ON THE

LAWS AND LIBERTIES

OF

ENGLISHMEN.

BRITONS EVER SHALL BE FREE!

BRITONS ever shall be free!! But how?

We will endea

vour, shortly, to explain a sentiment, which, for the honour of human nature, and the happiness of our country, we hope will never be falsified.

It is a general principle, that Liberty is the birth-right of Man; and not less so, that Law is the Guardian of Liberty. Without Liberty, a man's integrity of conduct, no more than his personal security, is in his own power. Without Law, Liberty degenerates into Licentiousness; Might overcomes Right; whence the oppression of Individuals gradually extends over Multitudes: whether the despotism be by an invading army, a lawless banditti, or a single tyrant of any kind.

The only remedy against the passion of Selfishness, which, when unchecked, is the origin of all evil, is Law; which restrains inordinate self-gratification within bounds; so that it shall not trespass on the personal rights of any man, and, by such restrictions, be in fact, the very Citadel of Freedom.

savage;

But what is that Freedom?—Not the Freedom of a wild to ravage and devour every thing according to his own will. True, manly, Freedom consists in an unlimited privilege to every man to do all the good his means may be capable of; but allows no sanction to the commission of any act that can injure his neighbour. To make such Laws as shall be a common protection to all degrees of people in a public community, is the purpose of what men call a Free Constitution: and since the histories of civilized nations have been written, we find recorded in none any Code of Laws which ever equalled in Liberty, Permanence, and Security, the venerable Constitution of England. From our childhood most of us have admired the heroes of the ancient republics, consecrated in poetic song; and, therefore, have been led to infer, without due inquiry,

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that their Laws were as wise and beneficial as some of their chiefs were patriotic and disinterested: which is so far from being true, that Sparta, Athens, and Rome, were each of them models of injustice to the great body of their population, whom they subjected to the most odious slavery. With regard to more modern times, it from the history of the most famous Kingdoms, Principalities, and Republics of the Continent, that in almost all of them there existed a licensing law for the higher orders, and a fettering one for the lower ranks. And again, at a more recent period, when the tables turned between these lower ranks and their lords, the despotic principle (like Falstaff's notion of Honour,) "whipped over from the fallen foe, to his victorious adversary!" Tyranny took its seat in the democratic chair! and whatever, or whosoever, opposed its supreme will, became the victims of an arbitrary execution. Will not Law-was the actual Sovereign; and all judgments became capricious.

Every sensible man in England, when he impartially considers causes and effects; when he looks to the events in France, for the last forty years, with their train of successive systems of Government, overthrown almost as soon as established, will honestly say-that, during all that time, "true Liberty never set her foot there."

A just Code of Laws is of slow growth; for they must be built on an accurate knowledge of the people they are intended to govern. "Rome was not built in a day!"--neither as a City, nor as a Body Politic and yet, we hear the Roman people quoted all over the continent, and sometimes in England too, by the most eager after constitutional changes, as the best examples for modern nations to follow.

These modern Legislators talk as fluently about enacting National Constitutions in a day, and establishing great States the next; as if the whole system of man might be governed by pantomimic trick. But the experiment has been fatally tried; and the new Commonwealths, Kingdoms, and Empires, which, within the last half century, sprang," like the canker weed" from the smoking ruins of Old Europe, and from the Spanish dominions in America; have, nearly all, perished as suddenly from sight; and even the names of some of them are no longer remembered. If the Commonwealth of the United States still subsists, it is to be considered that this federal form of government is yet an experiment, and that its capability of coherence in an advanced state of society, and over a very extensive territory, remains to be proved.

By an extraordinary distinction, or rather ordination of Providence, Great Britain, alone, has "stood in her inheritance," during the universal crash of national governments around her; she has stood, the wonder of those who sought to imitate the strength of

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her establishments; and who failed for want of the seasoned materials!—she has stood the envy of those who borrowed the names of her institutions; and because our honest simplicity would not fit their anomalous contrivances, they calumniated what they had not virtue really to adopt; if they, indeed, had the judgment to comprehend it and, impelled by the spirit that bears no rival, these Revolutionists have sought, by misleading the minds of Englishmen themselves, to undermine the Rock which overawed their own ambition, the Rock on which its people had reposed confidently through uncounted ages, and secured on which, by the activity of her commerce, her bravery, and her national virtue, BRITANNIA HATH INDEED RULED THE WAVES!

