silent. So also is Glanvil, an earlier writer than any of them, to wit, temp. H. 2. ; but his subject, perhaps, might not have led him to mention it. It was reserved for Finch, five hundred years after, in the time of Charles II., by a falsification of a phrase in the Year book, to open this new doctrine, and for his successors to join full-mouth in the cry, and give to the fiction the sound of fact. Justice Fortescue Aland, who possessed more Saxon learning than all the judges and writers before mentioned put together, places this subject on more limited ground. Speaking of the laws of the Saxon Kings, he says, "the ten commandments were made part of their law, and consequently were once part of the law of England; so that to break any of the ten commandments, was then esteemed a breach of the common law of England; and why it is not so now, perhaps, it may be difficult to give a good reason." Pref. to Fortescue's Rep. xvii. The good reason is found in the denial of the fact.

Houard, in his Coutumes Anglo-Normandes, 1. 87, notices the falsification of the laws of Alfred, by prefixing to them, four chapters of the Jewish law, to wit, the 20th, 21st, 22nd and 23rd chapters of Exodus; to which he might have added the 15th of the Acts of the Apostles, v. 23 to 29, and precepts from other parts of the scripture. These he calls Hors d'oeuvre of some pious copyist. This awkward monkish fabrication, makes the preface to Alfred's genuine laws stand in the body of the work. And the very words of Alfred himself prove the fraud; for he declares in that preface, that he has collected these laws from those of Ina, of Offa, Aethelbert and his ancestors, saying nothing of any of them being taken from the scripture. It is still more certainly proved by the inconsistencies it occasions. For example, the Jewish legislator, Exodus, xxi. 12, 13, 14, (copied by the Pseudo Alfred § 13) makes murder, with the Jews, death. But Alfred himself, Ll. ccvi. punishes it by a fine only, called a weregild, proportioned to the condition of the person killed. It is remarkable that Hume (Append. I. to his history) examining this article of the laws of Alfred, without perceiving the fraud, puzzles himself with accounting for the inconsistency it had introduced. To strike a pregnant woman, so that she die, is death by Exod.' xxi. 22, 23, and pseud. Alfr. § 18. But by the Ll. Alfred ix. the

offender pays a weregild for both the woman and child. To smite out an eye or a tooth, Exod. xxi. 24-27. Pseud. Alfred. § 19, 20, if of a servant by his master, is freedom to the servant; in every other case, retaliation. But by Alfred Ll. xl. a fixed indemnification is paid. Theft of an ox or a sheep, by the Jewish law, xxii. Exod. 1. was repaid five fold for the ox, and four fold for the sheep; by the Pseudograph § 24, double for the ox and four fold for the sheep. But by Alfred Ll. xvi. he who stole a cow and calf, was to repay the worth of the cow, and 40s. for the calf. Goring by an ox, was the death of the ox, and the flesh not to be eaten ; Exod. xxi. 28. Pseud. Alfr. § 21. By Ll. Alfr. xxiv. the wounded person had the ox. This Pseudograph makes municipal laws of the ten commandments: § 1-10, regulate concubinage; § 12, makes it death to strike, or to curse father or mother; § 14, 15, give an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe; § 19, sells the thief to repay his theft; § 24, obliges the fornicator to marry the woman he has lain with; § 29, forbids interest on money; § 28, 35, make the laws of bailment, and very different from what Lord Holt delivers in Coggs v. Bernard, and what Sir William Jones tells us they were; and punishes witchcraft with death, § 30, which Sir Matthew Hale 1. P. C. ch. 33, declares was not a felony before the stat. 1. Jac. c. 12. It was under that statute, that he hung Rose Cullender, and Amy Duny, 16. Car. 2. (1662) on whose trial he declared, "that there were such creatures as witches, he made no doubt at all; for 1st. The scriptures had affirmed as much. 2nd. The wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such persons -and such hath been the judgment of this kingdom, as appears by that act of parliament which hath provided punishments proportionable to the quality of the offence." And we must certainly allow greater weight to this position " that it was no felony till James's statutes," deliberately laid down in his H. P. C., a work which he wrote to be printed and transcribed for the press in his lifetime, than to the hasty scriptum, that "at common law, witchcraft was punished with death as heresy, by writ de heretico comburendo," in his methodical summary of the P. C. ра. ; a work "not intended for the press, nor fitted for it and which he de

6.

