of command, and sometimes borrowed with small
thought of repaying. But the fact that they thought it necessary to
disguise their exactions under the names of benevolences and loans
sufficiently proves that the authority of the great constitutional rule
was universally recognised.

The principle that the King of England was bound to conduct the
administration according to law, and that, if he did anything against
law, his advisers and agents were answerable, was established at a very
early period, as the severe judgments pronounced and executed on many
royal favourites sufficiently prove. It is, however, certain that the
rights of individuals were often violated by the Plantagenets, and that
the injured parties were often unable to obtain redress. According to
law no Englishman could be arrested or detained in confinement merely
by the mandate of the sovereign. In fact, persons obnoxious to the
government were frequently imprisoned without any other authority than
a royal order. According to law, torture, the disgrace of the Roman
jurisprudence, could not, in any circumstances, be inflicted on an
English subject. Nevertheless, during the troubles of the fifteenth
century, a rack was introduced into the Tower, and was occasionally used
under the plea of political necessity. But it would be a great error to
infer from such irregularities that the English monarchs were, either in
theory or in practice, absolute. We live in a highly civilised society,
through which intelligence is so rapidly diffused by means of the press
and of the post office that any gross act of oppression committed in
any part of our island is, in a few hours, discussed by millions. If the
sovereign were now to immure a subject in defiance of the writ of Habeas
Corpus, or to put a conspirator to the torture, the whole nation would
be instantly electrified by the news. In the middle ages the state of
society was widely different. Rarely and with great difficulty did the
wrongs of individuals come to the knowledge of the public. A man might
be illegally confined during many months in the castle of Carlisle or
Norwich; and no whisper of the transaction might reach London. It is
highly probable that the rack had been many years in use before the
great majority of the nation had the least suspicion that it was ever
employed. Nor were our ancestors by any means so much alive as we are to
the importance of maintaining great general rules. We have been taught