Rouen. After the unction, Archbishop Baldwin handed to Richard I the sword of justice to the spirituality; the archbishop still gives a kingly sword "brought now from the altar of God by us the bishops and servants of God, though unworthy." In Shakespeare's picture of investiture, Gascoyne, the Lord Chief Justice, is thus given back the authority that had lapsed on the death of Henry IV :

"You did commit me:

For which I do commit into your hand

The unstained sword that you have us'd to bear.”

Helping to keep the peace might be set against breaches of the peace; Falstaff was told that Shrewsbury might be set against Gadshill. Henry VIII excused from service beyond the sea a man who was to assist in maintaining order in his county. The king's justiciar in the last resort is not a person learned in the law; in 1180 Henry de Lucy took prisoner William the Lion. What happened when a king could not keep the peace by strength of arms? Douglas, in the reign of James II, forbade anyone to obey the king's officers on pain of death. The men of the Isles burned and harried the country wherever they came or went, and spared neither young nor old. In the days of Henry VIII the Lord Deputy had to interpose with his armed power between Irish chieftains. In the reign of William III was fought the last open battle between two Scottish clans; in the time of Pitt armed resistance was made in Ireland to the judgment of the Courts of law.

Adam Smith, whom most people would regard as an apostle of peace, declared all improvements in Russia might be traced to the establishment of a standing army. It was in his opinion an instrument which executed and maintained all the reforms of Peter the Great. That degree of peace, which that country has ever since enjoyed internally, is altogether owing to the influence of that army. In England the story of the establishment of

a citizen army goes side by side with the better administration of justice. As William the Conqueror summoned the juries of all the shires to declare the law, so he bade all landowners come and swear fealty to him in the great gemôt on Salisbury Plain; he introduced the inquest from Normandy and ascertained the resources of the kingdom on the oaths of men in the neighbourhood. Henry I sent itinerant judges among his people, and he it was who captained the English, encouraged by their voices to make no terms with those that broke the law: "Heed not these traitors"—our Lord King Henry. Henry II became the justiciar of Stephen, putting down the barons who had usurped the royal rights. He again sent the justices on their iters, and that they might have force enough behind them to bring powerful offenders to justice, saw to it that by the Assize of Arms every freeman was adequately armed. The Statute of Winchester enforced the hue and cry from town to town and county to county; the village bailiff was enjoined to see that every man had the armour which the law required him to possess; he became a petty constable or captain. The constables were to report to the justices of the peace, whose office was derived from that of the guardians of the peace elected in the County Court; constables commanded a hundred infantry in war; the duty of both was to prevent riots and forcible entries.

With these facts in his mind, it was clear that the Attorney-General could do no less than advise George III that force could be used to suppress the Gordon Riots. If social history were taught, neither king nor cabinet would have needed a legal opinion. There is a popular belief that the Riot Act must be read before soldiers can be used. Lord Chief Justice Tindal, in charging the Grand Jury at Bristol in 1832, reminded an age that had forgotten what every citizen had known in ruder times. "The law acknowledges no distinction between the soldier and the

private individual; the soldier is still a citizen, lying under the same obligation, and invested with the same authority to preserve the peace of the king as any other subject. If the one is bound to attend the call of the civil magistrate, so is the other. If the one may interfere for that purpose when occasion demands it without the requisition of the magistrate, so may the other too. Still further, by the Common law, not only is each private subject bound to exert himself to the utmost, but every sheriff, constable, and other peace officer is called upon to do all that in them lies for the suppression of riot, and each has authority to command all other subjects of the king to assist them in that under the king."

If there had been judges in the time of Athelstan, so would have been the charge to the jury, when the Danes broke out, or the Welsh came into the land, or the king's peace was in any way broken.

Every man, the judge would have said, is obliged to attend the assembly, to assist in the work of justice; if he refuses to attend the chief men of the neighbourhood are to ride to him, and take all that he has. If any one will not ride with his fellows he must pay the penalty for contempt. The peace is to be proclaimed in the assembly towards all that the king will to be in the peace. If any man breaks the peace the chief men of the burgh are to ride to the offender and take all that he has; half of this is to go to the king, and half to the men who are in the riding; if he resist it is lawful to kill him. If any one will avenge him then be he foe to the king and all his friends.

This is the historic law of England which, except for the voluntary enrolment of special constables, has been whittled down to apply only to the military and to the police; and unfortunately so, for when every citizen was responsible for the execution as well as for the making of the law, breakers of the peace did not seem to be merely

at odds with a posse of police or a detachment of soldiers, but to be foes to the king and all his friends. Still further this weakening of the national memory affects the lawmaking assembly, which thus forgets that it is derived from the armed assemblies that among all the free nations of the north met not only to consider the questions of peace and war, the declaration and amendment of the customs of the race, but also the administration of justice. Arms were given to the freeman; the presentation of weapons set the slave at liberty; social life depended on the courage of each man and his neighbours, and justice rested on the armed citizens; in the armed assemblies the kings were chosen; in the House-things was the commencement of political liberty; they became in England the hustings of election. With this derivation from arms the House of Commons tended to become the law-making assembly as well as the only body that could impose taxation; they are there to change the law because they represent the suitors without whose voice no man can be condemned in the local Courts. Because they make the law they are there to enforce it; in them are present the men of all the shires to over-awe powerful offenders as it was their duty to do in their own county courts. Every one has to satisfy the tax-gatherer because the tax-payers are the effective force of the Crown; every one, but most of all the national representatives, is bound to see that grievances are redressed, since, as the Great Charter recognises, war is the only way to redress an intolerable grievance; and when once it has been removed all subjects are bound to assist in keeping the king's peace or in the words of the Charter "to obey the king as before."

KENELM D. COTES,

II. MOB-LAW.

We have the law Divine, natural law, civil law, the law of nations or international law, but they are as the pebbles on the beach in comparison with the law of the mob. They are the teachings of Holy Writ: they are the evidence of harmonious creation; they are the wisdom and philosophy of great and wise men in all ages of the world's history; they are the result of universal habit and custom; they form the rule and guidance of our political and social life, and yet they become but as broken reeds when once set at defiance by the wild and riotous demands of the howling mob. The voice of the mob over-rides all wisdom and sets at nought all prescribed rules of human conduct. Mob-law ordinarily means fire, pillage, destruction, and death. It is a grim and deadly enemy to all order; it knows no master : it is wild, desperate and uncontrollable, and while its fury lasts it rests like a pall over the land. Sometimes, however, the mob is gentle and peaceful and sways its mighty force unarmed and without bloodshed, and, as a strange corollary, out of the mob's wake often rises order, health, happiness, and the wealth and the prosperity of nations.

Mob-law is sometimes the champion of popular rights and the defender of oppression, in which case its ends in the minds of the populace justify its means, and it is encountered under the disguise of patriotism. The word mob-law is distasteful-it has not an agreeable sound-but although you may change its dress you cannot alter its character or substantial and distinctive features. Sometimes it is a riot which is defined to be a disturbance of the peace by few or many persons. Sometimes it is an insurrection, which is said to be the active and open hostility against any constituted government or authority by a considerable number of persons. Sometimes it is called a revolution, the exact meaning of which, according to lexicographers, is a