_, and also _such of
the Danish_ (customs) as were reasonable and approved, into the _West
Saxon Lage_, which was still the ground-work of the whole. And this
appears to be the best supported and most plausible conjecture, (for
certainty is not to be expected,) of the rise and original of that
admirable system of maxims and unwritten customs which is now known by
the name of the _common law_, as extending its authority universally
over all the realm, and which is doubtless of Saxon parentage."--_4
Blackstone_, 412.

"By the _Lex Terrae_ and _Lex Regni_ is understood the laws of Edward the
Confessor, confirmed and enlarged as they were by William the Conqueror;
and this Constitution or Code of Laws is what even to this day are
called '_The Common Law of the Land_.'"--_Introduction to Gilbert's
History of the Common Pleas_, p. 22, _note_.]

[Footnote 41: Not the conqueror of the English people, (as the friends
of liberty maintain,) but only of Harold the usurper.--See _Hale's
History of the Common Law_, ch. 5.]

[Footnote 42: For all these codes see Wilkins' Laws of the Anglo-Saxons.

"Being regulations adapted to existing institutions, the Anglo-Saxon
statutes are concise and technical, alluding to the law which was then
living and in vigor, rather than defining it. The same clauses and
chapters are often repeated word for word, in the statutes of subsequent
kings, showing that enactments which bear the appearance of novelty are
merely declaratory. Consequently the appearance of a law, seemingly for
the first time, is by no means to be considered as a proof that the
matter which it contains is new; nor can we trace the progress of the
Anglo-Saxon institutions with any degree of certainty, by following the
dates of the statutes in which we find them first noticed. All arguments
founded on the apparent chronology of the subjects included in the laws,
are liable to great fallacies. Furthermore, a considerable portion of
the Anglo-Saxon law was never recorded in writing. There can be no doubt
but that the rules of inheritance were well established and defined; yet
we have not a single law, and hardly a single document from which the
course of the descent of land can be inferred. * * Positive proof cannot
be obtained of the commencement of any institution, because the first
written law relating to it may possibly be merely confirmatory or
declaratory; neither can the non-existence of any institution be
inferred from the a