The American regards England with more than kindly eyes. Her history has been the history of our race. The sterling valor of the Englishman early made itself felt in the demands made by him upon the reluctant kings who ruled him. At no time in the history of Great Britain, from the Norman Conquest, had the peasantry and “Common People” been submerged as completely by the power of the privileged classes as has been the case in France, and, in fact, as in all of continental Europe. When John, known as “Lackland,” the younger brother of Richard Cœur de Lion, came to the throne of England (1109-1216), he ruled weakly and lost nearly all the English possessions in France. The peasants rose against the imbecile monarch and, joined by the barons and feudal lords, compelled him to sign the Magna-Charta or Great Charter, at Runnymede (1215). By this immortal instrument the king gave up the right to demand money when he pleased, to imprison or punish when he pleased. He was to take money only when the barons granted the privilege, for public purposes, and no freeman was to be punished except when his countrymen judged him guilty of crime. The courts were to be open to all, and justice was not to be sold, refused, or withheld. The serf villein was to have his plow free from seizure. The church was secured against the interference of the king. No class was neglected, but each obtained some cherished right. Thus, early in the history of England, we find the “Common People” of that nation from whom we derive our blood and many of our laws--the foundation, in fact of all of them--and much of our domestic and social conditions and manners, asserting rights for which Americans afterwards contended with the parent country, England. The Magna-Charta was wrested from King John not by the lords and barons alone--but by a union between the nobles and the “Common People.” Thus early the “Common People” of England learned to appreciate their might and strength. And the Americans, as inheritors along with their blood of so many of the traditions and characteristics of the English, have not failed to possess themselves of that quality which is inherent in the Anglo-Saxon heart--the fearless demanding of the right to equality. Pronouncedly did the American people, November 8, 1892, reiterate in an unmistakable manner the sentiment of the race who, in 1214, had forced from King John of England the Magna-Charta which has been, ever since, the foundation of English liberty. English kings have continually tried to break the Magna-Charta, but have ever failed in the attempt. They have been compelled, during reigns succeeding that of King John, to confirm its provisions thirty-six times. The early assertion of the right to representation by the people is interesting as a step onward in the march of the Anglo-Saxon toward equality and liberty.