Popular Law-making: A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statuteStimson, Frederic Jesup
History
Popular Law-making: A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statute
Stimson, Frederic Jesup
Legislation -- United States
time when the word Parliament was used. Thus Magna Charta expresses it
that there should be no taxation without "the advice" of Parliament,
without legislation; and as Parliament was a representative body, it
is the equivalent of "taxation without representation." This also was
omitted in Henry III's charter, 1217, and only restored under Edward
I in 1297, a most significant omission. And it is also expressed in
early republications of the Great Charter that taxation must be for
the benefit of _all_, "for public purposes only," for the people
and not for a class. On this latter principle of Anglo-American
constitutional law one of our great political parties bases its
objection to the protective tariff, or to bounties; as, for instance,
to the sugar manufacturers; or other modern devices for extorting
wealth from all the people and giving it to the few. All taxation
shall be for the _common_ benefit. Any taxation imposed for the sole
benefit of the land-owning class, for instance, or even for
the manufacturing class, is against the original principles of
constitutional liberty.
Then we come to chapter 39, the great "Liberty" statute. "No freeman
shall be taken or imprisoned or be disseised of his freehold or _his
liberties or his free customs_ [these important words added in 1217]
or be outlawed or exiled or otherwise destroyed but by lawful judgment
of his peers, or by the law of the land." This, the right to law, is
the cornerstone of personal liberty. Any government in any country on
the Continent can seize a man and keep him as long as it likes; it is
only Anglo-Saxons that have an absolute right not to have that happen
to them, and not only are they entitled not to be imprisoned, but
their liberty of free locomotion may not be impeded. An American
citizen has a constitutional right to travel freely through the
whole republic and also not to be excluded therefrom. Punishment by
banishment beyond the four seas was forbidden in very early times in
England. "Disseised of his freehold, of his liberties or his free
customs"--that is the basis of all our modern law of freedom of trade,
against restraint of trade, and the basis on which our actions against
the modern trusts rest; the right to freely engage in any business, to
be protected against monopoly either of the state or brought about
by competitors, to freely make one's own contracts, for labor or
property, to work as long as one chooses, for what wages one wills,
and all the other liberties of labor and trade. "Or be outlawed or
exiled or otherwise destroyed"--that is a broad general phrase for any
interference with a man's property, life, or liberty. "Nor will we go
upon him"--that has been translated in various ways, but it means what
it says; it means that the king won't descend upon a man personally or
with his army; nor will we "send upon him"--a law officer after
him; "but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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