then was; and that phrase, or its later equivalent—­due process of law—­is discussed to-day probably in one case out of every ten that arise in our highest courts.  Many books have been written upon it.  To start with, it means that none of these things can be done except under law; that is, except under a lawsuit; except under a process in a court, having jury trial if it be a civil case, and also an indictment if it be a criminal case, with all the rights and consequences that attend a regularly conducted lawsuit.  It must be done by the courts, and not by the executive, not by the mere will of the king; and, still more important to us to-day, not by legislatures, not even by Parliament.  “We will sell to no man, we will deny or delay to no man, either right or justice,” needs no explanation; it is equality before the law, repeated in our own Fourteenth Amendment.

Lastly, we have in cap. 41:  “Merchants shall have safe conduct in England, subject only to the ancient and allowed customs, not to evil tolls”—­a forecast of the allowable tariff as well as of the spirit of modern international law.  Finally, there is a chapter on mortmain, recognizing that land might not be given to monasteries or religious houses, and particularly under a secret trust; the object being to keep the land, which made the power of the realm, out of the hands of the church.  As far as that part of it goes, it is merely historical to us, but it developed into the principle that corporations “which have no souls,” and do not die, should not own too much land, or have too much power—­and that is a very live question in the United States to-day.

One must not be misled by the generality of the phrase used in chapter 39, and think it unimportant because it looks simple.  It is hard for an American or Englishman to get a fresh mind on these matters.  We all grow up with the notion that nobody has the right to arrest us, nobody has the right to deprive us of our liberty, even for an hour.  If anybody, be he President of the United States or be he a police officer, chooses to lay his hand on our shoulder or attempts to confine us, we have the same right to try him, if he makes a mistake, as if he were a mere trespasser; and that applies just as much to the highest authority, to the president, to the general of the army, to the governor, as it does to a tramp.  But one cannot be too often reminded that this principle is peculiar to English and American civilization.  Throughout the Continent any official, any judge, anybody “who has a red band around his cap,” who, in any indirect way, represents the state—­a railway conductor, a spy, a station agent—­not only has the right to deprive you of your freedom, but you have no right to question him; the “red band around the cap” is a final answer.  Hence that extraordinary incident, at which all England laughed, the Kupenick robbery.  A certain crook who had been a soldier and was familiar with the drill and the passwords, obtained possession of an old captain’s