eas of justice, irrespective of the laws agreed
upon by kings, priests, and barons; and whatever principles they
uniformly, or perhaps generally, enforced, _and none others_, became
practically the law of the land as matter of course.[39]

Finally, on this point. Conclusive proof that the legislation of the
king was of little or no authority, is found in the fact _that the kings
enacted so few laws_. If their laws had been received as authoritative,
in the manner that legislative enactments are at this day, they would
have been making laws continually. Yet the codes of the most celebrated
kings are very small, and were little more than compilations of
immemorial customs. The code of Alfred would not fill twelve pages of
the statute book of Massachusetts, and was little or nothing else than a
compilation of the laws of Moses, and the Saxon customs, evidently
collected from considerations of convenience, rather than enacted on the
principle of authority. The code of Edward the Confessor would not fill
twenty pages of the statute book of Massachusetts, and, says Blackstone,
"seems to have been no more than a new edition, or fresh promulgation of
Alfred's code, or _dome-book_, with such additions and improvements as
the experience of a century and a half suggested."--_1 Blackstone_,
66.[40]

The Code of William the Conqueror[41] would fill less than seven pages
of the statute book of Massachusetts; and most of the laws contained in
it are taken from the laws of the preceding kings, and especially of
Edward the Confessor (whose laws William swore to observe); but few of
his own being added.

The codes of the other Saxon and Norman kings were, as a general rule,
less voluminous even than these that have been named; and probably did
not exceed them in originality.[42] The Norman princes, from William the
Conqueror to John, I think without exception, bound themselves, and, in
order to maintain their thrones, were obliged to bind themselves, to
observe the ancient laws and customs, in other words, the "_lex terrae_,"
or "_common law_" of the kingdom. Even Magna Carta contains hardly
anything other than this same "_common law_," with some new securities
for its observance.

How is this abstinence from legislation, on the part of the ancient
kings, to be accounted for, except on the supposition that the people
would accept, and juries enforce, few or no new laws enacted by their
kings? Plainly it can be accounted for in no oth