powerful proprietors, from whom they again received grants of it, to be holden under their authority and protection, in return for which they rendered certain services; and that thus allodial possessions ceased generally, and were supplanted by feudal tenures. This was the history of landed property all over the continent, and England formed no exception to the rule. The Anglo-Saxons distributed the lands in part to individuals, and reserved the residue to be at the disposal of the state. The opinion of Mr Allen is, that the former constituted what was termed Boc-land, and held by book or charter; the latter was termed Folc-land, land of the folk or people, and continued at the disposal of the folc gemote, or court of the district, reverting to the community after the expiration of the period for which it was granted out. The boc-land might be held by the King as well as by other individuals; the folc-land was subject to various burdens of a public nature. The boc-land was held in free and absolute property, unless in cases where it had been originally granted upon condition of certain payments. Our author demonstrates, by the clearest evidence, the error of those antiquaries who have considered folc-land as held by the common people, or by those in a state of villenage; and shows that the same person possessed, in different places, and by separate titles, land of both descriptions. The whole of the dissertation on the tenures of land is highly interesting and full of learning; it certainly places this subject in a new light, and deserves the best attention of antiquaries and lawyers. But the matter most to our present purpose is that which regards the crown. King, it seems, held land exactly as the subject did. This is clearly proved by King Alfred's will; from which it appears that Alfred had had the rights of himself and his family to the landed inheritance of his grandfather Egbert determined in the courts of law, and that he afterwards had been empowered by a decision of the witan to make a new settlement of his share.

The

Mr Allen demonstrates very fully that boc-land might be held by any tenure, under any conditions, and by any class of per sons; and he illustrates the varieties of those holdings. It might be transferred, unless fettered by the terms of the grant; and it continued to be boc-land as long as it passed by deed. When the conveyance was without charter, it became what was called lan-land. Folc-land became boc-land by being granted out to individuals; and this gift was at first the act of the national assembly, and afterwards of the King, but always with the advice and assent of the assembly, or witan; and while all the charters contain a statement of this consent, instances are not want

ing of such grants being revoked as invalid for want of it. Some of the folc-land was held by the thegns, or persons employed in military service, and called thegn-land; some by those engaged in the civil administration, the ealdermen and gerefan, or reves, and this was called reve-land; and some part was set apart for the expenses of the royal household, and said to be held in demesne, or let out to farm. Frequently folc-land was granted out, subject to certain services or payments, for the King's use; and this was the origin of the right of purveyance, afterwards so shamefully abused in the times of the Plantagenets and the Tudors. The land first known by the name of folc-land, afterwards came to be called Terra regia and crown land; but the expression comprehended both what belonged to the King for his own use; what he held as private property by a title unconnected with the crown; and what he was only nominally the owner of, and could not alienate, or in any way affect, without the consent of the national council. In process of time this distinction was obliterated: It became a maxim of the English law, that all lands holden by the King, even those which descended to him from relations unconnected with the crown, were held by him jure coronæ, and made part of the crown property; and he obtained, on the other hand, an absolute control over the crown property, unfettered by the Parliament in all respects, except that of devising it by will. The patrimony of the crown was thus dilapidated with scandalous profusion, until the statute of Anne restrained the power of alienation to grants for three lives, or 31 years; and it was only by a strange anomaly, that, in the reign of George III., the ancient Anglo-Saxon scheme wasrestored; the crown lands being vested in the public, and the King enabled to hold lands by purchase, in his private capacity, and to devise them by will.

Such, then, was the Royal Prerogative in all ages of our history-not absolute by law, though oftentimes stretched by violence and usurpation-not monarchical in the continental sense of the word, but limited and restrained by the rights of the people. Every one,' says Mr Allen, has read with disgust the indecent attempts of churchmen to impress a character of divinity on Kings, to inculcate on their subjects the obligations ' of passive obedience and non-resistance as religious duties, to -'found their title on a delegation from heaven, and, with impious flattery, to exalt them above the Almighty, by maintaining, that the "most high, sacred, and transcendent" of relations is "the "relation between King and subject." Every one has *heard of the distinction made by judges and lawyers, in the ' times of the Tudors and Stuarts, between the ordinary and

'extraordinary, or absolute, as they were pleased to call it, pre'rogative of the crown. Every one knows the abuses introduced into our government, under pretence of the sovereign power "attributed in law books to the King of England. And every 6 one must admire the resolution and firmness of our ancestors in combating and successfully resisting these pernicious doc'trines.' Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, friend of the crown though he was, opposed the addition propounded in the House of Lords to the Petition of Right, with these remarkable words, Let us leave to his Majesty to punish 'malefactors, but these laws are not acquainted with sovereign 'power.' Sovereign power,' says the illustrious Coke, the most learned of lawyers, yet one of the great patriarchs of English liberty, sovereign power is no Parliamentary word. Magna • Charta and all our statutes are absolute, without any saving of sovereign power. Let us take heed what we yield unto. Magna 'Charta is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.'-' I know (said Pym) how to add sovereign to the King's person, but not to his power. We cannot leave to him a sovereign power; for he was never possessed of it.' We subjoin the concluding passage of this admirable treatise, as pregnant with sound wisdom, breathing the genuine spirit of the constitution, and conveying, in language at once just and striking, the practical results of our author's profound researches, and inculcating a truth, at all times of the last importance to the well-being of the community:

