Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/768

 758 R. G. Usher sive statements regarding the royal prerogative which it seems fairlv certain he never uttered before either the High Commission or the King's Bench. In general, moreover, it displayed Fuller as a learned and conservative lawyer, seeking truth and justice, and as a valiant defender of English liberty. In fact it made him seem like a worthy, patriotic man oppressed by a tyrannical government, which he had provoked by revealing its misdeeds. And posterity, satisfied to derive its information from the same source, has held almost universally a similar opinion of him. Fuller was represented as declaring that " the lawes of England are the High Inheritance of the Realme by which both the King and the subjects are directed ". " Without lawes, there would be neither King nor inheritance in England, which lawes . . . are so fitted to this people and this people to them as it doth make a sweet harmonic in the government." The law, continued this remarkable document, which is equally important and equally a landmark whether Fuller wrote it or not, " admeasureth the King's preroga- tiue so as it shall not extend to hurt the inheritance of the subjectes. And the law doth restrayne the liberall words of the King's grant for the benefit both of the King and the subjects and to the great happines of the Realme, especially when the Judges are men of courage, fearing God, as is to be proved by many cases adiudged in these Courtes of King's Bench and Common Pleas, which Courtes are the principall preservers of this high inheritance of the law." The king might not dispense " with the common law nor alter the same . . . nor put the subjects from their inheritance of the law . . . which was alwayes accompted one of the great blessings of this land, to have the law the meatyeard and the Judges the measurers. For in all well governed Commonwealthes, Religion and Justice are the two principall pillars wherein the power of God appeareth." These phrases alone suffice to give this pamphlet, and Fuller's case, a place in English constitutional history, for these are among the very first enunciations, if not the first, of that great theory of English constitutional law and history which Hakewill was to use so effectively in the case of Impositions in 1610, and which St. John was to render ever memorable in the great case of Ship Mone' in 1637. Some of the best known sentences attributed to Chief Justice Coke might be almost a quotation from this pamphlet. The brochure became so well known and was so much admired by the radical party that it was reprinted in 1641 as a manifesto of the Great Rebellion. Whatever may be the historical importance of this pamphlet.