Henry Hallam
![Constitutional History of England: From the Accession of Henry VII to the Death of George II Henry Hallam]( "Constitutional History of England: From the Accession of Henry VII to the Death of George II Henry Hallam")
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Must-read for Constitutional scholars 4 out of 5 stars.
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This book ought to be read by anyone who is interested in the meaning of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. What it will supply is a view of the meaning of the various contentious phrases of that document, by illustrating the controversies to which the Founding Fathers were replying.
As history, this book is seriously flawed, but even its flaws are enlightening. Hallam's subject is the "English Constitution." Of course, there is no written English Constitution; it is a tacit understanding of the proper limits and aims of power, and as such it has changed remarkably over the many centuries of British history. Hallam blandly assumes that the consensus of his own period is consensus that has always prevailed. If it seemed contentious in the past ---- the several tyrannies great and petty, the civil wars and glorious revolutions, and the sundry controversies between King and Parliament --- these were the result of royal or parliamentary usurpations of authority, never reflecting adversely on the Way Things Ought to Be, which just happened to be the way things were at the time he wrote.
This view of things is so cliché'd that it is often labelled "Whig history," the claim that the grand powers ultimately assumed by the House of Commons, in derogation of the Royal authority, really reflects an ancient and inherited order rather than a dramatic change from the former status quo. As history -per se-, it is open to serious doubt.
The point is, though, that whether this history is -true- or not, people believed in it as patriotic myth, and acted as if they believed it. This is nowhere more apparent than in the pages of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The very notion of a Bill of Rights was borrowed from the events chronicled in this book. The various usurpations that Madison thought to guard against in his amendments were aimed, not only at British colonial rule, but also against the alleged abuses of power committed by the Stuart and Tudor monarchs. To read this book from 1827 is to get a rare and valuable glimpse into the political habits of mind of respectably liberal English-speaking people in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This gives this work continuing value.
A literary note: Prof. Henry Hallam, the author of this book, was the father of Arthur Hallam, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's friend, whose early death occasioned Tennyson's -In Memoriam-.
