Slavery Was Illegal Under English Common Law
By Bob Ryan
The left tells us that black slavery is unique to Anglo-Saxon culture. But the reality of the matter is that slavery was always illegal in its motherland, England. How so?
Going back to 1215, start with the fact that England became a unique nation in the world around the issue of individual rights.
That began with the Magna Carta, which established for the first time that a king, in this case, the hated King John, was forced to admit he did not have absolute power. It may have been at the proverbial end of a sword and broken soon after by King John, but he was the one who marked the wax and was carried through by every king and queen to follow with some ignoring their limitation at great cost to them.
It should have rippled throughout Europe to other powerful lords who wanted the power the English barons gained, instead it remained localized to England. After King John’s defeat by the barons, others of equal rank should have followed. Outside Britain, it never went anywhere.
There was a ripple that did happen, but not throughout Europe, and not immediately realized. It was a ripple through time that led to English Common Law being written. It was a system of laws that bound everyone. The Magna Carta started with the limiting of kings and queens who ruled Britain. It spread to other royals who could not claim they had absolute power when not even a king or queen could make that claim.
No one was above English Common Law throughout Britain. If not even a king or queen had absolute power, no one did.
In order for any British colony to legally exist, Common Law was required by London. It was the reason representative governments were set up, whether the powerful governors liked it or not. Any governor could be removed and replaced by London for any number of reasons, including dragging his feet on the matter of installing representative government.
Outside Common Law were various codes backed by various crowns and high-ranking people. Due to Common Law being the law of the land, the codes were not lawful. The only thing considered lawful was what was written in Common Law.
The codes were an attempt to bypass Common Law. They had no legal standing in the courts. For something to be legal, it had to be included in Common Law.
Slavery was one of those issues that was included in code, but never added to Common Law. Considering the penchant of peasants for rising up and killing royals in England, none would dare risk their lives to make slavery legal.
In 1772, Somerset v Stewart was heard by Lord Mansfield, the presiding judge in that case. It makes for an interesting case of code versus Common Law, since it was dealing with slave code over what was permissible under the Common Law.
From History on the Net, The Case of Somerset v Setwart:
“That famous case involved a slave from [J]amaica, James Sommersett, who escaped when his master brought him along on a business trip to England. After he was recaptured, Sommersett was placed in chains aboard a ship that was to take him to Jamaica to be sold. While still aboard the ship, however, Sommersett was brought by habeas corpus before the Court of King’s Bench.”
Lord Mansfield was known for being a stickler with the law. He was not the judge anyone on the side of slave codes wanted sitting in judgment over that case. Without slavery included in Common Law, they had no legal grounds, since codes were not law.
From the UK National Archives, The Somerset Case:
“The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law,…It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.”
The positive law Lord Mansfield referred to was something that had to be included in English Common Law. Since there had only been slave codes and never a word about slavery being included in Common Law, the slave codes as a whole were found to be illegal.
Thomas Hobbes had one of the most brilliant legal minds of his day. His book, Leviathan, continues to be studied, despite it being written in 1651. He wrote about what made positive law in his book.
From Britannica, Thomas Hobbes:
In his magnum opus, Leviathan (1651), he wrote that “law in general, is not counsel, but command” and that civil (i.e., positive) laws are “those rules which the common-wealth hath commanded…by word, writing, or other sufficient sign of the will” that certain actions are to be done or not done.
The entirety of English Common Law consisted of positive laws. Positive is not a reference to a moraly positive, but something that was legal.
Since there were no slave laws included in Common Law, there was no positive laws to support the abhorrent practice. Slavery had no legal foundation to exist anywhere in Britain.
Any law written in a given British colony had to follow Common Law, not codes. Any law passed in a colony that violated Common Law was an illegal law. Slavery should have been stamped out by London the moment a single colony made slavery legal.
The failure of London to act immediately after the first illegal code was written resulted in the horrors of slavery that followed elsewhere. Slavery was a clear violation of English Common Law, since it never included slavery as being permissible under any circumstances.
The only legal thing that could be done regarding lifelong servitude was if an indentured servant violated the law, which included running away. A servant, if found guilty of violating any law could have his contract extended for the entirety of the servant’s life. It did happen on occasion and was legally allowed under Common Law.
