But we shall not fully appreciate the force and value of this provision, if we stop at this point of the investigation. The right of petition is an old undoubted household right of the blood of England, which runs in our veins. When we fled from the oppressions of kings and parliaments in Europe, to found this great Republic in America, we brought with us the laws and the liberties, which formed a part of our heritage as Britons. We brought with us the idea and the form of our legislative assemblies, composed of elected representatives of the people; we brought with us the right of petition, as the necessary incident of such institutions. For when, in the whole history of our father-land, has the right of petition ever undergone debate and question? Go back to the old parliamentary rolls, coeval with Magna Charta; peruse the black-letter volumes in which the early laws and practices of the English monarchy are seen to be recorded; and so far as you find a government to exist, you find the right to petition that government existing also as an undeniable franchise and birthright of the humblest in the land. The Normans came over, lance in hand, burning and trampling down every thing before them, and cutting off the Saxon dynasty and the Saxon nobles at the edge of the sword; but the right of petition remained untouched. In all succeeding times, from the day when the barons at Runnymede pledged themselves to deny to no man redress of his grievances, through every vicissitude of revolution and of war, down to the day when our forefathers abandoned their native country, the same right of petition continued without challenge. In the next reign, it is true, that of the misguided Charles I, the king invaded the public liberties; and he expiated the wrong, as he merited, by a felon's death. After the Commonwealth had passed away, came the petition of right, and with it the statute of the 13 Charles II, distinctly recognising the old right of petition, and regulating the mode of its exercise; and again, after the dethronement and exile of James II, the Bill of Rights and the statute of I William and Mary, again recognising and regulating the right of petition as it has been exercised at all times throughout Great Britain.