The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
forbids interest on money, § 35; makes the laws of bailment, § 28, very
different from what Lord Holt delivers in Coggs v. Bernard, ante 92, and
what Sir William Jones tells us they were; and punishes witchcraft with
death, § 30, which Sir Matthew Hale, 1 H. P. C. B. 1, ch. 33, declares
was not a felony before the Stat. 1, Jac. 12. It was under that statute,
and not this forgery, that he hung Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, 16 Car.
2, (1662,) on whose trial he declared "that there were such creatures as
witches he made no doubt at all; for first the Scripture had affirmed so
much, secondly the wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such
persons, and such hath been the judgment of this kingdom, as appears by
that act of Parliament which hath provided punishment proportionable to
the quality of the offence." And we must certainly allow greater weight
to this position that "it was no felony till James' Statute," laid
down deliberately in his H. P. C., a work which he wrote to be printed,
finished, and transcribed for the press in his life time, than to the
hasty scripture that "at _common law_ witchcraft was punished with death
as heresy, by writ de Heretico Comburendo" in his Methodical Summary
of the P. C. p. 6, a work "not intended for the press, not fitted for
it, and which he declared himself he had never read over since it was
written;" Pref. Unless we understand his meaning in that to be that
witchcraft could not be punished at common law as witchcraft, but as
heresy. In either sense, however, it is a denial of this pretended law
of Alfred. Now, all men of reading know that these pretended laws of
homicide, concubinage, theft, retaliation, compulsory marriage, usury,
bailment, and others which might have been cited, from the Pseudograph,
were never the laws of England, not even in Alfred's time; and of course
that it is a forgery. Yet palpable as it must be to every lawyer, the
English judges have piously avoided lifting the veil under which it was
shrouded. In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England
has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and
even bolder than they are. For instead of being contented with these
four surreptitious chapters of Exodus, they have taken the whole leap,
and declared at once that the whole Bible and Testament in a lump, make
a part of the common law; ante 873: the first judicial declaration of
which was by this same Sir Matthew Hale. And thus they incorporate into
the English code laws made for the Jews alone, and the precepts of the
gospel, intended by their benevolent author as obligatory only in _foro
concientiæ_; and they arm the whole with the coercions of municipal law.
In doing this, too, they have not even used the Connecticut caution of
declaring, as is done in their blue laws, that the laws of God shall
be the laws of their land, except where their own contradict them; but
they swallow the yea and nay together. Finally, in answer to Fortescue
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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