Lord Mansfield was a rarity in his time and any other. He had the courage of his convictions that English Common Law took precedence over code. He was the Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of his day. Someone who cared about law over everything else.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/slavery_was_illegal_under_english_common_law.html
Climate mania is costing Greek lives
Climate mania imposed by the eco-socialist elites has degenerated into a real drama in Greece, the cradle of Europe.
The alleged climate apocalypse is being touted by the mainstream Greek globalist media as the reason for drastically rising energy prices and thousands of citizens have been left to fend off the cold.
In the capital Athens, in the port metropolis of Piraeus as well as in other large cities, impoverished people are desperately trying to warm their freezing flats at least a little with old wood stoves or even charcoal grills. Often they start fires that eventually lead to fire disasters.
For example, sixteen people died in just one month, from 20 November to 20 December 2021 in such accidents. The youngest were just twelve and thirteen years old.
The reason for the fact that people, in their sheer desperation and fear of dying from the cold, are heating their homes with whatever they can get their hands on, is the drastically increased price of energy.
Natural gas, for example, has risen by almost 200 percent. Electricity has risen by as much as 300 percent. Electricity bills for two months, which normally amount to around 100 euros, are now running up to 300 euros, according to consumer associations. For the four-month final payments, even additional payments of up to 500 euros could be due.
The energy crisis in Europe is being manufactured according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, clearly in a bid to stop Russian gas from flowing through NordStream2. “You see what is happening in Europe. There is hysteria and some confusion in the markets. Why? Some people are speculating on climate change issues, some people are underestimating some things, some are starting to cut back on investments in the extractive industries. There needs to be a smooth transition.”
But the elites have focused on creating a flashpoint in former gas hub, Ukraine, to continue the process of energy inflation. This makes it possible for governments and large corporations to confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of citizens.
Meanwhile, the climate insanity of the German Greens, a party of Davos infiltrators, continue, while literally costing lives in Greece.
https://freewestmedia.com/2022/02/13/climate-mania-is-costing-greek-lives/
I, a non-Jew, stand with Eric Zemmour on Islam, not the church
by Giulio Meotti
A photo of a sign indicating the presence of a “space of silence for Muslim prayer” in the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris has aroused the ire of Catholic faithful and conservative commentators. This is the second largest church in Paris after Notre Dame, but the most important for Catholic worship, where Dan Brown filmed “The Da Vinci Code” and which in March 2019 was set on fire.
To relaunch the controversy, Gilbert Collard, supporter of Eric Zemmour,wrote: “We await the opening in the Great Mosque of Paris of a space of prayer so that Christians can pray for their brothers persecuted in the East!”.
It was a meeting “around the figure of Mary”. There was also the recitation of the Fatiha, the opening sura of the Koran. Imams announced Mohammed. Even important personalities of the French Church made themselves heard, such as Mathieu Raffray, professor of Philosophy at St. Thomas in Rome: “Conclusion of the ‘Islamic-Christian’ meeting in Saint Sulpice: a dance with teenagers in niqabs in the choir. Sadness and incomprehension in the face of so much ridicule “.
I don’t understand this much masochism …
I don’t understand why, for the first time in 700 years, Islamic songs and suras had to resound in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence under Brunelleschi’s Dome.
I do not understand why, in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, the Koran was heard at the ceremony for Fr Jacques Hamel, killed by the ISIS terrorists whose trial is being held in these days in Paris, where they defend the Sharia law.
I don’t understand why Anglican bishops in England proposed that the coronation ceremony of the next king of England should open with the Koran.
I don’t understand why numerous mosques in France have received donations from Catholic dioceses (Tours, Auch and Bordeaux).
I don’t understand why the St Theodore Catholic Church in Cologne financed the Great Mosque.
I do not understand why, precisely in Saint-Étienne du Rouvray, Bishop Duval gave a piece of land bordering one of the churches in the city of Hamel to build the mosque there.
I don’t understand it, because if at the end of the 70s there were 200 mosques in France, today there are 2,500, a Muslim prayer hall opens every week at the rate of 50 per year and, on the contrary, the Catholic Church has only built 20 new churches in the past decade according to research by La Croix.
