" Hume, ch. 11.
Edward the First confessed that the Great Charter was
substantially identical with the common law, as far as it went,
when he commanded his justices to allow "the Great Charter as the
Common Law," " in pleas before them, and in judgment," as has
been already cited in this chapter. 25 Edward I., ch. 1,
(1297.)
In conclusion of this chapter, it may be safely asserted that the
veneration, attachment, and pride, which the English nation, for
more than six centuries, have felt towards Magna Carta, are in
their nature among the most irrefragable of all proofs that it
was the fundamental law of the land, and constitutionally binding
upon the government; for, otherwise, it would have been, in their
eyes, an unimportant and worthless thing. What those sentiments
were I will use the words of others to describe, the words,
too, of men, who, like all modern authors who have written on the
same topic, had utterly inadequate ideas of the true character of
the instrument on which they lavished their eulogiums.
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