Act amending Magna Carta; while such enactments as the Statute of Marlborough and the Statute of Westminster I. have as intimate a connection with John’s Great Charter as the _Confirmatio Cartarum_ or the _Articuli super Cartas_ have. This is a truth which M. Bémont undoubtedly recognizes, though the scheme of his book led him rather to emphasize another and, at first sight, contradictory aspect of his subject. His object was not to explain the numerous ways in which the Charters of Liberties are entwined with the whole of English history, but merely to furnish a basis for the accurate study of one of their most important features. His book is indispensable, but is not intended to form, in any sense, a commentary on Magna Carta. It would thus appear that only two serious attempts have been made to produce treatises forming, explicitly and exclusively, commentaries on the Great Charter, namely the _Second Institute_ of Coke and the laborious and useful work of Mr. Richard Thomson. Since Mr. Thomson’s _Magna Charta_ appeared, three-quarters of a century have passed, marking an enormous advance in historical and legal science; yet the results of modern research, so capable of throwing light on the subject-matter of the Great Charter, have never been systematically brought to bear upon it. Dr. Stubbs, from whom such a work would have been especially welcome, contented himself with giving a paraphrase or abstract of the Charter, rendering into English equivalents as literally as possible the actual words of his Latin text—a cautious course, which cannot lead his disciples astray, but leaves them to the guidance of their own ignorance rather than of his knowledge. The reason given by Dr. Stubbs for keeping silence is rather the excess than the absence of information. “The whole of the constitutional history of England,” he tells us, “is little more than a commentary on Magna Carta.”[318] It is for this reason, presumably, that he refrains from all explanations and confines himself to an abstract of its main provisions. While thus many invaluable hints may be obtained from the pages of the three volumes of his history, and from his other works, Dr. Stubbs has not in any of his published writings contributed anything of the nature of a direct commentary upon John’s Great Charter. In this policy, he has been followed by the members of the great modern school of English historians of which he is the founder.[319] ----- Footnote 318: See _Const. Hist._, I. 572, and cf. _Select Charters_, 296. Footnote 319: One of the most brilliant members of that school, Mr. Prothero, whose power of rendering difficult subjects both lucid and interesting would specially have qualified him for the task of explaining Magna Carta, declines the task partly upon the ground that it would be impossible "to throw any new light on a subject exhausted by the ablest writers."—_S. de Montfort_, p. 14. -----