Magna Carta has been described, in words already quoted with approval, as “an intensely practical document,” Professor Maitland, _Social England_, I. 409; but this requires some qualification. If it was practical in preferring the condemnation of definite practical grievances to the enunciation of philosophical principles, it was unpractical in omitting to provide machinery for giving effect to its provisions. ----- Thoughtful and statesmanlike as were the provisions of Magna Carta, and wide as was the ground they covered, many important omissions can be pointed out. Some crucial questions seem not to have been foreseen, and others, for example the liability to foreign service, were deliberately shelved[227]—thus leaving room for future misunderstandings. The praise, justly earned, by its framers for the care and precision with which they defined a long list of the more crying abuses, must be qualified in view of the failure to provide procedure to prevent their recurrence. Men had not yet learned the force of the maxim, so closely identified with all later reform movements in England, that a right is valueless without an appropriate remedy to enforce it.[228] ----- Footnote 227: Except in so far as affected by cc. 12 and 16. Footnote 228: Mr. Prothero estimates much more highly the constitutional value of Magna Carta: "The constitutional struggles of the following half-century would to a great extent have been anticipated had it retained its original form."—_Simon de Montfort_, 14. ----- VI. Magna Carta: Value of Traditional Interpretations. The Great Charter has formed a favourite theme for orators and politicians in all periods of English history, partly because of its intrinsic merit, partly because of the dramatic background of its historical setting, but chiefly because it has been, from the time of its inception down to the present day, a rallying cry and a protecting bulwark in every crisis which threatened to endanger the national liberties.