already cited.

Crabbe says, "It is admitted on all hands that it (Magna Carta)
contains nothing but what was confirmatory of the common law and the
ancient usages of the realm; and is, properly speaking, only an
enlargement of the charter of Henry I. and his
successors."--_Crabbe's Hist. of the Eng. Law_, p. 127.

Blackstone says, "It is agreed by all our historians that the Great
Charter of King John was, for the most part, compiled from the
ancient customs of the realm, or the laws of Edward the Confessor; by
which they mean the old common law which was established under our
Saxon princes."--_Blackstone's Introd. to the Charters._ See
_Blackstone's Law Tracts_, Oxford ed., p. 289.

Coke says, "The common law is the most general and ancient law of
the realm.... The common law appeareth in the statute of _Magna
Carta_, and other ancient statutes, (which for the most part are
affirmations of the common law,) in the original writs, in judicial
records, and in our books of terms and years."--_1 Inst._, 115 b.

Coke also says, "It (Magna Carta) was for the most part declaratory
of the principal grounds of the fundamental laws of England, and for
the residue it was additional to supply some defects of the common
law.... They (Magna Carta and Carta de Foresta) were, for the most
part, but declarations of the ancient common laws of England, _to the
observation and keeping whereof the king was bound and
sworn_."--_Preface to 2 Inst._, p. 3 and 5.

Hume says, "We may now, from the tenor of this charter, (Magna
Carta,) conjecture what those laws were of King Edward, (the
Confessor,) 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 Carta;
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 principal objects to which they had so long
aspired."--_Hume_, ch. 11.

Edward the First confessed that the Great Charter was substantially
identical with the common law, as far as it went, when he commanded his
justices to allow "the Great Charter as the Common Law," "in pleas
before them, and in judgment," as has been already cited i