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 A GOVERNMENT OF LAW

493

When we remember that, by that time, the ultimate effect of this charter was to give and jury system, grand and petit, had developed, guarantee full protection for person and it is not strange that the act of 1352, for property to every human being that breathes example, after reciting the charter provision English air." * Such was the process of in question, insisted on the necessity of evolution through which came into being "indictment or presentment of good and the popular and traditional construction lawful people of the same neighborhood of that clause in the Great Charter which, where such deeds be done." Evidently in the widest terms, is taken as a promise of founding his exposition on these fourteenth law and liberty, and good government to century statutes Coke1 makes "per legem every one; a promise upon which rests the terra" of the Charter equivalent to "by due supremacy of the law over the functionary which no one has ever attempted to trans process of law," and that again to "by in dictment or presentment of good and lawful plant from the soil inhabited by Anglican men." Thus by a nunc pro tune process of peoples. When the English colonies in America were statutory interpretation Magna Charta was made to enshrine the jury system which did formed English law was made the basis of not exist at the time of its execution. A Colonial rights. In the famous charter master of the subject has told us that "The granted by James I, in 1666, it was expressly Framers of the Petition of Right read the provided "that all and every the persons, same words (per legem terras') as a prohibition, being our subjects which shall go and inhabit not only of imprisonment ' without any within the said colony and plantation, and cause showed' but also of proceedings under every their children and posterity, which martial law, thus interpreting the aims of shall happen to be born within the limits King John's opponents in the light of the thereof, shall have and enjoy all liberties, misdeeds of King Charles, and applying to franchises, and immunities of free denizens the rude system established by Henry of and natural subjects within any of our other Anjou reforms more appropriate to the dominions, to all intents and purposes as if highly developed administration of the they had been abiding and born within this Tudors."2 By such a process of statutory our realm of England, or in any other of our and popular interpretation the Charter pro dominions."2 When the tie which bound vision in question was widened until it be the colonies to the mother country was came usual to read it as containing an severed they rapidly developed into a group original promise of trial by jury to all Eng of independent commonwealths in which lishmen; as absolutely prohibiting arbitrary each individual member was, in its organic commitment; and as undertaking solemnly structure, a substantial reproduction of the to dispense a full, free, speedy, and equal English kingdom. The foundation of the justice to all. To state the final outcome entire fabric was English law; the provisions of such a method of interpretation in the of the Great Charter became the substruc •words of Hallam: "It protected every in ture of every state constitution. When dividual of the nation in the free enjoyment the first ten amendments were added as a of his life, his liberty, and his property, un Bill of Rights to our federal constitution, in less declared to be forfeited by the judg the fifth was embodied the traditional con ment of his peers or the law of the land." * struction of that part of the Great Charter Or, if we adopt the words of Creasy : "The which guarantees the supremacy of the law, or, as we usually express it, due process of » Second Institute, p. 46. 1 McKcchnie, Magna Charta, p. 442.

1 Rng. Const., p. 15 Ill.

» Middle Ages, II, p. 448.


 * Charters and Consts., part ii, p. 1891.