rebellions he was forced to grant the famous charter of English liberties on June 15, 1215.

This celebrated paper had many clauses doing away with present and specific abuses. It also had several of a very general character protecting what came to be known as a man's inalienable rights-his personal safety, personal liberty, and private property. Out of these clauses, it may be said, developed all subsequent guarantees asserted at different times in England, such as the Petition of Right in 1628, the Habeas Corpus Act in 1679, and the Bill of Rights in 1689.

In the variety of laws operating to-day in the English Empire, we see as the dominant force the ancient charter exacted by the barons at Runnymede—its latest and most conspicuous example being afforded in the freedom of selfdetermination permitted in Ireland.

But this influence has not been confined to England and its dependencies. One of the most important phases of this imperial history of Magna Carta has been its effect upon the constitutions and laws of this country. In tracing its influence upon the American colonies, my time will not allow me to do more than take the oldest of these, Virginia, as an example. This will show that, while American institutions have developed in some important particulars in a different way from England's, due partly to the different conditions and partly, too, to the constructive statesmanship of American statesmen, the selfsame spirit has animated them throughout.1

Magna Carta was formally introduced to this continent in the granting of the first Virginia charter by King James I, April 10, 1606. In this document-in part the work of Sir Edward Coke-the following language occurs:

1In preparing this paper I have been greatly aided by J. D. Hazeltine, "The Influence of Magna Carta on American Constitutional Development."

Also we do, for Us, our Heirs, and Successors, Declare, by these Presents, that all and every the Persons, being our Subjects, which shall dwell and inhabit within every or any of the several colonies and Plantations, and every one of their children, which shall happen to be born within any of the Limits and Precincts of said several Colonies and Plantations, shall have and enjoy all Liberties, Franchises, and Immunities, within any of our other Dominions, to all Intents and Purposes, as if they had been abiding and born, within this our Realm of England, or any other of our said Dominions.

This was a fine introduction, but it appears as a gift of the English king. The truth is, these words contain only a solemn affirmation of the inherent rights of Englishmen, who, settling in this country, claimed so much of the English common law (including Magna Carta) and English statutes before 1606 as was applicable to their situation.

Many striking instances in Virginia colonial history where Magna Carta was invoked might be given, but the following will suffice.

Lawyers were not popular anywhere in the seventeenth century. By the rural population they were looked upon as a pernicious set of fellows bent upon stirring up litigation for the sake of fees. This opinion of lawyers even at the present day has not entirely passed away. So the General Assembly in 1656 passed an act prohibiting any lawyers from taking any fee at all. Naturally the governor and council, who had more experience of the world, did not look with favor on this bill, and, when presented to them for their approval, they promised to give assent to the measure "as far as agreeable to Magna Carta." Thereupon the Assembly appointed a committee to examine the terms of Magna Carta, who reported that they failed to discover in that instrument any prohibition of the colonial legislation in question. This opinion doubtless rested upon the idea that lawyers were public officers subject to official regulation.

Another instance is afforded in the case of Major Robert Beverley, who in 1682 incurred the hostility of Governor Jeffreys and his Council for alleged activity in stirring up the people of Middlesex and Gloucester counties to cut down the tobacco plants, the object of which was to lessen the supply and thereby increase the price. Upon his arrest and committal to the custody of the sheriff, he applied for a writ of habeas corpus. His first application was refused, but on the second his petition was granted. A hearing was had at Jamestown and he was freed on giving bond of two thousand pounds. In a letter from him to his attorney, William Fitzhugh, his right to the writ was placed on the thirty-sixth and thirty-ninth chapters of Magna Carta, which prohibited indefinite imprisonment without trial, and granted relief on application. Virginians were very chary of admitting the application of English laws after 1606 and Fitzhugh makes no mention of the English Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.

It is often stated in histories of Virginia that Spotswood brought with him in 1710 the writ of habeas corpus previously denied to Virginians, but this, like many other statements, is devoid of any just foundation. What Spotswood really brought was Queen Anne's endorsement of the ancient practice. The writ of habeas corpus was a part of the common law of England antecedent to Magna Carta itself and protected by it.

A third instance may be cited in the case of General Warrants. As early as 1627 the governor and council of Virginia forbade the issuance of general warrants of arrest, though permitting a warrant for a group of specified persons in any one named plantation. This order was entered one hundred and thirty-four years before James Otis' speech in Massachusetts in 1761 on writs of assistance. In this speech, of which all we really know is from some scattered notes taken down by John Adams, Otis appealed

to the common law and Magna Carta in behalf of the rights of a British subject to be secure in his person and property, but the Supreme Court of Massachusetts overruled him, so that general warrants authorizing the customhouse officers to break open buildings suspected of containing smuggled goods were permitted in that colony down to the Boston Port Bill. According to Palfrey, the New England historian, the people of Massachusetts became entirely reconciled to them, but, when the commissioner of customs at Boston tried in 1769 to enforce the writs of assistance in Virginia, Governor Botetourt and his council, true to the early record, declared writs of assistance illegal and they were not permitted here. When in 1773 the question came up before the Connecticut court, the Connecticut Committee of Correspondence wrote to Virginia to find out what the Supreme Court of the colony had done. The Virginia Committee replied that "the courts of America are not bound to issue writs of so dangerous a nature, let the practice of the Court of Exchequer in England be what it will, unless they are warranted by law."

Many examples of the authority of Magna Carta in colonial Virginia might be cited, but I will content myself with one other alone at the close of that period. Then the attention of the Virginians, as well as of Americans in general, were focused on the efforts of Parliament to raise a revenue from America. Here again the appeal was to the common law guaranteed by Magna Carta and the other early charters of English liberty.

As before, Virginia was prominent in asserting her rights. Thus Otis and Massachusetts admitted the supremacy of Parliament and emphasized merely the injustice of taxation without representation. Virginia, while admitting a dependency on England, would not admit the supremacy of Parliament save in external matters and eventually claimed 2 Virginia Journals, 1773-1776, p. 136.

to be a kingdom coördinate with England. She claimed in her General Assembly to have her own Parliament, and declared from the beginning of the difficulties that not only was taxation without representation but legislation without representation an infringement on her ancient and inalienable rights. This was done under the leadership first of Richard Bland, and afterward of Patrick Henry, George Wythe, and Thomas Jefferson.

Then came the Revolution, and, after seven years of✔ war, independence. There was a new recognition of ancient principles both by the State and Federal Union, and again Virginia led in adopting her Declaration of Rights, drawn by George Mason, in proclaiming a constitution severing relations with England, and in organizing the new Union. The Declaration of Rights, the first of these, prepared by a plain Virginia planter, was at once a new Magna Carta and an English Bill of Rights divested of all temporary matter and taking its stand on the law of nature. Such was the stand of the Declaration of Independence drawn by Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, it was a contention of Mr. Jefferson that by the Revolution the American States had been reduced to a condition of nature, all subsequent laws being based upon a new recognition and reënactment. The common law, as it obtained in Virginia after that time, derived its validity only from a new birth.

More concrete were the constitutions of the different States of the Federal Union, and the Federal Constitution itself, but in them also, to use Lord Bryce's words, "there was little that was absolutely new. There was much that was as old as Magna Carta." Thus, for example, these constitutions invariably provided for taxation by the legislature only, for the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, for trial by jury in criminal cases, for the prohibition of laws imposing religious tests, and contained many other provisions of a primary character.