Note 114 — DIALOGUE V. ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT.

This casual remark seems to determine a famous dispute among the Antiquaries on the subject before us. Bishop Nicolson attended so little to this tralatitious use of words, in which all languages abound, that finding Laga in several places signified a country, he would needs have it that Camden, Lambarde, Spelman, Cowell, Selden, and all our best Antiquaries, were mistaken, when they supposed Laga ever signified, in the compositions here mentioned, a law. However, his adversaries among the Antiquaries were even with him; and finding that Laga, in these compositions, did signify a law in several places of our ancient laws, historians, and lawyers, deny that it ever signifies a country. Each indeed had a considerable object in view; the one was bent on overthrowing a system; the other on supporting it; namely, that famous threefold body of laws, the Danish, Mercian, and West-Saxon. It must be owned, the bishop could not overthrow the common system, without running into his extreme: it seems, his opponents might have supported it without running into theirs.