Probably no
king ever consented, more deliberately or explicitly, to hold his throne
subject to specific and enumerated limitations upon his power, than did
John when he put his seal to the Great Charter of the Liberties of
England. And if any political compact between king and people was ever
valid to settle the liberties of the people, or to limit the power of
the crown, that compact is now to be found in Magna Carta. If,
therefore, the constitutional authority of Magna Carta had rested solely
upon the compact of John with his people, that authority would have been
entitled to stand forever as the supreme law of the land, unless revoked
by the will of the people themselves.

But the authority of Magna Carta does not rest alone upon the compact
with _John_. When, in the next year, (1216,) his son, Henry III., came
to the throne, the charter was ratified by him, and again in 1217, and
again in 1225, in substantially the same form, and especially without
allowing any new powers, legislative, judicial, or executive, to the
king or his judges, and without detracting in the least from the powers
of the jury. And from the latter date to this, the charter has remained
unchanged.

In the course of two hundred years the charter was confirmed by Henry
and his successors more than thirty times. And although they were guilty
of numerous and almost continual breaches of it, and were constantly
seeking to evade it, yet such were the spirit, vigilance and courage of
the nation, that the kings held their thrones only on the condition of
their renewed and solemn promises of observance. And it was not until
1429, (as will be more fully shown hereafter,) when a truce between
themselves, and a formal combination against the mass of the people, had
been entered into, by the king, the nobility, and the "_forty shilling
freeholders_," (a class whom Mackintosh designates as "_a few
freeholders then accounted wealthy_,"[106]) by the exclusion of all
others than such freeholders from all voice in the election of knights
to represent the counties in the House of Commons, that a repetition of
these confirmations of Magna Carta ceased to be demanded and
obtained.[107]

The terms and the formalities of some of these "confirmations" make them
worthy of insertion at length.

Hume thus describes one which took place in the 38th year of Henry III.
(1253):

"But as they (the barons) had experienced his (the king's) frequent
breach of promis