The Sun.
London, England, 1825-04-12 00:00:00

[MORNING POST.].

Those not acquainted with Mr. Hume's pe-
culiar notions of law may suppose that in the
Act of encouraging Combination, the repeal of
the Common Law upon that subject was a mere
accidental blunder of the lawgiver, and not a pre-
meditated radical innovation. But on the even-
ing that Mr. Secretary Peel moved for leave to
bring in the Juries' Laws Consolidation and
Amendment Bill, the Right . Hon. Gentleman
having stated that he did .not intend to meddle
with Common Law relative to .Juries, how did
Mr. Hume receive the intimation ? With no-
thing less than mingled regret and censure.
The Common Law he declared to be, in his
opinion, no Law at all ; and, notwithstand-
ing the marked sneers with which his friends
Dr. Lushington and Mr. Bright treated the
anunciation, the Honourable Member Proceeded
to inveigh against so harbarbous a relic of anti-
quity being retained in any modern Code pre-
suming to hope for his civilized-sanction. 'So it
is that Quackery " plays its fantastic tricks be-
fore flight Heaven," and that brazen Ignorance
contemns, and attempts to trample upon the pro-
foundest emanations of wisdom and the most
sacred shrines of justice. Should Mr. flume
[ again nbtain, leave- to legislate,_ we therefore
hope this notice of his fundamental opinions of
our most venerable [ and valuable laws will
serve as a warning to Parliament that some
poisonous reptile proviso lurketh in the clause's
of are the unguis in he rba which has
been discovered in the Combination Act. For
the benefit of the Honourable ;Gentleman him-
self, and to prove to him how absurd is his con.
clusion_that the Common .Law is no .law at all,
we subjoin an extract from the Reports,of the
Lords' Committees on the Peerage in 1820,
which ma..y. enlighten hiM a little on, the matter;
as it thence appears that the Cammon Law, as
well a..s the Statute Law—the unwritten as well
as the written laws, of the country, were so far
back as the reign of Henry- 111. considered
to have emanated from and to have been 'sane-
tioued by Parliainent. " kapPears (says the
Report, p. 96) from the •treirtise attributed to
Bracton (a learned Judge), that; the - laws of
England were at that time (600 years ago) prin-
cipally what in his treatise are termed 4 'Leger
Non' scriptus,' the foundation of what has since
been generally called the Common Law, as dis-
tinguished from the Statute Law of the realm.;
and this tends to confirm the conjecture, that
after the partial adoption, 1)y -the Conque-
I tor., of the Saxon law, and • before- the
reign of Edward the First, few changes
were made in the ordinary law of the land,
by any legislative provision. But from the,
treatise of Bracton it appears, that all the un-
written, as well as the written laws of the coun-
try, were considered as having emanated from the
same ,authority ; or, to use his words,, Con-
-Genscnsu Alf agnalum, et rdpubilece con;
O. •
mu=
,sponsione, aucloritate Regis, sive Prin.cipis,
prece4nte :' and he adds, that, the laws thus
established could not be alteredavithoutahe com-
mon consent and advice of those.by whose advice
consent they had beew made—,words which.
[ plainly infer an •acknowledged constitution of
4 legislative power, whose authority was supreme."

[MOUNING
How Vinglandris changed ! Her Ministers are
liberal, most liberal,,—her Ministerial Journalists,
that used to be the advocates of evtry oppressive
and unjustifiable measure of the Continental,
Despots, are now almost_ as greatly changed
,as
Ministers themselves. The Courier never treated
the French.Jacobins more irreverently than ~he
ttow.trrats the. ereat.Poivers. Really if we had
not the; file of our contemporary to refer to., so
complete is the transformation which has !Alm)
place, that we should. be , -alltiost...,terhpted ; to
doubt :our recollections . of.. the past.
use cannot altogether forget the past,
we ,forgive,. and . that ..is
,hetter..., .We hold
eat'-the-.right baud of:Sellowshiv.' -60. on as in
the fa lowrn ; part‘graph--tannt thA;,f:loly
Allies
with their, egregious folly, iiu,Aiti,king;they can
regulate the Continent without us. (By the bye,.

did not Mr. Canning once say something about
the preponderance of certain great Powers on the
'Continent, and that we must be contented
hereafter to move in our own orbit ?)—tell
them, that if they are like school-boys, who
give themselves a holiday without the con-
sent of their master, they must make up
their minds to be flogged like school-boys.—
But to the point. " Most of the Ministers, we
are told (says our contemporary), of the German
Princes to the Austrian Court, will return to
their respective countries while the Emperor is in
Upper Italy, but the Ministers of the ' Great
Powers, such as Russia, France,and Prussia,' have
received an invitation to go to-Milan about the time
that theEmperot will arrive in that city. How quiet-
ly the name of England is here thrust out of the list•
of the great Powers! What are we to infer front this?
That the remaining four—Austria;Russia,Prussia,
and France, have some business in hand, with
wl►?'ch they are well assured England will have
nothing to do, and, therefore, they do not think
it necessary to mention her at all. Perhaps this
Vienna article should he appended, by way of
explanation, to another article in the Quotidienne
of Friday last, which we have given in our ex-
tracts from the Paris Papers, where there is some
talk about • a quadruple A Mance, to watch over the
tranquillity of Europe.' The idea of these Royal
and Imperial conservators of European tranquil-
lity, electing themselves into such an office (sup-
posing so absurd air intention to exist) with a
perfect disregard of what England may approve
or disapprove, would be like school-boys giving
themselves a holiday without the consent of their
master. They might have their day ; but the
master would be sure to have his also."