Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/64

 56 ROMAN LAW AND THE January happened between these dates, and revolutions of thought generally cause or are caused by corresponding changes in the world of action. Men had been introduced to the idea that for bringing order out of chaos in the matter of French and feudal usage there was much to be said for a law which was all-embracing and which knew nothing of peculiars, for a system which familiar- ized the nation with the notions of a princeps, whose will would bear with equal force on all,^ It was doctrine which Louis XI or Henry IV did not find distasteful and which Louis XIV was in his time to regard as common sense. If, however, the principles of Roman law told for centraliza- tion and for concentrated power, we must be careful, on the other hand, not to make the commentators outrun their principles and turn them into the theory-mongers of despotism by finding in their writings an analogy which, as a matter of fact, they never drew without some reservations. They were not pamphleteers even in the royal way in which Hooker might be called a pam- phleteer. It is true of all of them that they were first and foremost commentators. It is interesting, perhaps significant, that in the works of Alciat, Cujas, Duaren, Doneau, Connan, Brisson, and Denys Godfrey, the only royal dedications to be found are in Brisson's treatise De verborum qvjae ad ius pertinent significatione, which appeared in 1596 with a dedication to King Henry III, and in the tract on duelling which Alciat dedicated to Francis I, who after all had invited him to France from Italy. The alleged retort of Cujas to those who would embroil him in religious con- troversy has achieved renown : ^ while in analogous circumstances he writes expressing his reluctance to enter the arena, ' cogitans quam sit alienum a studiis meis congredi cum hominibus nullo alio quam maledicendi studio praeditis '.^ The standard of reserved severity which Cujas set himself caused comment at the time, but polemics, except legally internecine polemics, were not characteristic of the French civilians. But there is a more important reason for using caution in attributing to the French civilians too rigidly monarchic views. Some opinions they express themselves will show it. There is a passage in Alciat 's comments from the ancient jurisconsults eeu per indirectum conceditur nobilitaa quando aliquid confertur quod nobilitatem babeat annexam at regnum ducatos vel comitatus ' : Coruuetudinea Turonenaea, tit. 24. viii, gloss i. > Thus Duarene writing to Sebastian Albaspinaeos in 1560 of the complicated laws and procedure then administered in France, says, ' eo magis quia Romanum ius quod in manibus habemus ad amputanda semel huius Hydrae capita maxima idoneum eommodumque videtnr Hotman wrote in favour of a coda libellutn (luendam nuper editum Zachariae Furneateri avbdililio nomine.'
 * ' Nihil hoc ad edictum praetoris.'
 * 'Pro lo. Motducio episcopo el comiti Valentino Diensi praeacriptio adveravs