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By the phrase "the law of the land," in chapter thirty-nine, the fundamental principles and axioms of the existing law were perpetuated. Exactly what those fundamental principles and axioms were then understood to be is not now capable of accurate exposition. The judges and the people of those days certainly had some definite ideas of reasonably just and fixed rules of conduct adequate for the solution of the simple questions arising in the controversies then being submitted for adjudication. Had the judges been pressed for a comprehensive or philosophical definition of "the law of the land," they might have said that they would not attempt to define the term any more than they would attempt to define justice itself, and that, as the Supreme Court of the United States declared only a few years ago, it is better to ascertain the intent of such an important phrase in a great constitutional document by the gradual process of judicial inclusion and exclusion as practical experience may dictate and as the cases presented for decision may require; in other words, that their decisions would in time sufficiently declare and perpetuate the principles of the law of