[Footnote b: Spelm. Gl. 362.] OUR antient lawyers, and particularly Fortescue[c], insist with abundance of warmth, that these customs are as old as the primitive Britons, and continued down, through the several mutations of government and inhabitants, to the present time, unchanged and unadulterated. This may be the case as to some; but in general, as Mr Selden in his notes observes, this assertion must be understood with many grains of allowance; and ought only to signify, as the truth seems to be, that there never was any formal exchange of one system of laws for another: though doubtless by the intermixture of adventitious nations, the Romans, the Picts, the Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans, they must have insensibly introduced and incorporated many of their own customs with those that were before established: thereby in all probability improving the texture and wisdom of the whole, by the accumulated wisdom of divers particular countries. Our laws, saith lord Bacon[d], are mixed as our language: and as our language is so much the richer, the laws are the more complete. [Footnote c: _c._ 17.] [Footnote d: See his proposals for a digest.] AND indeed our antiquarians and first historians do all positively assure us, that our body of laws is of this compounded nature. For they tell us, that in the time of Alfred the local customs of the several provinces of the kingdom were grown so various, that he found it expedient to compile his _dome-book_ or _liber judicialis_, for the general use of the whole kingdom. This book is said to have been extant so late as the reign of king Edward the fourth, but is now unfortunately lost. It contained, we may probably suppose, the principal maxims of the common law, the penalties for misdemesnors, and the forms of judicial proceedings. Thus much may at least be collected from that injunction to observe it, which we find in the laws of king Edward the elder, the son of Alfred[e]. "_Omnibus qui reipublicae praesunt, etiam atque etiam mando, ut omnibus aequos se praebeant judices, perinde ac in judiciali libro_ (_Saxonice_, [Anglo-Saxon: dom-bec]) _scriptum habetur; nec quicquam formident quin jus commune_ (_Saxonice_, [Anglo-Saxon: folcrihte]) _audacter libereque dicant._" [Footnote e: _c._ 1.]