An inquirer into the structure of the earth, who should know nothing of its crust but the sandy plains of Germany, would, were he of a sceptical spirit, discredit all those geological wonders which the most sceptical of scientific men now believe.[68:1] In relation to some parts of the British constitution, Hume was in the position of such an investigator. His early prejudice against the study of the law, prevented him from being fully acquainted with a science, the knowledge of which is essential to any man who would clearly develop the progress of our constitution,--the common law of England. He did not understand its stubborn immovable nature, its solid impregnable masonry, against which the ambitious violence of monarchs, and the fury of popular tumults raged in vain. From the day when Gascoigne committed Henry V. to prison, to that when surly tyrannical old Sir Edward Coke argued face to face with King James against the interference of the prerogative with the independent authority of his court, those who were the honest administrators of the common law held that they were no man's servants, and no man's masters, but the sworn expounders of a settled rule of action, which no power within the realm could sway. It might be full of strange conceits, of passages hard to determine, of unreasonable and often cruel rules: but what this oracle bade them, that were they bound to do, be the consequences what they might. To a mere onlooker, this system appeared to be clumsy and barbarous, and unendowed with that philosophical symmetry which characterized the rival system of the civil law. It required that one should have a full knowledge of its massive structure, and passive power of resistance, to appreciate its value in a country where king, nobles, and common people, were alike characterized by party spirit, courage, and restless activity. A philosopher, indulging in a distant contemplation, would at once prefer the nice philosophical adaptation to the wants of a state, and the fine logical structure, with which a despotic power, able to manipulate the laws at its own will, had endowed the system of Justinian; and if he found that the administrators of the rude common law waged a determined war against this philosophical code, his contempt for the one, and his admiration of the other, would be likely to be increased. But there is no doubt that the advocates of the common law were right in resisting the introduction of the pliant principles of the civilians. If it be true that the common law, and the constitution which grew along with it, embodied no philosophical principle of liberty, it is also true that they embodied no philosophical principle of despotism, such as that which was ready made in the Justinian legislation. The theories of passive obedience, and the sacredness of the monarchical character, were strangers to it; and these doctrines, so attractive to those who profit by them, were introduced by the civilians.