England

The aim of this Introduction is to trace the connection, during these opening years of the twentieth century, between the development of English law and the course of English opinion.

It occurred to me that this duty might best be performed by tracing out the relation during the last hundred years between the progress of English law and the course of public opinion in England.

Contrast now with the dominant legislative opinion of 1859 the dominant legislative opinion of 1900, as described in Lectures VII.

To enter into these matters in detail would be to write the religious history of the England of the sixteenth century, and it is enough to say that at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, whilst the Queen had succeeded in maintaining Episcopacy and to a great extent the use of the Common Prayer Book as it had been settled soon after her accession, the doctrine taught and accepted by the vast majority of …

The Scots invaded England, defeated a large part of the Royal Army at Newburn, and occupied Northumberland and Durham.

On the one hand direct taxation is always felt to be a greater annoyance than indirect, and on the other hand Ship-money was a new burden, whereas Tonnage and Poundage, and even the Impositions, had been levied for many years.

It is thus necessary briefly to narrate how the scattered Anglo–Saxon and Danish tribes and territories, originally unconnected, were slowly welded together and grew into England;

By these expedients and many others, Henry raised the English monarchy, always in the ascendant since the Conquest, to the very zenith of its power, and left to his sons the entire machinery of government in perfect working order, combining high administrative efficiency with great strength.

In England alone the monarchy stood firm.

The abolition of a vast number of feudal and hierarchical privileges gave them a great impulse in England, and a gradual multiplication of pecuniary privileges since has brought the same country to a state of misery, which may involve them in some general convulsion.

and English follies are converted from objects of our abhorrence, into models for our imitation.

Would liberty be well established in England, if her hierarchy was destroyed, whilst the government retained the absolute power of distributing wealth and poverty?

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

But most [35] commonly it is called the Common Law, or the Common Law of England;

All writers agree that this means the common law.

“By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass.

As regards civil liability, this is not at present the law of England, but it is the practice and understanding of English people.

The law and practice are well settled in England.

There is marked infertility among Hindus of high rank, and, though there may be a theoretical preference for adopting a son rather than allow the succession to go to a collateral, yet (as I am informed) there is a great deal of the same superstitious disrelish for effecting an adoption which is known sometimes to prevent in England the making of a will.

The country had been desolated by the war between the Empress Matilda and Stephen of Blois, afterwards King Stephen of England.

We Englishmen are satisfied to rest the title of our Royal House on the Act of Settlement, which limits the right of succession to the descendants of the Electress Sophia of Hanover.

Twenty years ago I took a census of the individualists in this country, and I found that they could all be seated comfortably in a Bayswater 'bus.

It is sometimes said that the system of party government is on its trial in this country.

It has long been an open secret that the asylum offered by London to political refugees is exceedingly distasteful to the rulers of foreign countries, and that certain exalted personages had made no secret of their determination to force England to join hands with the continental despotisms in “stamping out socialism.

In England secret trusts one of the causes which led to the passing of the statute of Uses and Trusts.

Subsequently the Statute of Westminster, 13 Edward I, permitted assizes to be held in the vacations, and thus a distinction grew up in England somewhat resembling that of the jurisdictional (dies fasti) and judicial terms (rerum actus);

So by English law aliens were not, till recently, allowed to purchase real property or to take it by devise.

There are several Fictions still exercising powerful influence on English jurisprudence which could not be discarded without a severe shock to the ideas, and considerable change in the language, of English practitioners;

We in England are well accustomed to the extension, modification, and improvement of law by a machinery which, in theory, is incapable of altering one jot or one line of existing jurisprudence.

It would be wearisome to enter on a detailed comparison or contrast of English and Roman Equity;

Nor does the Brehon law altogether disappoint the expectations of the patriotic Irishmen who, partly trusting to the testimony of Edmund Spenser, the least unkind of the English critics of Ireland, though one of the most ruthless in his practical suggestions, looked forward to its manifesting, when it was published, an equity and reasonableness which would put to shame the barbarous jurisprudence of England.

