THE LAW OF THE LAND.

A COMMON phrase this-the "Law of the Land." Most familiar and household-like its sound-grave and dignified in its meaning, and sonorous in its twang. People talk of the law of the land solemnly and sententiously, as of something perhaps a little mystic and obscure; but good, great, just, benevolent as a God, and mighty as a God.

The law of the land! It comes glibly off the tongue. Orators prate of it fluently; judges lay it down solemnly. It is a received and venerated phrase; a most hallowed collocation of words. And no one seems to know or to think of the world of satire it contains.

Yes, satire,-keen, biting, trenchant satire. It tells a mighty, and a sad truth most unconsciously; reveals the nakedness of the deformity it would cover; tells our laws and our law-makers what they are how they have cheated us-and in all the most unsuspected formula of words.

The law of the land. Interpret the sentence-the law for the land-the law so affectionate to the owners of the land-the law which is proud to surround acres with a triple shield, while it leaves weak industry unprotected-the law made by landowners for the benefit of landowners-the law, their willing tool, their useful slave-the law which stints out the food of the poor for the "landed interest, "which creates fictitious crime for the landed interest the law made by land for land-exalting land, lavishing upon it all tenderness, blessing it with all immunity,-verily, the law of this country is the "Law of the Land !"

Ages ago, when England was little but a broad forest-when deer, and wolves, and wild-boars ranged where cities now standthe law of the day, such as it was, was made by landowners for their order. Feudal castles-those chivalric receptacles for stolen goods-started up. Banditti, as ignorant as brutal-the titled thieves from whom our aristocracy are proud to trace their descent -waged war upon honesty, and industry, and weakness; and made laws too, enacted measures especially designed for their own disinterested purposes, established criminal codes as enlightened

as themselves, and administered them as humanely as they were conceived philosophically.

Such were our first legislators. From the land sprung our national code. In the land it is still rooted, and the land it still shelters. Nations suffer from hereditary legislation as individuals from hereditary disease; the first feature of acre legislation is its hereditary character. The landowners took care not only to make laws, but to leave their descendants the privilege also. The right of plunder was a precious heir-loom. It has descended from those who imposed the forest-laws to those who imposed the corn-laws; from the tyrant of white serfs to the holder of black slaves. It is the spell which crushes the many to exalt the few; it is the hereditary curse; the evil which clings to us; cramping our energies, blighting our prospects.

Class legislation means no more or less than robbery committed under the sanction of forms of law. And in the long bead-roll of our laws, how few there are to be found which do not spring from class legislation-from one class legislation-from land legislation? Landowners have always been our legislators; the inevitable consequence has been that our laws have been framed for the benefit of land. True, this is what was to have been expected. Man is selfish-selfishness, like other bad passions, grows by what it feeds on. Our original legislators had a tolerably fair stock when they commenced operations, and, God knows, it has had plenty of food to batten upon since.

We say, then, that all our interests have been sacrificed to that of land; the simple question of who were our legislators? we propound to any who deny the assertion. Landowners had the

wand in their possession, and for their own benefit they waved it.

Let us trace then some of the results of their handiwork, let us prop the charge with evidence; let us look to the blessings of a landed aristocracy possessing political power, of which Parliament was once entirely composed; and which is still supreme in one House, and strong-very strong-in the other. And here let us not be met by the cant objection of the sinfulness of arraying one class against another. We shall array one class against another when one is right and the other is wrong. We battle for freedom of labour, for natural political right, in behalf of unprotected industry, of the toiling, suffering people of England. If any come forth to meet us, then God help the right! but to shrink from the contest, to talk of hollow peace when wrongs have to be'

redressed, when grievances have to be smitten, is not humane and magnanimous, but cowardly. We are of the people; our sympathies are with the people. Let the magnates of the land "stand by their order." We shall stand by ours.

The first foreshadowing of our Parliament was the "Great Council" of the Norman barons. The imagination flies easily back to that formidable assembly. Grouped beneath the arched roofs of castle halls, we can see in fancy the mailed warriors glittering in brass and steel, attended by their standard-bearers and men-atarms; the whole assembly a blaze of warlike and heraldic pomp : we can fancy the short, stern speeches, more like words of command than orations, which proclaimed the birth of the landed legislation; that might was right would be the motto of the senate, and from such a legislature the law of the strong hand issued naturally forth. These our first legislators were the men who built thick-walled fastnesses,-those massive keeps of which one of the Scottish Jameses well said, that their constructors were thieves in their hearts; and not only in their hearts, but in their deeds. In the dungeons of these chivalric palaces many a wretch died of slow torture, unrelentingly applied to drag from him the secret of the hiding-places of his wealth. Within their vast battlements lived serfs, the iron-collared goods and chattels of their proprietors. The desert forests and moors which formed England were the scene of continued pillage where anything was to be plundered; of continued cruelty and death when any wretch dared to come between the aggressor and his spoil. And this was the dawning of Merrie England. And such were the men who made its first laws.

