Edward granted about twenty parliamentary confirmations of the great charter; and these concessions are commonly appealed to as proofs of his great indulgence to the people and his tender regard for their liberties. But the contrary presumption is more natural. If the maxims of Edward’s reign had not been in general somewhat arbitrary, and if the great charter had not been frequently violated, the Parliament would never have applied for these frequent confirmations, which could add no force to a deed regularly observed, and which could serve to no other purpose than to prevent the contrary precedents from turning into a rule, and acquiring authority. It was indeed the effect of the irregular government during those ages that a statute which had been enacted some years, instead of acquiring, was imagined to lose force by time, and needed to be often renewed by recent statutes of the same sense and tenor. Hence, likewise, that general clause, so frequent in old acts of Parliament, that the statutes enacted by the king’s progenitors should be observed--a precaution which, if we do not consider the circumstances of the times, might appear absurd and ridiculous. The frequent confirmations of the privileges of the Church proceeded from the same cause. There is not a reign among those of the ancient English monarchs which deserves more to be studied than that of Edward III, nor one where the domestic transactions will better discover the true genius of that kind of mixed government which was then established in England. The struggles with regard to the validity and authority of the great charter were now over; the king was acknowledged to lie under some limitations; Edward himself was a prince of great capacity, not governed by favorites, not led astray by any unruly passion, sensible that nothing could be more essential to his interest than to keep on good terms with his people; yet, on the whole, it appears, that the government at best was only a barbarous monarchy, not regulated by any fixed maxims nor bounded by any certain undisputed rights which in practice were regularly observed. The king conducted himself by one set of principles, the barons by another, the Commons by a third, the clergy by a fourth. All these systems of government were opposite and incompatible; each of them prevailed in its turn, as incidents were favorable to it; a great prince rendered the monarchical power predominant; the weakness of a king gave reins to the aristocracy: a superstitious age saw the clergy triumphant; the people, for whom chiefly government was instituted, and who chiefly deserve consideration, were the weakest of the whole. But the Commons, little obnoxious to any other order, though they sunk under the violence of tempests, silently reared their head in more peaceable times; and while the storm was brewing were courted on all sides, and thus received still some accession to their privileges, or at worst some confirmation of them. RIENZI.