[!lemma=priesthood] [□]
[!lemma=priesthood] [□=□]
[!lemma=priesthood] [□ & □]
Throughout this Introduction , unless the contrary is expressly stated , or appears from the context , no reference is made to the position either of ( i. ) the Crown colonies , or ( ii . Under the foreign , and especially the French system , the form of laws , or in other words , of statutes , is permanently affected by the knowledge of legislators and draftsmen that any law will be supplemented by decrees . " / 2 / But when particular land was bound , the warranty went with it , even into the hands of the King , because , as Bracton says , the thing goes with its burden to every one . It may be well , therefore , to state with some precision why , to one who has studied the characteristics of federal government , it must seem in the highest degree improbable that Home Rule all round , or the federal solution , will be of any benefit whatever to any part of the United Kingdom . The dear statement which that work contains of the difference between our so-called " written law " and " our conventional constitution , " originally led me to seek for an answer to the inquiry , what may be the true source whence constitutional understandings , which are not laws , derive their binding power , whilst the equally vigorous statements contained in the same book of the aspect in which the growth of the constitution presents itself to an historian forced upon my attention the essential difference between the historical and the legal way of regarding our institutions , and compelled me to consider whether the habit of looking too exclusively at the steps by which the constitution has been developed does not prevent students from paying sufficient attention to the law of the constitution as it now actually exists . These advantages are surely not owing to the soil of this island , nor to the latitude in which it is placed ; but to the spirit of its laws , from which , through various means , the characteristic independence and industrious-ness of our nation have been derived . Is it credible that , for instance , the peoples of India will see with indifference this trusteeship pass from the hands of an Imperial Parliament ( which has more or less learned to think imperially , and in England has maintained the equal political rights of all British subjects ) into the hands of a new-made Imperial Congress which will 99 Sir Joseph Ward is an eminent colonial statesman ; he is also an ardent Imperialist of the colonial type . Meanwhile it is certain that understandings are not laws , and that no system of conventionalism will explain the whole nature of constitutional law , if indeed " constitutional law " be in strictness law at all .