The general conclusion to be derived from this survey is that, while much praise may be due to the baronial leaders for their comparatively liberal interest in the rights of others, they are scarcely entitled to the excessive laudation they have sometimes received. The rude beginnings of many features which have since come into prominence in English institutions (such as the conceptions of patriotism and nationality and the principles of equality before the law and the tender regard for the rights of the humble) may possibly be found in the germ in some parts of the completed Charter; but the Articles of the Barons were what their name implies, a baronial manifesto, seeking chiefly to redress the private grievances of the promoters, and mainly selfish in motive. Yet, when all deductions have been made (and it has seemed necessary to do this with emphasis in order to redress the false balance created by the exaggerations of enthusiasts), the Great Charter still stands out as a prominent landmark in the sequence of events which have led, in an unbroken chain, to the consolidation of the English nation, and to the establishment of a free and constitutional form of polity upon a basis so enduring that, after more than eight centuries of growth, it still retains the vigour and the buoyancy of youth. IV. Magna Carta: an Estimate of its Value. No evidence survives to show that the men of John’s reign placed any excessive or exaggerated importance on the Great Charter; but, without a break since then, the estimate of its worth steadily increased until it came to be regarded almost as a fetish among English lawyers and historians. No estimate of its value can be too high, and no words too emphatic or glowing to satisfy its votaries. In many a time of national crisis, Magna Carta has been confidently appealed to as a fundamental law too sacred to be altered—as a talisman containing some magic spell, capable of averting national calamity. Are these estimates of its value justified by facts, or are they gross exaggerations? Did it really create an epoch in English history? If so, wherein did its importance exactly lie?