n his trial,
from rumor or suspicion alone, but upon the evidence of lawful
witnesses. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed of
his free tenement and liberties, or outlawed, or banished, or anywise
hurt or injured, unless by the legal judgment of his peers or by the
law of the land; and all who suffered otherwise in this or the two
former reigns shall be restored to their rights and possessions. Every
freeman shall be fined in proportion to his fault; and no fine shall
be levied on him to his utter ruin; even a villein or rustic shall not
by any fine be bereaved of his carts, ploughs, and implements of
husbandry. This was the only article calculated for the interests of
this body of men, probably at that time the most numerous in the
kingdom.

It must be confessed that the former articles of the Great Charter
contain such mitigations and explanations of the feudal law as are
reasonable and equitable; and that the latter involve all the chief
outlines of a legal government, and provide for the equal distribution
of justice and free enjoyment of property; the great objects for which
political society was at first founded by men, which the people have a
perpetual and unalienable right to recall, and which no time, nor
precedent, nor statute, nor positive institution ought to deter them
from keeping ever uppermost in their thoughts and attention.

Though the provisions made by this charter might, conformably to the
genius of the age, be esteemed too concise, and too bare of
circumstances to maintain the execution of its articles, in opposition
to the chicanery of lawyers, supported by the violence of power, time
gradually ascertained the sense of all the ambiguous expressions; and
those generous barons, who first extorted this concession, still held
their swords in their hands, and could turn them against those who
dared, on any pretence, to depart from the original spirit and meaning
of the grant. We may now, from the tenor of this charter, conjecture
what those laws were of King Edward, which the English nation, during
so many generations, still desired, with such an obstinate
perseverance, to have recalled and established. They were chiefly
these latter articles of Magna Charta; and the barons who, at the
beginning of these commotions, demanded the revival of the Saxon laws,
undoubtedly thought that they had sufficiently satisfied the people by
procuring them this concession, which comprehended the p