Rash, arrogant, perfidious, irreligious, unquiet, he CHAR made a tolerable head of a party, but a bad VIII. king; and had talents fit to disturb another's go- A. D. vernment, not to support his own. A most striking 1216. contrast presents itself between the conduct and fortune of John, and his adversary Philip. Philip came to the crown when many of the provinces of France, by being in the hands of too powerful vassals, were in a manner dismembered from the kingdom; the royal authority was very low in what remained. He reunited to the Crown a country as valuable as what belonged to it before; he reduced his subjects of all orders to a stricter obedience than they had given to his predecessors. He withstood the papal usurpation, and yet used it as an instrument in his designs; whilst John, who inherited a great territory, and an entire prerogative, by his vices and weakness gave up his independency to the Pope, his prerogative to his subjects, and a large part of his dominions to the king of France.

CHAP. IX.

Fragment.-An Essay towards an History of the Laws of

THER

England.

and the

IX.

HERE is scarce any object of curiosity more CHAP. rational, than the origin, the various revolutions of human laws. Political

progress,

which threatened their entire destruction; softened CHAP. and mellowed by peace and religion, improved and,

exalted by commerce, by social intercourse, and that great opener of the mind, ingenuous science? These certainly were great encouragements to the study of historical jurisprudence, particularly of our own. Nor was there a want of materials, or help, for such an undertaking. Yet we have had few attempts in that province. Lord Chief Justice Hale's history of the Common Law is, I think, the only one, good or bad, which we have, But with all the deference justly due to so great a name, we may venture to assert, that this performance, though not without merit, is wholly unworthy of the high reputation of its author. The sources of our English law are not well, nor indeed fairly, laid open; the ancient judicial proceedings are touched in a very slight and transient manner; and the great changes and remarkable revolutions in the law, together with their causes, down to his time, are scarcely mentioned.

Of this defect I think there were two principal causes; the first, a persuasion hardly to be eradicated from the minds of our lawyers, that the English Law has continued very much in the same state from an antiquity, to which they will allow hardly any sort of bounds. The second is, that it was formed and grew up among ourselves; that it is in every respect peculiar to this island; and that

IX.