runnymede was in the fullest sense of the term a national act, and not a mere act of the baronage on behalf of their own special privileges.” It would be easy to add to this “cloud of witnesses,” but enough has been said to prove that it has been a common boast of Englishmen, for many centuries, that the provisions of the Great Charter were intended to secure, and did secure, the liberties of every class and individual of the nation, not merely those of the feudal magnates on whose initiative the quarrel was raised.