BRITISH LAW

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 16212, 29 September 1924, Page 7

BRITISH LAW

THE NATION’S GREATEST GIFT. In enumerating possessions that are common to the United States, dominions, and Britain, we are prone to put language first (says the London Obser ver). But in every-day usage the ready intelligibility of the spoken and written word sometimes undoes its own work. It is common tongue which alone or principally determines community of outlook. That which, in main issues, holds the English-speak-ing communities together is the inheritance of English law, which is the inheritance of a moral attitude predisposing thought and feeling even in our own despite. From it descend a method of thinking, a method of society, and a,method of politics. The grain that grew in Westminster Hall is now sown in five continents. It has flourished and become diversified in transplantation. But however the varying course of history may have differentiated the practice of the heritors, their unity in this respect, judged 1 externally, is far more conspicuous and impressive than their diversity. There is the same unshakable and There is the same unstakable and instinctive conviction that reason and consent are the first and last safeguards of civilisation. There is the same determination to spread peace and liberty through the wider operation of law. This conception of law and its spread is the greatest gift which the English-speaking race can claim to have made to the world. There is no greater marvel in the atlas than the extesit of the territories over which the principle of order, founded ■through law upon freedom, has already been given effective supremacy. The world will move on from chaos or back accordingly as that principle is given a wider and wider international acceptance, and physical force is subordinated more and more strictly to the service of law. This is the principle to which the English-speaking peoples have committed their whole future.