inhabitants. In the "Declaration and Resolves" of the first
Continental Congress, they assert "that the respective colonies
are entitled to the Common Law of England," and in the address to
the people of Great Britain they complain that the English
settlers in Canada "are now the subjects of an arbitrary
Government, deprived of Trial by Jury, and when imprisoned cannot
claim the Benefit of the _Habeas Corpus_ Act, that great
Bulwark and Palladium of English Liberty."[Footnote: Journals of
Congress, I, 29, 44. A. H. Carpenter, "Habeas Corpus in the
Colonies," American Historical Review, VIII, 18.]

The same sentiments dictated the terms of the Ordinance of 1787,
under which our first Territories were to be organized. One of
its leading provisions was this:

ART. 2. The inhabitants of the said territory shall always be
entitled to the benefits of the writ of _habeas corpus_,
and of the trial by jury; of a proportionate representation of
the people in the legislature, and of judicial proceedings
according to the course of the common law.

A recognized system of jurisprudence had, under the circumstances
and from the causes which had been stated, begun to grow up
before the Revolution. It might fairly be called American, but
it was thoroughly English by heredity, and had been shaped by a
long succession of English influences, and steadied by the firm
hand of English power.

The Revolutionary War made everything connected with the law of
England distasteful to the people at large. The lawyers knew its