The whisper wakes, the shudder plays, Across the reeds at Runnymede

In just over three months, we will be celebrating one of the great turning points in personal liberty, the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede in England. Like all such steps, it did not solve all problems at once, there were ebbs and flows on adherence to the principles articulated in the Magna Carta, there was both individual and institutional backsliding, but things were never the same after June 15, 1215.

Kipling wrote a poem commemorating that event just four years before its 700th anniversary, The Reeds at Runnymede. I visited Runnymede some years ago. It is a beautiful English pastoral place imbued with importance by that long ago event.

The Reeds at Runnymede?
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
What say the reeds at Runnymede?
The lissom reeds that give and take,
That bend so far, but never break,
They keep the sleepy Thames awake
With tales of John at Runnymede.
At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Oh, hear the reeds at Runnymede:
'You musn't sell, delay, deny,
A freeman's right or liberty.
It wakes the stubborn Englishry,
We saw 'em roused at Runnymede!

When through our ranks the Barons came,
With little thought of praise or blame,
But resolute to play the game,
They lumbered up to Runnymede;
And there they launched in solid line
The first attack on Right Divine,
The curt uncompromising "Sign!'
They settled John at Runnymede.

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Your rights were won at Runnymede!
No freeman shall be fined or bound,
Or dispossessed of freehold ground,
Except by lawful judgment found
And passed upon him by his peers.
Forget not, after all these years,
The Charter signed at Runnymede.'

And still when mob or Monarch lays
Too rude a hand on English ways,
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,
Across the reeds at Runnymede.
And Thames, that knows the moods of kings,
And crowds and priests and suchlike things,
Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings
Their warning down from Runnymede!

If you were in the middle back then, the threats to your liberty and well-being were the Mob or the Monarch. Today, it seems that threats to the large middle come from both Mob and Monarch, sometimes working in tandem. The government is always an institutional force that is both necessary and requires active vigilance and restraint. At one time, Government existed to constrain the Mob. Nowadays, it is more complicated. NGOs and SJW advocacy and Big Business and Big Labor and Big Academia, etc. they all want a whack at constraining the liberties of the average man, often working together to achieve their respective ends which are almost always detrimental to the average man. But,

And still when mob or Monarch lays
Too rude a hand on English ways,
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,
Across the reeds at Runnymede.

It is a dynamic self-adjusting system, never quite in balance and never static.