THE UNWRITTEN CHARTER OF OUR CONSTITUTION

Every schoolboy knows that our British Constitution cannot be read or accessed in one particular place like the Holy Bible that encompasses the sacred scriptures collected over the ages. Recording the evolution of our island race and the nature of our existence over the next two thousand years in a written document embracing the British Constitution amounts to an impossible task.

The spoken words handed down through generations were often more likely to transmit the substance of traditional history than anything in writing. Indeed in ancient times the Druids were forbidden from recording their customs and thoughts and writing was limited to only very few people as a method of communication. Whilst massive tomes enshrine centuries of constitutional statutes that are the foundations of our ancient civilization, much significant common law is scattered like leaves that may now be either compost or preserved like a papyrus waiting to be rediscovered. These are the elements of our sure defence against over-mighty governments and tyranny in every form, but only if we uphold them ourselves and demand those whom we elect as our representatives to abide by them.

Sir Winston Churchill wrote of the doctrinal importance of Magna Carta and the sovereignty of the law “that when in subsequent ages the State, swollen with its own authority, has attempted to ride rough-shod over the rights or liberties of the subject, it is to this doctrine that appeal has again and again been made, and never as yet, without success.” (History of the English Speaking Peoples Volume I Page 202) Another great Englishman and Prime Minister, William Pitt the Elder, First Earl of Chatham, speaking in the House of Lords said: “Instead of the arbitrary power of a King, we must submit to the arbitrary power of the House of Commons. If this be true, what benefit do we derive from the exchange? Tyranny my Lords, is detestable in every shape, but none so formidable as when it is assumed and exercised by a number of tyrants.” He continued: “When the liberty of the subject is invaded and all redress denied him, resistance is justified. If there is any doubt in point of faith, our maxim should be to appeal at once to the great source and defence of our religion the Holy Bible. The Constitution has its political bible – Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights and the Bill of Rights form that code – the Bible of the English Constitution. Had some of His Majesty’s unhappy predecessors trusted less to the comments of their ministers, had they been better read in the text itself, the Glorious Revolution would have remained only possible in theory and not have existed to record a formidable example to their successors.”