Читать книгу Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John. With an Historical Introduction онлайн

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ssss1. Prof. Maitland, Township and Borough, p. 76, explains some of the absurdities involved: "Have you ever pondered the form, the scheme, the main idea of Magna Charta? If so, your reverence for that sacred text will hardly have prevented you from using in the privacy of your own minds some such words as ‘inept’ or ‘childish.’ King John makes a grant to the men of England and their heirs. The men of England and their heirs are to hold certain liberties of that prince and his heirs for ever. Imagine yourself imprisoned without the lawful judgment of your peers, and striving to prove while you languish in gaol that you are heir to one of the original grantees. Nowadays it is only at a rhetorical moment that Englishmen ‘inherit’ their liberties, their constitution, their public law. When sober, they do nothing of the kind. But, whatever may have ‘quivered on the lip’ of Cardinal Langton and the prelates and barons at Runnymead, the speech that came was the speech of feoffment. Law, if it is to endure, must be inherited. If all Englishmen have liberties, every Englishman has something, some thing, that he can transmit to his heir. Public law cannot free itself from the forms, the individualistic forms of private law."