Excerpt from Magna Carta, 1215 1915: An Address Delivered Before the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York in the Assembly Chamber, Albany, N. Y. June 15, 1915The meeting, which began on June 15, 1215, and which extended over four days of anxious counsel and debate, was no ordinary gathering. Feelings, hopes, ambitions that had long been forming, tendencies of whose end and significance those who represented and voiced them were but dimly conscious, aspirations that lie deep in the heart of man from the beginning of time, but come to the surface only with the passing of long ages of years, were all struggling for expression. The turbulence of a century and a half had left its mark everywhere. The invading Norman with his disciplined troops and vigorous administrative skill had overthrown the Saxon kings and mounted the throne of England in their stead. Meanwhile for five generations the new Norman and the old Anglo - Saxon nationalities had been gradually welding themselves into a new nation in which the ancient Saxon customs and traditions were to come once more to the post of honor and to share the rule. The administrative, the financial and the judicial reforms of William the Conqueror and of the two Henrys, had provided the skeleton for a nation's government, while the intermingling of the two bloods, the two temperaments and the two traditions was providing the body for a nation. The Crusades had stirred the imagination of men and had lifted them up out of absorption in their.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.