Common Law

The author claims the copyright of this book in England, on Common Law principles, without regard to acts of parliament;

That this right of resistance was recognized as a common law right, when the ancient and genuine trial by jury was in force, is not only proved by the nature of the trial itself, but is acknowledged by history.

Other statutes of similar tenor have been enacted, as follows:

The Common Law, whatever else it may be, is pretty tough.

Thus far we have spoken of the Common Law militant, striving with troubles at home and opposed to hostile powers without.

Only one law, the Common Law, has ever gone forth into the world beyond the narrow seas under or in company with the British flag;

Landowners, for example, made free use of spring-guns and man-traps;

Consider, again, the nature of one only of the many irrational restrictions placed by the common law upon the admissibility of evidence.

If they demurred to the introduction of wide reforms, their hesitation was due in part to the sound conviction that fixity of law is the necessary condition for the maintenance of individual rights and of personal liberty.

The same policy had a further result in facilitating the growth of a body of common law, uniform throughout the length and breadth of England, opposed to the varying usages of localities and individual baronial courts.

Neither parks nor warrens were protected by the forest law, but by that part of the common law which related to theft and trespass.

The operation of the common law is, of course, no longer excluded from their confines, the old antithesis between forest law and the law of England being a thing of the past.

The customary law of all countries which have not included their law in Codes, and specially the English Common law, have often had an origin claimed for them independently of the Sovereign, and theories have been propounded on the subject which Austin scouts as mysterious and unintelligible.

The great maxim by which objections to it are disposed of is, as I have so often said before, ‘What the Sovereign permits, he commands.

The relative influence of the king, the nobility, and the House of Commons, in controlling legislation, has greatly fluctuated.

Now, I do not cite these opinions of judges as any proof at all, that the Common Law recognizes a man’s right of property in his inventions.

Now the granting of monopolies—by which I mean the granting exclusively to one what is the right of all—was plainly incompatible with the Common Law.

But, though much is obscure in the beginnings of what we Englishmen call the Common Law, it was undoubtedly in the main a version of Germanic usage, generalised by the King’s courts and justices.

Whence follows the taking Commissions in their own Courts and Consistories, and where else they sit in matters determinable of right at Common Law, the putting of ministers upon parishes, without the patron’s and people’s consent.

These lie wholly outside the common law forms of action and all classifications founded upon them.

A tort is an act or omission giving rise, in virtue of the common law jurisdiction of the Court, to a civil remedy which is not an action of contract.

Nay more, I would fain sum up in this slight token the brotherhood that subsists, and we trust ever shall, between all true followers of the Common Law here and on your side of the water;