374 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. use to-day to explain what is meant by personal freedom are the precise equivalents of the plain, simple Latin terms of that age:
- NuUus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur." These words
were, moreover, employed in the thirty-ninth article to express an idea which was just as dear to the men of that time as it is to us, remote as was the prospect of its complete realization in 12 1 5. When they drew the famous thirty-ninth article that right was put first ; and Lord Coke remarks, — in his comment taries on the article, where he points out that the evils from the laws of the land are to protect the subject, are recited in the order in which they most afifect him, — ^that " this hath first place, because the liberty of a man's person is more precious to him than everything else that it is mentioned, and therefore with great reason should a man by law be relieved in that respect, if wronged." ^ Coke then discusses the meaning of the word " dis- seized," which he finds to include several varieties of rights, all of which may be included under the term '* property," — which, however, does not occur in the Magna Charta or in any of its con- firmations. According to Coke, this right is classified after that of personal liberty, because less sacred. Nevertheless, in the statute 28 Ed. III. c. 3, cited above, which is a confirmation of the thirty- ninth article in the original charter, the order of rights in the latter is reversed, property coming first, then personal liberty, then Hfe. It seems, however, that no great importance is to be attached to the arrangement. The essential point is that all the enactments cited — to which others might be added — declare three great funda- mental rights by prohibiting the doing of certain acts. Those rights are, perhaps, the most elementary and important rights conceivable, and are the ones with the development of which English constitutional history is chiefly concerned. They were brought together, and for the first time authoritatively and pub- licly announced to Englishmen as Englishmen in the thirty-ninth article of the Great Charter. At what period the rights in question took on their present nomenclature and began to be termed the rights of " life, liberty, and property" it is impossible to say with any precision. The terms themselves are probably as old as the language. It cannot be said that they are fortunate ones in this particular connection and combination, because their meaning is vague and uncertain 1 Second Institute, 54.
