massacre, should fall back for their own government upon these primal
verities of human society, and claim not only their inherited rights as
Englishmen, but also the peculiar privileges of pioneers in an
unconquered wilderness?

This spirit of constitutionalism in America, which culminated in the
Constitution of the United States, had its institutional origin in the
spacious days of Queen Elizabeth. That wonderful age, which gave to the
world not only Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson, but also Drake,
Frobisher and Raleigh, was the Anglo-Saxon reaction to the Renaissance.
The spirit of man had a new birth and was breaking away from the too
rigid bonds of ancient custom and authority.

Among the notable, but little known, leaders of that time was Sir Edwin
Sandys, the leading spirit of the London (or Virginia) company. He was a
Liberal when to be such was an "extra hazardous risk." He was the son of
a Liberal, for his father, a great prelate, had been sent to the Tower
for preaching in defence of Lady Jane Grey. The son, Sir Edwin, was the
foe of monopolies, and in the same Parliament that impeached the great
genius of this Inn, Francis Bacon, Sandys advocated the then novel
proposition that accused prisoners should have the right to be
represented by counsel, to which the strange objection was made that it
would subvert the administration of justice. As early as 1613, he had
boldly declared in Parliament that even the King's authority rested upon
the clear understanding that there were reciprocal conditions which
neither ruler nor subject could violate with impunity. He might not too
fancifully be called the "Father of American Constitutionalism," for he
caused a constitution--possibly the first time that that word was ever
applied to a comprehensive scheme of government--to be drafted for the
little colony of Virginia in 1609 and amplified in 1612. Speaking in