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Essay on the Trial By Jury by Lysander Spooner
page 28 of 350 (08%)
enactment generally was, either "The King wills and commands,"
or some other form significant of the sole legislative authority of
the king. The king could pass laws at any time when it pleased
him. The presence of a parliament was wholly unnecessary. Hume
says, "It is asserted by Sir Harry Spelman, as an undoubted fact,
that, during the reigns of the Norman princes, every order of the
king, issued with the consent of his privy council, had the full
force of law."[7] And other authorities abundantly corroborate this
assertion.[8]The king was, therefore, constitutionally the
government; and the only legal limitation upon his power seems to
have been simply the Common Law, usually called "the law of the
land," which he was bound by oath to maintain; (which oath had
about the same practical value as similar oaths have always had.)
This "law of the land" seems not to have been regarded at all by
many of the kings, except so far as they found it convenient to do
so, or were constrained to observe it by the fear of arousing
resistance. But as all people are slow in making resistance,
oppression and usurpation often reached a great height; and, in the
case of John, they had become so intolerable as to enlist the nation
almost universally against him; and he was reduced to the
necessity of complying with any terms the barons saw fit to dictate
to him.

It was under these circumstances, that the Great Charter of Englsh
Liberties was granted.

The barons of England, sustained by the common people, having
their king in their power, compelled him, as the price of his throne,
to pledge himself that he would punish no freeman for a violation
of any of his laws, unless with the consent of the peers that is, the
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