England

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

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.

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.

In England alone the monarchy stood firm.

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.

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

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.

In England, the religious controversies terminated in an act of uniformity, by which a majority of the people are cruelly oppressed;

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

All writers agree that this means the common law.

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

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

but unless it has become familiar in India, qu.

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.

Any attempt to swerve from this rule of Anglo-Saxon individualism must inevitably lead to the establishment of a savage despotism on the one hand, and a rebellious anarchism on the other.

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

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

By English law, a will of realty operates as a mode of conveyance and document of title without probate, but since the Land Transfer Act, 1897, it is usually proved.

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.

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;

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

and this is the second year since the coming of the plague into Ireland.

The ancient laws of Ireland have come down to us as an assemblage of law-tracts, each treating of some one subject or of a group of subjects.

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.

At present, the United States, England, and some other nations say, by their laws, “we will give this property a partial protection—that is, the protection of civil, but not of criminal, laws;

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.

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.

Slavery was therefore as much unconstitutional in the colonies, as it was in England.

Those charters were the fundamental constitutions of the colonies, with some immaterial exceptions, up to the time of the revolution;

The authority of these charters, during their continuance, and the general authority of the common law, prior to the revolution, have been recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Some writers have explained the English constitution thus;

Individuals are undoubtedly safer in England than in some other Countries:

wherefore in a constitutional sense they contribute nothing towards the freedom of the State.