Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/388

372 372 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, on the article of which our " life, liberty, and property " clauses are either copies or slight variations. The provision referred to is, of course, the thirty-ninth article of the Great Charter. It declares that ** nullus hber homo capia- tur, vel imprisonetur, aut dissaisiatur, aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nee super eum ibimus, nee super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum, vel per legem terrae." ^ No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or banished, or any ways destroyed ; nor will we pass upon him, nor send upon him,^ unless by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. In the confirmatory statute of 9 Henry III., which is the form of the Great Charter found in the Statutes at Large, and is therefore part of the existing law of England, the above article is slightly enlarged. After the word ( *' de hbero tenemento suo, vel Hbertatibus, vel liberis consuetu- dinibus suis"),^ — an addition obviously intended to explain the right of property which the word *' disseized " represents and declares. In another statute, passed in the fifth year of Edward III., the same article is rendered as follows : " No man shall be attached by any accusation, nor forejudged of life or limb, nor his lands, tenements, goods, nor chattels seized into the king's hands, against the form of the Great Charter and the law of the land," — a clear declaration of the rights of personal liberty, Hfe, and property. In 25 Ed. III. Statute 5, chapter 4, we find a more extended reading : " None shall be taken by petition or suggestion made to our lord the king, or to his council, unless it be by indictment or presentment of good and lawful people of the same neighborhood where such deeds be done, in due manner, or by process made by writ original at the common law; nor that none be out of his franchises, nor of his freeholds, unless he be duly brought into answer and forejudged of the same by due course of law." Finally in 28 Ed. III., c. 3, the same declara- tion of rights is put still more clearly as follows: "No man, of whatever estate or condition that he be, shall be put out of land 1 Stubbs' Select Charters, 301. 2 That is, send others to pass upon, or condemn him ; 2 Institute, 54. 8 " Libertatibus " is evidently used here in the technical sense, meaning a privilege of an exclusive nature — a franchise. "Liberis consuetudinibus " means simply cus- tomary rights.
 * disseized " we find ** of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs "