Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Saturday, December 14, 2019

So long Andrew Sheer!

It’s no wonder Canada’s Conservatives failed to gain enough seats for a majority in Parliament following the October election.  Their campaign slogan (It’s time for you to get ahead) had all the karma of a Walmart store motto: “Save money.  Live Better.”

Friday, December 13, 2019

Lessons for Xi Jinping: Habeas Corpus and “The Petition of Right” (1628)


And where also by the statute called, ‘The Great Charter of the Liberties of England[1],’ it is declared and enacted that no freeman may be taken or imprisoned or imprisoned or be deseised of his freeholds or liberties, or his free customs, or be outlawed or exiled; or in any manner destroyed, but by the lawful judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land:

And in the eight and twentieth year of the reign of King Edward the Third, it was declared and enacted by authority of Parliament, that no man of what estate or condition that he be, should be put out of his lands or tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disherited, nor put to death, without being brought to answer by due process of law:

Nevertheless, against the tenor of the said statutes, and other the good laws and statutes of your realm, to that end provided, divers of your subjects have of late been imprisoned without any cause showed, and when for their deliverance they were brought before your justices, by your Majesty’s writs of Habeas Corpus, there to undergo and receive as the court should order, and their keepers commanded to certify the causes of their detainer; no cause was certified, but that they were detained by your Majesty’s special command, signified by the Lords of your Privy Council, and yet were returned back to several prisons, without being charged with anything which they might make answer according to the law ….[2]

They do therefore humbly pray your Most Excellent Majesty, that no man be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge without common consent by Act of Parliament; and that none be called to make answer, or take such oath, or to give attendance, or be confined, or otherwise molested, or disquieted concerning the same, or for refusal thereof; and that no freeman, in any such manner as is before-mentioned, be imprisoned or detained [3]

“The Petition of Right” (excerpts), June 7, 1628




[1] A reference to the Magna Carta, signed by King John on 15 June 1215.
[2] Samuel R. Gardiner, The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1628-1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889 [Franklin Classics Reprint]), pp. 2,3.  Emphasis added.
[3] Ibid., p. 4.

Thursday, December 5, 2019

Milton to Xi Jinping (a tweet)


Give me Liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to Conscience, above all Liberties.

John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)[1]



[1] John Milton, Milton’s Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, ed., Thomas Osborn (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1873), p. 64.