Page:An introduction to Roman-Dutch law.djvu/62

 22 ‘In South Africa its tradition is continuous, its pre-eminence unchallenged. Bench and Bar have been trained to it. The best legal talent of the country has applied it in judgments or explained it in text-books. Far other has been its fate in Ceylon. Here it has been mangled by the Legislature, and administered by judges sometimes frankly contemptuous of its principles. And yet it lives! The local Bar is vigilant and active. The Bench has been adorned by at least one profound civilian. There are text-books. There are law reports almost continuous since 1821. In British Guiana these signs of activity have been absent. There are no text-books. There are no written records of judgments of earlier date than 1856. There are no reports, the series initiated in 1890 having been discontinued after four years' life. Upon a general view of the state of the Roman-Dutch Law in this Colony it may be said that except in the sphere of property and intestate succession not very much of it remains. What of it the Courts had spared the Legislature has quite lately set itself to destroy.’

Since these words were written events have tended to confirm them. The institution of the Union of South Africa and with it of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, which hears appeals also from the Supreme Court of Southern Rhodesia, will before long lead to the production of a body of statutory and judge-made law, in which the principles of the Roman-Dutch Law will be expounded and developed. It may be anticipated that under such auspices the Roman-Dutch Law will assume a completeness and a symmetry which it has failed to attain in previous ages. It will be a system in which the best elements of the Roman and the English Law will be welded together in an harmonious and indissoluble union. As the corpus of South African Law grows to maturity the old folios and quartos, which some of us have learnt to handle with a feeling almost of affection, will be less and less consulted.