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 in this chapter.--_25 Edward_ I., ch. 1, (1297.) In conclusion of this chapter, it may be safely asserted that the veneration, attachment, and pride, which the English nation, for more than six centuries, have felt towards Magna Carta, are in their nature among the most irrefragable of all proofs that it was the fundamental law of the land, and constitutionally binding upon the government; for, otherwise, it would have been, in their eyes, an unimportant and worthless thing. What those sentiments were I will use the words of others to describe,--the words, too, of men, who, like all modern authors who have written on the same topic, had utterly inadequate ideas of the true character of the instrument on which they lavished their eulogiums. Hume, speaking of the Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest, as they were confirmed by Henry III., in 1217, says: