the transaction. And so, in quite significant phrase the
towns zealously guarded their charters as the "title-deeds of their
liberties."

[Sidenote: The "Great Charter" (1215).]
After a while the word charter was applied in England to a particular
document which specified certain important concessions forcibly wrung by
the people from a most unwilling sovereign. This document was called
_Magna Charta_, or the "Great Charter," signed at Runnymede, June 15,
1215, by John, king of England. After the king had signed it and gone
away to his room, he rolled in a mad fury on the floor, screaming
curses, and gnawing sticks and straw in the impotence of his, wrath.[2]
Perhaps it would be straining words to call a transaction in which the
consent was so one-sided a "contract," but the idea of Magna Charta was
derived from that of the town charters with which people were already
familiar. Thus a charter came to mean "a grant made by the sovereign
either to the whole people or to a portion of them, securing to them the
enjoyment of certain rights." Now in legal usage a charter differs from
a constitution in this, that the former is granted by the sovereign,
while the latter is established by the people themselves: both are the
fundamental law of the land.[3] a The distinction is admirably
expressed, but in history it is not always easy to make it. Magna Charta
was in form a grant by the sovereign, but it was really drawn up by the
barons, who in a certain sense represented the English people; and
established by the people after a long struggle which was only in its
first stages in John's time. To some extent it partook of the nature of
a written constitution.

[Footnote 2: Green, _Hist. of the English People_, vol. i. p.
248.]

[Footnote 3: Bouvier, _Law Dictionary_, 12th ed., vol. i. p.
259.]

[Sidenote: The "Bill of Rights" (1689).]
Let us now observe what happened early in 1689, after James II had
fled from England. On January 28th parliament declared the throne
vacant. Parliament then drew up the "Declaration of Rights," a
document very similar in purport to the first eight amendments to
our Federal Constitution, and on the 13th of February the two houses
offered the crown to William and Mary on condition of their accepting
this declaration of the "true, ancient, and indubitable rights of the
people of this realm." The crown having been accepted on these terms,
parliament in the following December enacted the famous "Bill