" needs no explanation; it is
equality before the law, repeated in our own Fourteenth Amendment.

Lastly, we have in cap. 41: "Merchants shall have safe conduct in
England, subject only to the ancient and allowed customs, not to evil
tolls"--a forecast of the allowable tariff as well as of the spirit
of modern international law. Finally, there is a chapter on mortmain,
recognizing that land might not be given to monasteries or religious
houses, and particularly under a secret trust; the object being to
keep the land, which made the power of the realm, out of the hands of
the church. As far as that part of it goes, it is merely historical to
us, but it developed into the principle that corporations "which have
no souls," and do not die, should not own too much land, or have too
much power--and that is a very live question in the United States
to-day.

One must not be misled by the generality of the phrase used in chapter
39, and think it unimportant because it looks simple. It is hard for
an American or Englishman to get a fresh mind on these matters. We all
grow up with the notion that nobody has the right to arrest us, nobody
has the right to deprive us of our liberty, even for an hour. If
anybody, be he President of the United States or be he a police
officer, chooses to lay his hand on our shoulder or attempts to
confine us, we have the same right to try him, if he makes a mistake,
as if he were a mere trespasser; and that applies just as much to the
highest authority, to the president, to the general of the army, to
the governor, as it does to a tramp. But one cannot be too often
reminded that this principle is peculiar to English and American
civilization. Throughout the Continent any official, any judge,
anybody "who has a red band around his cap," who, in any indirect way,
represents the state--a railway conductor, a spy, a station agent--not
only has the right to deprive you of your freedom, but you have no
right to question him; the "red band around the cap" is a final
answer. Hence that extraordinary incident, at which all England
laughed, the Kupenick robbery. A certain crook who had been a soldier
and was familiar with the drill and the passwords, obtained possession
of an old captain's uniform, walked into a provincial town of some
importance, ordered the first company of soldiers he met to follow
him, and then with that retinue, appeared before the town hall and
demanded of the mayor the keys of the trea