_Const. Hist._, I. 571. Cf. _Ibid._, I. 583, “The act of the united nation, the church, the barons, and the commons, for the first time thoroughly at one.” Who were “the commons” in 1215? The question is a difficult one to answer. Cf. also Mr. Prothero, _Simon de Montfort_, 18, “The spirit of nationality of which the chief portion of Magna Carta was at once the product and the seal.” ----- A united English nation, whether conscious or unconscious of its identity, cannot be said to have existed in 1215, except under several qualifications. The conception of “nationality,” in the modern sense, is of comparatively recent origin, and requires that the lower as well as the higher classes should be comprehended within its bounds. Further, the coalition which wrested the Charter from the royal tyrant was essentially of a temporary nature, and quickly fell to pieces again. Even while the alliance continued, the interests of the various classes, as has been already shown, were far from identical. Political rights were treated as the monopoly of the few (as is evidenced by the retrograde provisions of chapter 14 for the composition of the _Commune concilium_); and civil rights were far from universally distributed. The leaders of the “national” movement certainly gave no _political_ rights to the despised villeins, who comprised more than three quarters of the entire population of England; while their _civil_ rights were almost completely ignored in the provisions of the Charter. Magna Carta undoubtedly marked one step, an important step, in the process by which England became a nation; but that step was neither the first nor yet the final one. V. Magna Carta. Its defects. The great weakness of the Charter lay in this, that no adequate sanction was attached to it, in order to ensure the enforcement of its provisions. The only expedient suggested for compelling the King to keep his promises was of a nature at once clumsy and revolutionary, and entirely worthless considered as a working scheme of government. Indeed, it was devised not so much to prevent the King from breaking faith as to punish him when he had done so. In other words, no proper constitutional machinery was invented to turn the legal theories of Magna Carta into practical realities. In its absence, we find what has sometimes been described as “a right of legalized rebellion” conferred on an executive committee of twenty-five of the King’s enemies.