ff scot free. That was the working of
the old Anglo-Saxon law, and it was a great many centuries before the
notion of law changed in their minds from that. And this "unwritten
law" perdures in the minds of many of the people to-day.

So it was that the Witenagemot--this Great Council of the realm--was
primarily judicial, in the first instance always judicial; that is, it
never made new laws. It got together to try people for the breach of
law; and that incidentally brought up the validity of the old law, and
then decided whether old law was valid or not. In a sense, therefore,
you see they told what the law was, they announced it; but they never
supposed they were making new laws. That was the last thing they
intended to do, and the last thing the people would have stood, had
they tried it.

So much for the growth of law, the origin of Anglo-Saxon law, as we
understand it, and for representative government, and for the origin
of Parliament. I doubt if there was any giving of new law, anything
that we should call _legislation_, made by the English Parliament,
then called the Witenagemot, before the Norman Conquest. I have never
been able to find any. You find occasional announcements that the men
of Kent "shall have their liberties as they used to," and perhaps
there will be a statement of what those liberties were, in brief; but
it is always clearly meant that they are stating the law as already
existing. How, then, did they invent a legislature?

The Roman law, the whole Roman system, as you know, was absolutely
distinct, and distinct in two great principles which have lasted down
really into modern times, and still divide Continental countries
from Anglo-Saxon countries. What I call the first great principle is
universal law--the principle that no officer of government, no high
official, no general, no magistrate, no anybody, can do anything
against the law without being just as liable, if he infringed upon a
subject's liberty, as the most humble citizen. That is a notion which
does not yet exist on the Continent or any part of the world except
England and the United States, and the countries or colonies copying
after them. In Germany, for instance, Dr. Gierke tells me it exists
only partially and by a modern constitution. This is the first great
difference; and the second one is the notion that laws are made by the
people only, with or without representative government. The notion
of law as a custom is Teutonic; b