“Every two weeks in France a mosque is born and a church disappears,” said Edouard de Lamaze, president of the Observatoire du patrimoine religieux in Paris.
I do not understand this in the face of an Islamic world where, as in Hagia Sophia, Islamism is converting what were once great basilicas into mosques.
I do not understand it in the face of a black list of the countries that persecute Christians the most – and they are almost all Islamic countries – and of articles like the one just published in the New York Times and entitled “‘Now there is nobody’: the lament of one of the last Christians in a Syrian city”.
I do not understand this in the face of a series of attacks against Christian churches on French soil and elsewhere.
I do not understand this in the face of the killing, just four months ago, of an English Catholic parliamentarian inside a church by an Islamist.
I do not understand this in the face of Dalil Boubakeur, the imam of the Great Mosque of Paris, a “moderate”, who asked to transform empty churches into mosques.
If the alternative is this masochist of empty “dialogue” that I do not understand, go ahead with the iron battle of civilization of Eric Zemmour, the Jewish essayist independent candidate for the presidential elections. Guest of BFMTV, in front of Karim, a Frenchman of Muslim faith, Zemmour had the courage to defend the idea that his country remains that of churches rather than mosques, “for cultural reasons”.
He announced his intention to ban “mosques-cathedrals”, the large ones, so that “France remains a landscape of churches”. “In France I don’t want to hear the voice of the muezzin”, Zemmour said, because for “some Muslims” the great mosques mean “the conquest of French territory”.
I, a Catholic, stand with Jewish Zemmour and not with the Church.
With the voice of reason.
New French riot police unit violently repress anti-vaccine march
A new unit, the CRS 8 (FAR) which is specialised in urban violence was deployed on the Champs Élysées for the anti-vaccine demonstration on Saturday, February 12, 2022.
The Macron administration is escalating its response against citizens who are protesting for their freedom and against the Corona measures. In Paris, the new police unit took up positions with armored vehicles against peaceful marchers.
This is the first time these CRS units have been deployed to a demonstration. The CRS 8 is a new intervention force capable of intervening in 15 minutes within a radius of 300 km anywhere in France. It is a special unit that can be mobilized 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to intervene in the event of urban violence. But the demonstration in Paris was peaceful.
These are images that are more reminiscent of a deployment due to a terrorist attack or another catastrophe. They also show a totalitarian Corona state at war with its own people.
The special unit of 200 CRS specially trained in maintaining order and able to move very quickly to any point in the territory was launched in July last year by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin in Bièvres where it is stationed, southwest of Paris.
The minister pointed out that this unit could be “deployed in 15 minutes within a radius of 300 km in the event of serious disturbances to public order and urban violence” .
The creation of this unit, was ordered by the Director General of the National Police, Frédéric Veaux, to respond to the increase in “violent demonstrations and urban violence” particularly in medium-sized towns allegedly unfamiliar with this type of phenomena.
“A tool that is both flexible and mobile due to its organization, the CRS 8 will ensure rapid intervention with optimized means. It constitutes a new blade of the Swiss army knife of the Mobile Forces Units,” added the ministry.
These police officers will be mobilized 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and can be deployed anywhere in France and “with the exception of an operational emergency,” this unit is “will not stay in an intervention area for more than a few days”.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin promised at the launch that “if the CRS 8 demonstrated its usefulness and effectiveness, then there will be other CRS 8”. The prospect is a chilling one after viewing the scenes of extreme violence directed at peaceful citizens on Saturday.
Italy: Muslim stabs his pregnant boss because he doesn’t take orders from women
An Italian female boss who was five months pregnant was attacked by her Bengali employee who stabbed her with a pair of tailor’s scissors that were particularly sharp and attacked her several times. Repubblica reported that the man clutched the scissors like a dagger and said, “I don’t take orders from women, that’s enough”.
The serious incident occurred on Thursday morning at around 9am in Via Santa Maria Auxiliatrice in Appio. It is only thanks to chance that the attack did not turn into a tragedy. Out of anger, 23-year-old Mohammed attacked the 38-year-old woman with the clear intention of killing her. The reason for the violence was explained by the 23-year-old himself: “In my country, we do not take orders from women. “Shopkeepers near the scene of the attack appeared on the street because they had been startled by cruel screams from a shop. Screams accompanied by absurd phrases echoed through the interior of a laundromat in Piazza Santa Maria Ausiliatrice.The 911 received numerous calls to intervene. Within a short time, police vehicles reached the scene here.
