Читать книгу Popular Law-making - Frederic Jesup Stimson - Страница 33

[Footnote 1: Stubbs, p. 136.]

[Footnote 2: Yet "Peter's Pence" were initiated by Ini, King of the

West Saxons, about 690!]

Now this is a very interesting matter, and were it borne in mind by our modern legislators they would escape a good deal of unintelligent legislation; that is, the distinction between a sin and a crime. A sin is against the church, or against one's conscience; matter, therefore, for the priest, or one's spiritual adviser. A crime is an offence against other men; that is, against the state, in which all are concerned. Under the intelligent legislation of the twelfth century all matters which were sins, which concerned the conscience, were left to the church to prevent or punish. For the same reason usury was matter for the priest—because it was regarded under the doctrines of the Bible as a sin. This notion prevailed down to the early legislation of the colony of Massachusetts, though doubtless many things which were then considered sins would now be regarded as crimes, such as bigamy, for instance. The distinction is, nevertheless, a valid one, and we shall have occasion frequently to refer to it. We shall find that the defect of much of our modern legislation—prohibition laws, for instance—is that they attempt to treat as crimes, as offences against the state, matters which are merely sins, offences against the conscience or the individual who commits them.

To-day, the American constitutions all say that a militia is the natural defence of a state of free men. It is interesting; therefore, to find, hardly a century after the Norman Conquest. In 1181, the Assize of Arms, which revived the ancient Saxon "Fyrd," the word for what we now call militia; and, twenty years before that, "scutage" replaced military service. To the burdens of the feudal system, compulsory military service and standing armies, our ancestors objected from the very beginning. In a sense, scutage was the beginning of taxation; but it was only a commutation for military service, much as a man to-day might pay a substitute to go to war in times of draft. General taxation first appears in 1188 in the famous Saladin tithe, the first historical instance of the taxation of personal property as distinct from a feudal burden laid upon land. The object of this tax was to raise money for the crusade against the Sultan Saladin. It was followed, five years later, by a tax of one-fourth of every person's revenue or goods to ransom the king, Richard I having gone to this crusade against Saladin, and been captured on his return by his good friend and Christian ally, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. It is interesting to note that the worth of the king in those days was considered exactly one-fourth of the common wealth of England. John was less expensive; but he was not captured. He levied a tax ten years later of one-seventh part on the barons, and one-thirteenth on every man.

In 1213 two important things happened. The high-water mark of domination by the Roman Church is reached when King John surrendered England to the pope, and took it back as a fief of the pope for a tribute of one thousand marks. The same year the other early method of trial of lawsuits was abolished by the Lateran Council—trial by ordeal. This was the only remaining Saxon method. The Norman trial by battle had already been superseded by trial by jury; and from this time on, in practice, no other method than a jury remains, though trial by battle was not abolished by statute until the nineteenth century.

And then we come to Magna Charta. The first time it was granted was in 1215 by John, but the charter always quoted is that promulgated ten years later under Henry III. They were very nearly identical, but the important omission in the charter of Henry was in regard to "scutage" ("no aid other than the three customary feudal aids shall be imposed without the common counsel of the kingdom"); that, of course, is the principle we have discussed above, first put in writing in the charter of John. The barons claimed it as part of the unwritten law. But Henry III in his charter cannily dropped it out—which is a trick still played by legislatures to-day. This Magna Charta was confirmed and ratified something like thirty times between the time of its adoption under John and the time it got established so completely that it wasn't necessary to ratify it any more. There are four sections of Magna Charta that are most important. Chapter 7, the establishment of the widow's dower; of no great importance to us except as showing how early the English law protected married women in their property rights. Chapter 13 confirmed the liberties and customs of London and other cities and seaports—which is interesting as showing how early the notion of free trade prevailed among our ancestors. It gave rise to an immense deal of commercial law, which has always existed independent of any act of Parliament. Chapter 17 provided that the common pleas court—that is, the ordinary trial court—should not follow the king about, but be held at a place and time certain. That was the beginning of our legal liberty; because before that the king used to travel about his realm with his justiciar, as they called his chief legal officer, and anybody who wanted to have a lawsuit had to travel around England and get the king to hear his case. But the uncertainty of such a thing made justice very difficult, so it was a great step when the leading court of the kingdom was to be held in a place certain, which was at once established in Westminster. Minor courts were, of course, later established in various counties, though usually the old Saxon county or hundred-motes continued to exist. Chapter 12 is the one relating to scutage, from the word scutum, shield—meaning the service of armed men. Just as, to-day, a man who does not pay his taxes can in some States work them out on the road, so conversely in England they very early commuted the necessity of a knight or land-owner furnishing so many armed men into a money payment. "The three customary feudal aids" were for the defence of the kingdom, the building of forts, and the building of bridges—all the taxes usually imposed upon English citizens in these earliest times—all other taxation to be only by the Common Council of the kingdom. This is the first word, council; later, it became "consent"; the word conseil meaning both consent and council. "Council of England" means, of course, the Great Council. We are still before the time when the word Parliament was used. Thus Magna Charta expresses it that there should be no taxation without "the advice" of Parliament, without legislation; and as Parliament was a representative body, it is the equivalent of "taxation without representation." This also was omitted in Henry III's charter, 1217, and only restored under Edward I in 1297, a most significant omission. And it is also expressed in early republications of the Great Charter that taxation must be for the benefit of all, "for public purposes only," for the people and not for a class. On this latter principle of Anglo-American constitutional law one of our great political parties bases its objection to the protective tariff, or to bounties; as, for instance, to the sugar manufacturers; or other modern devices for extorting wealth from all the people and giving it to the few. All taxation shall be for the common benefit. Any taxation imposed for the sole benefit of the land-owning class, for instance, or even for the manufacturing class, is against the original principles of constitutional liberty.

