58 



Who first founded Malmeshury ? 



East, probably about the era of Abraham, certainly very many 

 centuries before the Christian era. No allusion to Judaism, the 

 Greek and Latin mythologies, or to Christianity is to be met with in 

 them. They are manifestly the code of a patriarchal state of society, 

 and of a purely Monotheistic religion. They used to be learnt by 

 heart by all the students in the Druidic Colleges, one requisite of a 

 Druidic Law being " that it should be intelligible to all the people. " 

 When we remember the gross folly and inhumanity — I may say 

 the brutality — of many of our own modern Laws till a very recent 

 date, such as the enactments of hanging a man for stealing a sheep 

 or a horse, in common with committing a murder, we shall perhaps 

 be amazed at the very different spirit which breathes in this earliest 

 Legislation of our Island, nor shall we be less surprised at the high 

 tone of civil liberty, which animates this " Code Malmud " of one 

 of the three Sovereign Benefactors of Britain — a title which the 

 mildness and beneficence of its maxims amply justifies. I quote a 

 few specimens. 



"There are three tests of Civil Liberty, viz., Equality of Rights — 

 Equality of Taxation — Freedom to come and go. 



"There are three things which are private and sacred Property 

 to every man, Briton or Foreigner — his wife, his children, his 

 domestic chattels. 



" There are three things belonging to a man which no Law of 

 men can take or transfer — his wife, his children, and the instru- 

 ments of his calling, for no Law can unman a man or uncall a calling. 



"There are three persons in each family exempted from all 

 manual or menial work — the little child, the old man or woman, and 

 the family instructor. 



" There are three Orders against whom no weapon can be bared — 

 the herald, the bard, the Chief of the Clan. 



" There are three of private rank against whom no weapon can 

 be bared — a woman, a child under fifteen, and an unarmed man. 



" There are three civil birthrights of every Briton — the right to 

 go wherever he pleases, the right wherever he is to protection from 

 his land and sovereign, the right of equal privileges and equal 

 restrictions. 



