Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XXVII. Struggles of tfie lltng fa parllament. The exercise of the sovereign rights had now become So closely interwoven with the self-government of the counties, and so artistically combined in Parliament, that, thanks to the wisdom of the legislator, an ideal political constitution appears to have become realized, such as harmoniously blends together all classes of society in the service of the State and expands to the utmost all the resources of the nation, enabling it to fulfil the highest tasks of its legal, educational, and economic development. But it is not given to nations more than to individuals to attain such high aims without hard trials and struggles. As in the preceding period the monarchy appears from generation to generation in an ascendant and descendant motion, so does this epoch display, in the course of six generations, an unexampled picture of a rise and fall which appears peculiar to English history, now that the monarchy had become the head of a powerful assembly of estates of the realm, in which the conflicting interests of society take the form of violent parties. There is a tragic contrast between the beautiful and glorious dawn of this period and the bloody sunset which ends it. Though to the people of that time they were questions of life and death, to us the struggles of this period appear colourless antecedents to the establishment of a system of constitutional law, just as in reality the wildest struggles ended in a firm result and permanent arrangement of classes (Chap. XXVIII.) and a firmly established monarchy (Chap. XXIX.). I. (1272-1307). The age of Edward I. is the reverse of the immediately preceding one of Henry III. It is the age of the brilliant restoration of confidence in the monarchy ; the zenith of the English Middle A...