Let us look at some of the oldest of them. It was the law of this land in which we live that a peer had the privilege of committing any crime with immunity for the first time. The fact was, of course, that he could commit it with immunity any number of times, provided it did not chance to interfere with the convenience of another peer. But the theory of the law pardoned guilt only Proud privilege of Parliament! with your sacred members once killing was no murder-one shedding of blood was no shedding. The luxury of crime was only to be enjoyed by the aristocracy, and perhaps the priesthood-witness the "benefit of clergy"—and even bounds were theoretically set to that, in order, we suppose, that frequent indulgence might not blunt the savour of the morsel. Murder was a dear bonne bouche when permitted

once.

for the first time-it of course had the additional flavour of forbidden fruit when enjoyed for the second.

But although our peers granted crime-dispensations to themselves, they took very good care to be more strict in looking after the morals of the canaille below them. For an unprivileged mortal in any way to attack them or their lackeys was an offence to be far more severely visited than were the assault committed merely upon the fellow of the aggressor. As times became more learned as Captain Pen began to crow up a yet feeble note of defiance to Captain Sword-the peers surrounded themselves with a formidable defence of libel laws. To libel a plain squire was an offence, but to libel a Lord-heaven help us!—was a dreadful thing. There was wisdom, however, in the arrangement—men most liable to attack ought to be the most careful in guarding against it. The peers felt themselves in this situation; and as their "order" and their policy would naturally be impugnedthey having the power-as naturally took care to prevent it. Well, times became commercial as well as literary, and a curious custom, frequently repudiated in practice by our legislators, arose of men paying their debts. In order to guarantee that this should be done, a power was given to the creditor over the body of the debtor. It was the rude means of rude times. But the legis lators took care that their precious carcasses should have a bill of exemption. "Should they," as one of them said, "muddle away their fortunes in paying tradesmen's bills?"—of course not. There is one large class who have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them, and another, somewhat smaller, who have little to do with the laws but to make them. The vulgar debtor must pay or go to prison-the Lord or the Member must neither do the one thing nor the other. And here the advantage is manifest of being a real Lord, instead of a mere Member of the Commons of England. Your M. P., like Achilles, is vulnerable in the heel of parliamentary dissolution. Visions of bailiffs may flock round him, conjured up by the crash of the shutting doors of St. Stephen's. The King's Bench may fill as the ministerial and opposition benches empty. But your Lord has to dread no such vulgar consummation—once a Lord always a Lord—once a debtor he may be always a debtor, for all the powers spunging-houses have to compel him to quit the character. Could legislative flesh and. blood be pent within four noisome walls like that of ordinary men and women? Powers of Gentility forbid! Should one subject of

England be placed upon the same footing with respect to the law as another? Powers of Equity forefend ! The dungeon for the -but the sunny air for the peer; the creak of bolts for the one- -the chink of borrowed money sends back no such fearful echo to the ears of the other.

man

But, thank God, this is a state of things which is mending. The power of imprisoning the humble debtor will soon be added to the laws against witchcraft-the provisions for curing scrofula by the spell of Royal fingers, and various other shining evidence of the wisdom of our ancestors. The people are physically being brought up to the level of the peers-but the peers are morally being brought up to the level of the people. Imprisonment for debt will soon exist no longer either for peer or peasant. And here let us do justice to all men. The last great step taken in this direction was taken by the peers; but it was proposed, urged and carried, not by "the tenth transmitter of a foolish face,' but by a man who, whatever he is in some respects now, was once a commoner and a democrat, and still bears in his composition some of the leaven of a vrai enfant du peuple.

But the dens where men who owed money to their fellows could be cast, would have been long since beaten down but for the peers. They systematically resisted every attempt to mollify the strongent law. Through their imperious will, many a wretch has rotted debt-pent in the jails of England. The representatives of the land of England-the House of Lords, and we may add the Tory benches of the House of Commons, stuck long to their privileges. In 1783, and in the three following years, a series of measures passed the Lower House-not for the purpose of abolishing, but modifying, soothing, softening the rigours of the harsh law. The Lords threw them out. Protected themselves, would it not be making the ægis less precious to extend its influence to others? In 1787 there were three thousand poor debtors languishing in the jails of England; the Lords, in answer to the Commons' supplication in their behalf, told them to languish on.

And as with imprisonment for debt, so with nine-tenths of the unjust, impolitic laws with which we are or were oppressed. As they owed their birth to landowners, and were intended for their benefit, so every attempt at their modification or repeal was resisted by the landowners represented in the peers of England. Sometimes we see them standing by royalty-sometimes ranged against