How did the Magna Carta influence the U.S. Constitution?

On June 15, 1215, a disgruntled group of landed barons
achieved a great if very short-lived victory over the reigning monarch of the time, King
John.  That victory was the king’s consent to a document presented for his stamp that
limited the monarch’s authorities vis-à-vis his subjects.  That document, the
Magna Carta, or Great Charter, was a detailed list of
demands and principles that were intended to protect these elites from the tyranny of a
king with unchecked powers.  Among its more notable provisions was paragraph
#28:

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“No constable or other bailiff of ours
shall take corn or other provisions from anyone without immediately tendering money
therefor, unless he can have postponement thereof by permission of the
seller.”

This
limitation on the taxation of the king’s subjects, and its prohibition on the enforced
requisition of those subjects’ crops and other properties, remained a pillar of
democratic thought for centuries to come, and was reissued several times over the
ensuing years until it finally stuck.  Its influence on the British subjects residing in
the Crown’s North American colonies who were contemplating the text of what would become
the Constitution of the United States was considerable.  Those rebellious colonies were
heavily influenced by the intellectual developments characteristic of the Age of
Enlightenment, but central to those developments remained the principles established in
the Magna Carta.  That this nation’s founders were similarly influenced by the 1215
document is evident in Alexander Hamilton’s essay defending the draft constitution and
advocating for its ratification.  In that essay, designated Federalist
Paper #84, Hamilton wrote the
following:

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“It has been several times truly
remarked that bills of rights are, in their origin, stipulations between kings and their
subjects, abridgements of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not
surrendered to the prince. Such was Magna Charta, obtained by the barons, sword in hand,
from King John. Such were the subsequent confirmations of that charter by succeeding
princes. Such was the Petition of Right assented to by Charles I., in the beginning of
his reign. Such, also, was the Declaration of Right presented by the Lords and Commons
to the Prince of Orange in 1688, and afterwards thrown into the form of an act of
parliament called the Bill of
Rights.”

In that
passage, Hamilton recognizes the enduring influence of the Magna Carta, and of the
document’s role in the evolution of political thought through the ensuing centuries. 
The concept of limitations on the power of a ruler had sufficient appeal that it
survived many monarchs’ efforts at resisting the relinquishment of authority the
document stipulated.  The American Bill of Rights was a direct outgrowth of the
evolution of political thought that didn’t begin with the Magna Carta, but for which the
document represented perhaps its most important manifestation to
date.