Page:Halsbury Laws of England v1 1907.pdf/213

 Introduction.

ccix

ultimately produce confusion and contradiction.

but whatever the

fniendae causa reges olim constituti sunt;

form to

of

government may

know what

Justitiae

be, the desire to

have

the State considers justice,

is

justice,

and

essential to

civilisation.

The code result of a of

Twelve Tables

of laws of the

commission

Kome was

at

the

to Athens, at least in respect of ten

Mommsen

them, and the work, as

says,

was a

political

compromise between the popular and the aristocratic Livy tells us that the laws of the Twelve Tables parties. formed the foundation

own

of all the

heap

of the

description

Koman

of laws

law, but Livy's

accumulated one

"

shows what must have been in his time the confusion, and therein the uncertainty, of the law.

upon the other

When

one considers the power

of every praetor in turn hav-

ing jurisdiction to dictate by published rules what rules of justice

he would observe during his tenure

of office,

that these were not binding on his successor,

wonderful that the

such men

Koman law

required

is

it

and not

the labours of

as Gains, Papinian, Paul, Ulpian, Modestinus,

make it intelligible or fit for practical life. Lawyers who advised and judges who decided had a resource which a modern digestor or compiler does not and Tribonian,

possess

to

the sovereign power of the Emperor, which could



enact that an opinion should become the law, rendered the task of the law reformer a very different one from is

in our

The stating

own

what

it

day.

alteration of existing law

what the law

is

and the process

of

merely

are two very different functions,

and the confusion between the two has marred many an effort to get a clear

and

intelligible code.

once said in the House of first

Commons

get a comprehensive account of

you commence

amending

it



Mr. Gladstone

that

you should

what the law

and

a

great

is

before

many

law^