"As this was the first effort towards a legal government, so is it beyond comparison the most important event in our history, except that, Revolution without which its benefits would have been rapidly annihilated. The constitution of England has indeed no single date from which its duration is to be reckoned. The institutions of positive law, the far more important changes which time has wrought in the order of society, during six hundred years subsequent to the Great Charter, have undoubtedly lessened its direct application to our present circumstances. But it is still the key-stone of English liberty. All that has since been obtained is little more than as confirmation or commentary. ... The essential clauses of Magna Charta are those which protect the personal liberty and property of all freemen, by giving security from arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary spoliation. {803} 'No freeman (says the 29th chapter of Henry III.'s charter, which, as the existing law, I quote in preference to that of John, the variations not being very material) shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor send upon, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or delay to any man, justice or right.' It is obvious that these words, interpreted by any honest court of law, convey an ample security for the two main rights of civil society." _H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 8, part 2._ "The Great Charter, although drawn up in the form of a royal grant, was really a treaty between the king and his subjects. ... It is the collective people who really form the other high contracting party in the great capitulation,--the three estates of the realm, not, it is true, arranged in order according to their profession or rank, but not the less certainly combined in one national purpose, and securing by one bond the interests and rights of each other, severally and all together. ... The barons maintain and secure the right of the whole people as against themselves as well as against their master. Clause by clause the rights of the commons are provided for as well as the rights of the nobles. ... The knight is protected against the compulsory exaction of his services, and the horse and cart of the freeman against the irregular requisition even of the sheriff. ... The Great Charter is the first great public act of the nation, after it has realised its own identity. ... The whole of the constitutional history of England is little more than a commentary on Magna Carta." _W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 12, section 155._ The following is the text of Magna Carta;