on his trial, from
rumor or suspicion alone, but upon the evidence of lawful witnesses.
No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed of his free
tenement and liberties, or outlawed, or banished, or anywise hurt or
injured, unless by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the
land; and all who suffered otherwise in this or the two former reigns,
shall be restored to their rights and possessions. Every freeman shall
be fined in proportion to his fault; and no fine shall be levied on him
to his utter ruin; even a villain or rustic shall not by any fine be
bereaved of his carts, ploughs, and implements of husbandry. This was
the only article calculated for the interests of this body of men,
probably at that time the most numerous in the kingdom.

It must be confessed that the former articles of the Great Charter
contain such mitigations and explanations of the feudal law as are
reasonable and equitable; and that the latter involve all the chief
outlines of a legal government, and provide for the equal distribution
of justice, and free enjoyment of property; the great objects for which
political society was at first founded by men, which the people have
a perpetual and unalienable right to recall, and which no time, nor
precedent, nor statute, nor positive institution, ought to deter them
from keeping ever uppermost in their thoughts and attention. Though the
provisions made by this charter might, conformably to the genius of the
age, be esteemed too concise, and too bare of circumstances to maintain
the execution of its articles, in opposition to the chicanery of
lawyers, supported by the violence of power, time gradually ascertained
the sense of all the ambiguous expressions; and those generous barons,
who first extorted this concession, still held their swords in their
hands, and could turn them against those who dared, on any pretence, to
depart from the original spirit and meaning of the grant. We may now,
from the tenor of this charter, conjecture what those laws were of
King Edward which the English nation, during so many generations, still
desired, with such an obstinate perseverance, to have recalled and
established. They were chiefly these latter articles of Magna Charta;
and the barons who, at the beginning of these commotions, demanded
the revival of the Saxon laws, undoubtedly thought that they had
sufficiently satisfied the people by procuring them this concession,
which comprehended the