| View single post by Joe Kelley | |||||||||||||
| Posted: Mon Feb 12th, 2018 03:40 pm |
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Joe Kelley
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(MAGNA CARTA.) Care, Henry, ed. English Liberties, Or The Free-Born Subject’s Inheritance: Containing Magna Charta . . . The Habeas Corpus Act, And Several Other Statutes Boston: Printed by J. Franklin, for N. Buttolph, B. Eliot, and D. Henchman, 1721 Notes on Magna Carta "Farther, though it be said here, that the king hath given and granted these liberties, yet it must not be understood that they were meer emanations of Royal favour, or new bounties granted, which the people could not justly challenge, or had not a right unto before; for as lord Coke in divers places asserts, and as is well known to every gentleman professing the law, this charter is, for the most part, only declaratory of the principal grounds of the fundamental laws and liberties of England. Not any new freedom is hereby granted, but a restitution of such as the subject lawfully had before, and to free them from the usurpations and incroachments of every power whatever. It is worthy observation, that this charter often mentions sua jura, their rights, and libertates suas, their liberties, which shews they were before intitled to and possessed them, and that those rights and liberties were by this charter not granted as before unknown, but confirmed, and that in the stile of liberties and privileges long before well known.” https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A33823.0001.001/1:4?rgn=div1;view=fulltext English Liberties, Or The Free-Born Subject’s Inheritance: Containing Magna Charta, The Habeas Corpus Act, And Several Other Statutes, Henry Care Boston: Printed by J. Franklin, for N. Buttolph, B. Eliot, and D. Henchman, 1721 “Generally all monopolies are against this Great Charter, because they are against the liberty and freedom of the subject, and against the law of the land; and it is hoped that the publication of this opinion of lord Coke’s will induce some person of property and spirit, to try the validity of it, by commencing and carrying on with vigour, a prosecution against some of the many monopolizers that now exist in this kingdom, to the great distress of the poor, and band of industrious merit, and the total subversion of all order and good government.” https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/British_Liberties%2C_or_the_Free-born_Subject%27s_Inheritance_%281st_ed%2C_1766%29.pdf Compare that to the American Revolutionary Congress statement concerning a Declaration of Independence: "That the question was not whether, by a declaration of independence, we should make ourselves what we are not; but whether we should declare a fact which already exists: "That, as to the people or Parliament of England, we had always been independent of them, their restraints on our trade deriving efficacy from our acquiescence only, and not from any rights they possessed of imposing them; and that, so far, our connection had been federal only, and was now dissolved by the commencement of hostilities: "That, as to the king, we had been bound to him by allegiance, but that this bond was now dissolved by his assent to the late act of Parliament, by which he declares us out of his protection, and by his levying war on us a fact which had long ago proved us out of his protection, it being a certain position in law, that allegiance and protection are reciprocal, the one ceasing when the other is withdrawn:" http://teachingamericanhistory.org/ratification/elliot/vol1/approaches/
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