National virtue can neither be formed without religion, nor maintained without just laws, administered with integrity: and such laws amongst the nations of Europe, Great Britain alone has possessed from periods anterior to records, and still retains, defending the rights of every order and every individual of the people, against the injury or oppression of any other, whether it be the King on his throne, or the countryman in his hovel.

On the Law of Nature and the Law of Revelation, depend all good human laws; widening the privileges conferred by them, according to a People's knowledge of, and conformity to, the obligations they owe to their Creator and to society, and their consequent accountability to both. The rights of Englishmen, (which, taken in a political sense, are usually styled their Liberties,) as they are grounded in nature, and modified by wisdom, are also traceable to the earliest forms of our Government.

The Common Law of England has belonged to its people from time immemorial. Anterior to any records in this Island, the nation possessed this Law of Custom; derived to them from ancestors whose origin is lost in remote obscurity, and composing substantially the foundation of the Constitution of Great Britain. The people have been born in it; sucked its principles with their mother's milk; grown up, under its protection, from youth to manhood; and with a filial adherence through every change of dynasty and circumstances have maintained its preservation. Whether Dane or Norman overcame them, the old laws of the Land were held sacred! and, though often outraged, were never suffered to perish. Sometimes, indeed, under the heaviest tyrannies of invading conquerors, like man in his grave, they slept in silence: but like him, the spirit of their existence was yet alive, though men saw it not; and was to raise up the whole body again to a blessed resurrection. The first written Code of these Laws is a noble instance of such a principle of life, in the soul, as we may

justly call it, of the British Constitution - I mean the famous DOMEBook of our KING ALFRED, worthily surnamed THE GREAT.

It is agreed by all historians, that the nations which migrated from the North-east of Asia, and peopled Great Britain, in common with the North-west of Europe, brought with them one style of Government-a Chief, Elders, and a kind of Assembly, from out of the people at large. But from the peculiarity of her insular situation, Great Britain alone appears to have retained, with the least essential alterations, the laws and form of this ancient style of government. Both, however, were often interrupted, and sometimes openly violated, during periods of invasion, and other circumstances hostile to good order: and it was after a long succession of such national calamities, that King ALFRED, having conquered his Country's enemies, turned his attention to produce peace and happiness at home, by recalling into use those good old laws which foreign usurpers had thrust into neglect, and which the natives of the land, struggling for existence only, had almost forgotten. With great perseverance and research he appears to have collected and combined all traditions and precedents concerning those laws, in one well-digested Code, adding thereto many excellent regulations of his own; the substance of which, though the original has long been lost, has always been called the COMMON LAW OF ENGLAND.

THE ARTICLES OF KING ALFRED'S LAWS were Forty in number, beginning with the Ten Commandments from Scripture. Throughout, they shewed impartial justice, and a sincere determination to root out oppression and violence. They were, indeed, mild, with regard to the nature of the punishments inflicted; for most crimes short of Murder, received no harder sentence than Fines, in graduated proportions. But the strictness with which the penalty was enforced, counterbalanced this lenity. A certain value was set upon injury to any member of the human body, and the offender was obliged to pay it, were he Prince or Peasant. The Laws for the protection of Property, were regulated with equal certainty.—To Magistrates, King ALFRED was inexorable, if they did not perform their duties with fairness and judgment. He used to re-examine doubtful causes; and marked any unjust favour in the Judges with the strongest signs of his displeasure. If they pleaded, as many did, want of knowledge of the Law, or ignorance of all the bearings of the case, he publicly reprimanded them for presuming to take a commission to determine on life or property, when they knew themselves unqualified; and he dismissed them from their posts till they should know better. After a few of these examples, the great men, rather than be thus openly dis