Then we come to chapter 39, the great "Liberty" statute. "No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or be disseised of his freehold or his liberties or his free customs [these important words added in 1217] or be outlawed or exiled or otherwise destroyed but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land." This, the right to law, is the cornerstone of personal liberty. Any government in any country on the Continent can seize a man and keep him as long as it likes; it is only Anglo-Saxons that have an absolute right not to have that happen to them, and not only are they entitled not to be imprisoned, but their liberty of free locomotion may not be impeded. An American citizen has a constitutional right to travel freely through the whole republic and also not to be excluded therefrom. Punishment by banishment beyond the four seas was forbidden in very early times in England. "Disseised of his freehold, of his liberties or his free customs"—that is the basis of all our modern law of freedom of trade, against restraint of trade, and the basis on which our actions against the modern trusts rest; the right to freely engage in any business, to be protected against monopoly either of the state or brought about by competitors, to freely make one's own contracts, for labor or property, to work as long as one chooses, for what wages one wills, and all the other liberties of labor and trade. "Or be outlawed or exiled or otherwise destroyed"—that is a broad general phrase for any interference with a man's property, life, or liberty. "Nor will we go upon him"—that has been translated in various ways, but it means what it says; it means that the king won't descend upon a man personally or with his army; nor will we "send upon him"—a law officer after him; "but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land"—that means jury trial, or at least the law of the land, as it then was; and that phrase, or its later equivalent—due process of law—is discussed to-day probably in one case out of every ten that arise in our highest courts. Many books have been written upon it. To start with, it means that none of these things can be done except under law; that is, except under a lawsuit; except under a process in a court, having jury trial if it be a civil case, and also an indictment if it be a criminal case, with all the rights and consequences that attend a regularly conducted lawsuit. It must be done by the courts, and not by the executive, not by the mere will of the king; and, still more important to us to-day, not by legislatures, not even by Parliament. "We will sell to no man, we will deny or delay to no man, either right or justice," needs no explanation; it is equality before the law, repeated in our own Fourteenth Amendment.

Lastly, we have in cap. 41: "Merchants shall have safe conduct in England, subject only to the ancient and allowed customs, not to evil tolls"—a forecast of the allowable tariff as well as of the spirit of modern international law. Finally, there is a chapter on mortmain, recognizing that land might not be given to monasteries or religious houses, and particularly under a secret trust; the object being to keep the land, which made the power of the realm, out of the hands of the church. As far as that part of it goes, it is merely historical to us, but it developed into the principle that corporations "which have no souls," and do not die, should not own too much land, or have too much power—and that is a very live question in the United States to-day.

One must not be misled by the generality of the phrase used in chapter 39, and think it unimportant because it looks simple. It is hard for an American or Englishman to get a fresh mind on these matters. We all grow up with the notion that nobody has the right to arrest us, nobody has the right to deprive us of our liberty, even for an hour. If anybody, be he President of the United States or be he a police officer, chooses to lay his hand on our shoulder or attempts to confine us, we have the same right to try him, if he makes a mistake, as if he were a mere trespasser; and that applies just as much to the highest authority, to the president, to the general of the army, to the governor, as it does to a tramp. But one cannot be too often reminded that this principle is peculiar to English and American civilization. Throughout the Continent any official, any judge, anybody "who has a red band around his cap," who, in any indirect way, represents the state—a railway conductor, a spy, a station agent—not only has the right to deprive you of your freedom, but you have no right to question him; the "red band around the cap" is a final answer. Hence that extraordinary incident, at which all England laughed, the Kupenick robbery. A certain crook who had been a soldier and was familiar with the drill and the passwords, obtained possession of an old captain's uniform, walked into a provincial town of some importance, ordered the first company of soldiers he met to follow him, and then with that retinue, appeared before the town hall and demanded of the mayor the keys of the treasury. These were surrendered without question and he escaped with the money, representing, of course, that he had orders from the Imperial government. It never occurred to any one to question a soldier in full uniform, and it was only some days later, when the town accounts were sent to Berlin to be approved, that the robbery was discovered.

Such a thing could by no possibility have happened in England or with us; the town treasurer would at once have demanded his authority, his order from the civil authorities; the uniform would have failed to impress him. Moreover, under our local self-government, under our decentralized system, nobody is above even a town officer, or a State or city official at the head of his department, however small it be, except the courts. State officers may not command town officers, nor Federal officers State officers; nor soldiers give orders to policemen. The president, the governor, may perhaps remove them; but that is all. And even the policeman acts at his peril, and may be sued in the ordinary courts, if he oversteps his authority. The notion that a free citizen has a right absolutely to question his constraint by any State officer is peculiar to the English and American people, and this cannot be too often repeated; for it is what foreigners simply fail to understand. And it rests on this chapter in the Great Charter, originally, as amplified and explained by the courts and later acts of Parliament, such, as the Habeas Corpus Act. If a man is arrested by any official, that person, however great, has to justify the arrest. In theory, a man arrested has a right to sue him for damages, and to sue him criminally for trespass; and if that man, be he private individual or be he an official or president, cannot show by a "due course of law"—that is, by a due lawsuit, tried with a jury—that he did it under a duly enacted law, and that the facts of the case were such as to place the man under that law—then that official, however high, is just as much liable in the ordinary courts, as if he were the merest footpad trying to stop a man on the highway—a doctrine almost unknown to any country in the world outside of England, the United States, and English colonies.