BILL OF RIGHTS. A formal and public declaration of popular rights and liberties.
The document pre-eminently known by that name was the English statute, 1 W. and M., Sess. 2, c. 2 (1689).
What was known as the Declaration of Right was delivered to the Prince and Prin cess of Orange (afterwards William III. and Mary) by the English lords and com mons, and in December, 1689 (at the second session of the Convention Parliament, which had reassembled October 25, 1689), it was, with some amendments, few but important, enacted into a statute known as the Bill of Rights. The Declaration was presented to the new monarchs as embodying the condi tions of their election, and only after their acceptance of its terms was proclamation of their accession made, on February 13, 1689 ; 2 Gneist, Hist. Eng. Const. 316, note.
The Bill of Rights contained 13 clauses or guaranties, suggested by the illegal and ar bitrary acts previously committed by the Crown. These were a declaration of the il legality of (1) the pretended power of the suspension of laws or their execution, by regal authority, without consent of Parlia ment; (2) the recent assumption and exercise of the same power ; (3) the commission for erecting the late Court of Commissioners for ecclesiastical causes and other similar com missions and courts ; (4) levying money for the use of the Crown by pretense of preroga tive without grant of Parliament; (6) rais ing or keeping a standing army in time of peace, without consent of Parliament. There were also declarations in favor of (5) the right of petition; (7) the right of Protestants to bear arms ; (8) free elections of members of Parliament ; (9) freedom of speech and debates in Parliament, which should not be questioned elsewhere ; (10) that excessive bait should not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punish ment inflicted; (11) the due impanelling and return of jurors, and that those in treason trials should be freeholders; (12) that grants and promises of fines and forfeitures before conviction are illegal and void ; (13) that Parliament ought to be held frequently.
The absence of what was popularly known as a Bill of Rights in the Federal Constitu tion, as originally adopted, was the cause of some opposition to the work of the Conven tion which framed it, and an effort was made to secure its insertion by Congress. This failed and it was believed by Madison, and those who joined him in opposing the movement to amend, that its success would, by creating confusion as to what instrument was to be ratified, have endangered the final adoption of the Constitution. 2 Curtis, Hist. Const. U. S. 498.
Subsequently and very soon after the orig inal instrument went into effect the first ten amendments, adopted together, embodied, as limitations upon the powers of the Federal government, substantially all the guaranties, considered applicable to our conditions, of the English Bill of Rights. Since all of those provisions are also embodied in most, if not all, of the American Constitutions, their as sertion of fundamental, political and per sonal liberty are referred to collectively as a "bill of rights." Indeed some of the State Constitutions preserve the name as well as the substance.
The text of the English Bill of Rights will be found in 2 Hist. for Ready Ref. 937. See CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.