A thick mist of feudal law hid the ancient constitution of Irish society from English observation, and led to unfounded doubts respecting the authenticity of the laws of Wales.

and even now, in the Sanscrit schools which remain, the pupil is trained to exercises of memory which are little short of miraculous to an Englishman.

This is all the encouragement they gave, to those extraordinary wealth producers, the inventors, who were willing and ready to give to the people of England an hundred pounds worth of agricultural products, in exchange for one pound in money.

But there is still equal, and indeed vastly more, need of a civil war, (if the object cannot be otherwise attained,) to compel the government to protect the property of, and thereby encourage, those extraordinary agriculturalists, the inventors, (including chemists,) who virtually offer to feed the people of England for one per centum of the existing prices.

I apprehend also that all the British conquests in India, within the last hundred years, and all the oppressions practised, within that time, upon 100,000,000 of people, have not succeeded in extracting so much net wealth from that country, as has been created by the spindles and looms of England, in the last ten, or perhaps even five, years.

When our ancestors came to this country, they brought with them the common law of England, including the writ of habeas corpus, (the essential principle of which, as will hereafter be shown, is to deny the right of property in man,) the trial by jury, and the other great principles of liberty, which prevail in England, and which have made it impossible that her soil should be trod by the foot of a slave.

for slavery was tolerated, to a certain extent, in England, (as we have already seen,) for many years previous to the decision just cited—that is, the holders of slaves from abroad were allowed to bring their slaves into England, hold them during their stay there, and carry them away when they went.

did not punish criminally,) the African slave-trade at that time, could not legally establish slavery in the colonies, any more than it did in England—especially in defiance of the positive requirements of the charters, that the colonial legislation should be consonant to reason, and not repugnant to the laws of England.

We may now proceed to see what the bastard formalism of pleading had come to in England in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and we may use the guidance of a very learned person, Serjeant Hayes, afterwards a justice of the Queen’s Bench for a short time, who knew the system thoroughly and did his best to bring about its downfall.

There is nothing to be said here about the other systems which coexisted with common law procedure in England down to our own time, and still have an independent existence in some jurisdictions.

Phelps described to me many years ago, to the more elaborate scheme of Massachusetts, resembling in a general way that which satisfied our courts in England, under the Common Law Procedure Acts, from 1852 to 1875.

It may however be objected, that a treatise of this kind is useless in England, where, from the excellence of our laws and government, no examples of cruelty or oppression are to be found.

In England they ripped open the belly of a man guilty of high-treason, tore out his heart, dashed it in his face, and then threw it into the fire.

Would you prevent a sect from overturning the state, imitate the present wise conduct of England, of Germany, of Holland;

It was during a visit to England upon a diplomatic mission in this same year that he met the great scholar Isaac Casaubon, who said in a letter to Daniel Heinsius:

The Magna Carta, greatest of all historical characters wrung from the various kings of England from Henry I downward, was granted by King John at the pressing instance of the Barons and Commons of England toward the end of his ill-judged and unfortunate reign.

And it has been confirmed by the authority both of France and England, that a sovereign cannot answer for every injury done to the subjects of a friendly power by his naval or military forces;

It certainly extends much beyond them in England;

In England there are men whose income exceeds 60,000l.

In England, the expense of carrying through a common action, cannot be less than about 24l.

Bastian of England and Professor Haeckel (1) of Germany.

Germany, England, and France claim the honor of having produced the first *modern* philosopher, presenting Nicolas of Cusa, Bacon of Verulam, and René Descartes as their candidates, while Hobbes, Bruno, and Montaigne have received only scattered votes.

France gives the initiative (in Descartes), then England assumes the leadership (in Locke), with Leibnitz and Kant the hegemony passes over to Germany.

Thirty Kings and two minors have reigned in that distracted kingdom since the conquest, in which time there have been (including the Revolution) no less than eight civil wars and nineteen Rebellions.

Wherefore laying aside all national pride and prejudice in favour of modes and forms, the plain truth is, that it is wholly owing to the constitution of the People, and not to the constitution of the Government that the Crown is not as oppressive in England as in Turkey.

and with this maxim in view I offer a a few remarks on the so much boasted constitution of England.