The Bengali’s murderous rampage was allegedly triggered by the woman who owned the shop asking him to carry out an order the shop had received from a customer. Following these instructions, the 23-year-old man, who had no criminal record and had until then been considered good-natured by his employer, took a pair of scissors and began stabbing the 38-year-old woman, who was five months pregnant, in the chest. When the victim defended herself against the first blow with her hand, she cut herself and began to bleed. Even injured, she was still trying to disarm the man, who was about to hit her again, when he was stopped by the homeowner’s husband, who by chance came into the laundry room, grabbed him from behind and pulled him away.
For a few seconds, a scuffle broke out between the two opponents, but the victim’s husband was victorious. Mohammed then decided to flee the shop and took to the streets. Police who arrived at the scene gave chase to the Bengali while medical personnel treated the woman and took her to a hospital as a precaution, also to check the condition of the baby she was bearing. The attacker was spotted a few kilometres away from the scene of the crime, in Piazza Cantù. After being arrested, he was handcuffed and taken to the police station where he was charged with aggravated assault and is awaiting trial. Il Giornale
Horror! Macron Police Hurl Tear Gas at Customers Inside Paris Cafe — Chase Hundreds of Freedom Protesters Down the Street (VIDEO)
Muslim organisation calling for the killing of Jews protests in prisoner’s clothing in Hamburg, Germany
Unusual images at the Jungfernstieg: On Saturday, people protested there in prisoner clothing and with their hands tied. The action was meant to draw attention to the Uyghurs in re-education camps in China. Behind the demo organisers is “Muslim Interaktiv” – a group that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has under surveillance.
Around 140 people gathered for the protest at Jungfernstieg at noon on Saturday. The organisers had called for the demonstration under the slogan “China, Olympics, Uyghurs” to draw attention to the situation of Muslim Uyghurs in China.
According to estimates by human rights activists, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs are interned in re-education camps there. There, they are reportedly forced to abandon their culture and religion.
The protest in Hamburg’s city centre on Saturday, on the other hand, does not appear to be backed by democrats. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution warns against the group “Muslim Interaktiv”. “Muslim Interaktiv takes up current and socially relevant issues in order to exploit them for their own ends,” says the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, explaining the group’s approach. Muslim Interaktiv” is close to the banned “Hizb ut-Tahir” (HuT), which calls for the killing of Jews and, according to the report, wants to enforce political goals with violence.
https://www.mopo.de/hamburg/ungewoehnliche-protestaktion-in-hamburg-das-steckt-dahinter/
Criminal Canadian Monopoly: Dr. David Martin Exposes Why Trudeau Won’t Back Down
We Are All Truckers Now
By Sally Zelikovsky
As momentum from the Freedom Convoy in Canada mounts and works its way into the US, and similar convoys spring up in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, people are collectively standing up to two years of COVID restrictions, lies, misery, and abuse at the hands of our government masters. And we owe it all to Canada’s truckers. Oh, Canada’s truckers! We love you!
But it’s not just the truckers. It’s their families traveling with them. It’s the ordinary citizens bringing them fuel, hot drinks, and meals. It’s the throngs of people braving the cold and raising maple leaf flags in solidarity. It’s those sitting on the sidelines, cheering them on—hoping they don’t cave; praying they continue to resist. It’s the non-MSM journalists actually interviewing truckers and hearing their well-articulated grievances for the first time and revealing that, it turns out, they aren’t the Nazis, terrorists, racists, white supremacists, small fringe minority, or Neanderthals the Trudeau-Biden elites would have you believe.
The truckers make a clear case for freedom. They understand tyranny when they see it. As trucker after trucker emerges as Sikh, Jew, Black, Asian, Ukrainian, and regular white guy, they scoff at the simplistic and over-used, now ho-hum and fully anticipated, fabricated accusations that they are racist terrorists. Those who came to the West from far lands are afraid, however, that the misery and oppression they left behind in their home countries are coming to their adopted homelands.