clared himself he had never read over since it was written." Preface. Unless we understand his meaning in that to be, that witchcraft could not be punished at common law as witchcraft, but as a heresy. In either sense, however, it is a denial of this pretended law of Alfred. Now all men of reading know that these pretended laws of homicide, concubinage, theft, retaliation, compulsory marriage, usury, bailment, and others. which might have been cited from this Pseudograph, were never the laws of England, not even in Alfred's time; and of course, that it is a forgery. Yet, palpable as it must be to a lawyer, our judges have piously avoided lifting the veil under which it was shrouded. In truth, the alliance between church and state in England, has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are; for instead of being contented with the surreptitious introduction of these four chapters of Exodus, they have taken the whole leap, and declared at once that the whole Bible and Testament, in a lump, make a part of the common law of the land; the first judicial declaration of which was by this Sir Matthew Hale. And thus they incorporate into the English code, laws made for the Jews alone, and the precepts of the gospel, intended by their benevolent author as obligatory only in foro conscientiæ; and they arm the whole with the coercions of municipal law. They do this, too, in a case where the question was, not at all, whether Christianity was a part of the laws of England, but simply how far the ecclesiatsical law was to be respected by the common law courts of England, in the special case of a right of presentment. Thus identifying Christianity with the ecclesiastical law of England.

In the already alluded to copy of this, sent to Thomas Cooper in 1814, the remainder of this, by what is clearly a long subsequent interpolation, is made to read as follows:

In doing this, too, they have not even used the Connecticut caution of declaring, as is done in their blue laws, that the laws of God shall be the laws of their land, except where their own contradict them; but they swallow the yea and nay together. Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the ten commandments should not be a part of the common law of England? we may say they are not because they never were made so by legislative authority, the document which has imposed that doubt on him being a manifest forgery."

TO COLONEL WILLIAM PRESTON.1

STAUNTON, Aug. 18, 1768.

DEAR SIR, I sit down to petition your suffrage in favor of a friend whose virtues and abilities have made him much to me, and will give him equal place in your esteem whenever you have an opportunity of becoming acquainted with them. The gentleman I speak of is the Rev. James Fontaine, who offers himself as a candidate for the place of chaplain to the House of Burgesses. I do not wish to derogate from the merit of the gentleman who possessed the office last, but I cannot help hoping that every friend of genius, when the other qualities of the competitors are equal, will give a preference to superior abilities; integrity of heart and purity of manners recommend Messrs. Price and Fontaine equally to our esteem, but in acuteness of penetration, accuracy of judgement, elegance of composition, propriety of performing the divine service, and in every work of genius, the former is left a great distance behind the latter. I do not ask your favor on a bare assurance of this from me, but from that knowledge of Mr. Fontaine's superiority, which you will obtain on enquiring of others. I have heard that the other has been possessed of the office; an argument which with you will need no confutation. These small preferments should be reserved to reward and encourage genius, and not be strowed with an indiscriminating hand among the common herd of competitors.2

1 From the original in the possession of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, of New York. This application met with no success, Rev. Thomas Price being continued in office.

RESOLUTIONS OF THE VIRGINIA HOUSE OF BURGESSES.1

Monday, the 8th of May, 9th GEO. III., 1769.

Resolved, Nemine contradicente, That a most humble and dutiful Address be presented to his Excellency the Governor, returning Thanks for his very affectionate Speech at the Opening of the Session;

Expressing our firm Attachment to his Majesty's sacred Person and Government, and a lively Sense of his Royal Favour, manifested by frequent Approbations of our former Conduct; by extending his Paternal Regard to all his Subjects, however remote ; and, by his gracious Purpose, that our Chief Governor shall, in future, reside among us;

Declaring, that we esteem, as a peculiar Mark of his Attention to our Happiness, the Appointment of his Lordship to preside over this Colony; and, that his Virtues and Abilities, manifested ever since his Arrival here, are to us the firmest Assurance, that Wisdom and Benevolence will distinguish his Administration;

Joining, in Congratulations on the Birth of another Princess, and the happy Restoration of her Majesty's Health;

Assuring his Excellency, that we shall, with Candour, proceed to the important Business on which we are met in General Assembly; and that, if in the Course of our Deliberations, any Matters shall arise, which may in any wise affect the Interests of Great-Britain, these shall ever be discussed on this ruling Principle, that her Interests, and ours, are inseparably the same; And finally, offering our Prayers, that Providence, and the Royal Pleasure, may long continue his Lordship the happy Ruler of a free and happy People.

1 From the Journal of the House of Burgesses for 1769, p. 4. It is the first of Jefferson's public papers, and in a letter to Wirt (Aug. 5, 1815) he writes of it: "On receiving the Governor's [Botetourt] speech, it was usual to move resolutions as heads to an address. Mr. Pendleton asked me to draw the resolutions which I did. They were accepted by the House, and Pendleton, Nicholas, myself and some others were appointed a committee to prepare the address. The committee desired me to do it, but when presented it was thought to pursue too strictly the diction of the resolutions, and that their subjects were not amplified. Mr. Nicholas chiefly objected to it, and was desired by the committee to draw one more at large, which he did with amplification enough, and it was accepted. Being a young man as well as a young member, it made on me an impression proportioned to the sensibility of that time of life."

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