FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   312   313   314   315   316   317   318   319   320   321   322   323   324   325   326   >>  
orders, or laws, and, in order to gain them a reverence, would prove that they were as old as the nation; and to support that opinion, they put to the torture all the ancient monuments. Others, pushing things further, have offered a still greater violence to them. N. Bacon, in order to establish his republican, system, has so distorted all the evidence he has produced, concealed so many things of consequence, and thrown such false colors upon the whole argument, that I know no book so likely to mislead the reader in our antiquities, if yet it retains any authority. In reality, that ancient Constitution and those Saxon laws make little or nothing for any of our modern parties, and, when fairly laid open, will be found to compose such a system as none, I believe, would think it either practicable or desirable to establish. I am sensible that nothing has been, a larger theme of panegyric with, all our writers on politics and history than the Anglo-Saxon government; and it is impossible not to conceive an high, opinion of its laws, if we rather consider what is said of them than what they visibly are. These monuments of our pristine rudeness still subsist; and they stand out of themselves indisputable evidence to confute the popular declamations of those writers who would persuade us that the crude institutions of an unlettered people had reached a perfection which the united efforts of inquiry, experience, learning, and necessity have not been able to attain in many ages. But the truth is, the present system of our laws, like our language and our learning, is a very mixed and heterogeneous mass: in some respects our own; in more borrowed from the policy of foreign, nations, and compounded, altered, and variously modified, according to the various necessities which the manners, the religion, and the commerce of the people have at different times imposed. It is our business, in some measure, to follow and point out these changes and improvements: a task we undertake, not from any ability for the greatness of such a work, but purely to give some short and plain account of these matters to the very ignorant. The Law of the Romans seems utterly to have expired in this island together with their empire, and that, too, before the Saxon establishment. The Anglo-Saxons came into England as conquerors. They brought their own customs with them, and doubtless did not take laws from, but imposed theirs upon, the people they had van
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   312   313   314   315   316   317   318   319   320   321   322   323   324   325   326   >>  



Top keywords:

people

 

system

 

imposed

 

learning

 

writers

 

establish

 

things

 

monuments

 

opinion

 
evidence

ancient

 
variously
 
modified
 

altered

 
compounded
 

policy

 

foreign

 

nations

 
necessities
 

manners


business

 

religion

 

commerce

 
measure
 
borrowed
 

attain

 

necessity

 

inquiry

 

experience

 

present


nation

 
respects
 

heterogeneous

 

language

 

support

 

follow

 

establishment

 

Saxons

 
empire
 

island


orders
 
England
 

doubtless

 

customs

 

conquerors

 

brought

 

expired

 
utterly
 

ability

 
greatness