1 - Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Rights: England, the United States, and Continental Europe

Summary

“The Commons of England for hereditary fundamental Liberties and Properties are blest above and beyond the Subject of any Monarch in the World.” Thus wrote Edward Chamberlayne in 1669 in his highly successful work Angliae Notitia, which was to run through no less than thirty-eight editions until 1755 and was translated into German and other continental languages.

Chamberlayne did not mean the members of the House of Commons; he had in mind free Englishmen who did not belong to clergy or nobility, and he proceeded to enumerate, in what may be considered an early, though unofficial catalog of the rights of Englishmen, these liberties and properties in eight points. I shall mention only a few of them. The first point: “No Freeman of England ought to be imprisoned or otherwise restrained, without cause shewn for which by Law he ought to be so imprisoned.” In point two, the Writ of Habeas Corpus was mentioned; in point four, it was stated: “No soldiers can be quartered in the House of any Freeman in time of Peace, without his will.” In point five, the Englishmen’s property rights were extolled: “Every Freeman hath such a full and absolute property in Goods, that no Taxes, Loans, or Benevolences ordinarily and legally can be imposed on them, without their own consent by their Representatives in Parliament.” hamberlayne went on to describe the unrestricted freedom to bequeath one’s property, “which other Nations governed by the Civil Law, cannot do.” Those familiar with the 1628 Petition of Right will recognize in points four and five various similarities in content and partly even in wording. Point six stated that no Englishman could be compelled (unless bound by his tenure) to fight in foreign wars.