In modern times the prerogative of the crown has been so strictly defined by law, and since the Revolution there has been fortunately a succession of Princes so little disposed to contend for an illegal extension of its boundaries, that though the old doctrines of absolute sovereignty and transcendent dominion still disfigure our law books, they are little heard of elsewhere. Occasionally, however, it happens, that in parliamentary discussions, assertions are hazarded of latent prerogatives in the crown, which are supposed to be inherent in the very nature of sovereignty. That such pretensions are unfounded, it is not difficult to make out. Every government that is not established by military force, or founded on the express consent of the people, must derive its authority from positive law or from long-continued usage. But, where law confers any power, it prescribes and directs the mode of administering the authority it bestows; and what has been given by usage, is necessarily regulated by usage in its exercise. A prerogative founded on usage, which cannot be enforced because it has fallen into desuetude, is a contradiction in terms. No one will pretend, that any prerogative of the King of England is founded either on military force or on the express consent of the people. Every prerogative of the crown must therefore be derived from statute or from pre

scription, and in either case there must be a legal and established mode of exercising it. Where no such mode can be pointed out, we may be assured that the prerogative so boldly claimed is derived neither from law nor usage, but founded on a theory of monarchy, imported from abroad, subversive of law and liberty, and alien to the spirit as well as to the practice of our constitution. In England there are no latent powers of government, but those possessed by the supreme and sovereign authority of the state. The King is our sovereign lord; but he does not possess the sovereign authority of the commonwealth, which is vested, not in the King singly, but in the King, Lords, and Commons jointly. When we hear of a prerogative inherent in the crown, which the King has no legal means of exercising, we may be certain that it has no existence but in speculative notions of government. Emergencies may arise, where it is necessary for the safety of the state to commit additional powers to the persons intrusted with its defence. But when such cases occur, we are to be guided by considerations of reason and expediency in the powers we confer, and not by vain and empty theories of prerogative, which the very act we are called upon to perform proves to be futile and unfounded.

Independently, however, of this practical inference, we hold the light which this book throws upon the early history of our constitution to be of the greatest importance. It shows us that, whatever the slavish propensities of priests or lawyers may have affected to believe, absolute power never was of right, and by law, naturalized in England; that freedom never was an exotic or a stranger, but the birthright and inheritance of Englishmen ; that the presumption where no law or usage appears is always in favour of liberty, and against royal prerogative; that it is in no case for the subject to show his title to be free, but for the monarch to prove his right to oppress. Those who deem all former times to have been less enlightened than our own, are, generally speaking, correct in their assumptions; but it by no means follows that, the farther we go back into history, the less advanced we shall find the independence of the people, and the more absolute the rule of the prince. Men are not by any means less jealous of their rights in early than in advanced stages of society. It often, indeed, happens, that the same refinements which enlarge the intellect and polish the manners of a community, relax its love of independence, and prepare the way for encroachments upon its rights. And the proposition is any thing rather than accurate, which regards the liberty of early times as on a level with their civilisation.

ART. IX.-Euvres Complètes de THOMAS REID, chef de l'Ecole Ecossaise. Publiées par M. TH. JOUFFROY, avec des Fragments de M. ROYER-COLLARD, et une Introduction de l'Editeur. Tomes II. VI. 8vo. Paris: 1828-9. (Not completed.)

W E rejoice in the publication of this work,-and for two reasons. We hail it as another sign of the convalescence of philosophy, in a great and influential nation; and prize it as a seasonable testimony by intelligent foreigners, to the merits of a philosopher, whose reputation is, for the moment, under an eclipse at home.

We are pleased by the appearance of this translation of the works of Reid-in Paris-and under the auspices of so distinguished an editor as M. Jouffroy, less, certainly, as indicating the triumph of any particular system or school, than as a pledge, among many others, of the zealous, yet liberal and unexclusive, spirit with which the science of mind has of late been cultivated in France. The contrast which the present philosophical enthu siasm of France exhibits to the speculative apathy of Britain, is any thing, indeed, but flattering to ourselves. The new spirit of metaphysical enquiry, which the French imbibed from Germany and Scotland, arose with them precisely at the time when the popularity of psychological researches began to decline with us; and now, when all interest in these speculations seems here to be extinct, they are there seen flourishing in public favour, with a universality and vigour corresponding to their encouragement.

The only example that can be adduced of any interest in such subjects, recently exhibited in this country, is the favourable reception of Dr Brown's Lectures on the Philosophy of the Mind. This work, however, we regard as a concurrent cause of the very indifference we lament, and as a striking proof of its reality.

As a cause ;-these lectures have certainly done much to justify the general neglect of the study they were intended to promote. Dr Brown's high reputation for metaphysical acuteness, gave a presumptive authority to any doctrine he might promulgate; and the personal relations in which he stood to Mr Stewart, afforded every assurance, that he would not revolt against that philosopher's opinions, rashly, or except on grounds that would fully vindicate his dissent. In these circumstances, what was the impression on the public mind, when all that was deemed best established, all that was claimed as original and most important in the philosophy of Reid and Stewart, was proclaimed by their disciple and successor to be nought but a series of misconceptions, only less wonderful in their commission than in the general acquiescence