No hoods. No swastikas. No Confederate flags. Those are all just government-fed fictions.
And what’s the reaction of the officials both in Canada and the US? To pressure GoFundMe to cancel the $10 million raised for the Freedom Convoy; freeze out truckers and their children by having police remove their fuel cans in sub-freezing weather; arrest an old man for honking his horn; and starve out truckers and their families by threatening to arrest people who bring them food and drink. Meanwhile, the Biden administration and Pete Buttigieg plot to find alternate routes around bridges facing long delays because of the truck convoy and the state of Michigan brandishes the possibility of forcibly removing the big rigs and their supporters from the Ambassador Bridge.
Oh, let’s not forget the Department of Homeland Security promising to investigate as a domestic terrorist anyone who articulates viewpoints about COVID at variance with official government agitatsiya—attempting to thwart a US convoy before it even starts. You got that? That’s an unconstitutional prior restraint on expression if you ask me.
Forget the politicians. They’re worthless. But the police both in Canada and the US are going to have to decide if they want to support those fighting for the right to live free or be the jackboots and brown shirts of fascists past, robotically doing the bidding of their masters.
This is no longer run-of-the-mill law enforcement—to protect and serve, ensuring peace and safety of the citizenry. This is about our governments using a virus as an excuse to restrict our ability to work, live, travel, speak, pray, and parent; as a cudgel to exert power over our lives; and to spread disinformation to keep us living in fear and pitting us against one another. The police are being used to arrest and detain law-abiding, hard-working, tax-paying citizens whose views on COVID the authoritarians don’t like, but who have been forced to the brink and have no choice but to take bold (but peaceful and lawful) action to regain their lives and liberties.
So many have been champing at the bit waiting to do something—anything—to stop the insanity. But too many have been intimidated by the Biden administration’s persecution of the J6ers and ongoing threats from DHS that differing viewpoints about COVID or the 2020 election will be treated as mis-, dis-, and mal-information. This intimidation is intentional.
But the truckers took the initiative and freed us from those fears. It had to be them. They were the ones destined to take action because not only did they work during the plandemic to keep us heated, fed, and medicated, but they also essentially control the supply chain. No truckers? The supply chain collapses. They are the only ones who could force the government’s hand—just as America’s parents were the only ones who could stop the CRT curriculum, LGBTQ grooming, and damaging COVID mandates in our schools.
If the government arrests all the truckers—who will deliver our food? If the government allows the convoy, who will deliver our heating oil? If the government prevents them from assembling and protesting, the truckers have made it clear they will not resume driving and delivering. They will not yield until the mandates are history. It’s their way or the highway. They are the purple squirrels for this job.
They swooped down out of nowhere to stand between us and the government. And so it is incumbent on all of us to support them—whether we make a donation at GiveSendGo, hang a Canadian flag from our front porch, get in the car and join the anticipated US convoy to DC, bring them food, or cheer them on from the roadside. This is how the plandemic ends.
And if this persists for a few months, so be it. If we can’t get all the supplies we need, we’ll make the best of it. Dig into our doomsday closet supplies. Stock up while we still can. Make sure we have enough medication for a few months.
In this Government vs. The People standoff, we will win. Elites have nothing but disdain for the very people they depend on to live—people who work with their hands so the elites don’t have to; who build their homes and buildings; manufacture just about everything they need; repair their electrical, plumbing, and heating systems; install their AC and repair their cars; care for their kids; deliver their food, fuel, building supplies, new ovens, whatever. Teachers, nurses, gas station attendants. The very people the left claims to care about are now domestic terrorists and racists. We’ll survive but the elites will fall apart.
We’ve lost so much: our loved ones, our health, our freedoms, our dreams, our jobs, our prosperity, and our humanity. We’ve lost the very essence of what it is to be an American or a Canadian.
This is our “let’s roll” moment. The truckers gave us this moment. Let’s not squander it because we are too busy or too scared. And we are legion. This movement is international and, unlike a worldwide Marxist movement, it’s a force for good. Truckers of the world, unite!
We’re all truckers now!
As for the rest of you? Truck you, you mother truckers!
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/we_are_all_truckers_now.html