Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/206

178 178 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. if a man would know any one thing, he must know more than one. And so our system of law must be compared with others ; its characteristics only come out when this is done. As to the exam- ination of mediaeval and modern continental law, we have hardly made a beginning. When we trace our law far back, the only possible comparison with anything long-lived and continuous is with the Roman law. If any one would remind himself of the flood of light that may come from such comparisons, let him recall the brilliant work of Pollock's predecessor at Oxford, Sir Henry Maine, in his great book on Ancient Law. That is the best use of the Roman law for us, as a mirror to reflect light upon our own, a tool to unlock its secrets. And so the recent learned historians of our law have used it. In writing of the English system of writs and forms of action, for instance, they put mean- ing into the whole matter in pointing out that all this, beginning in the middle of the twelfth century, finds a parallel in Rome ** at a remote stage of Roman history. We call it distinctively English ; but it is also in a .certain sense very Roman. While the other nations of Western Europe were beginning to adopt as their own the ultimate results of Roman legal history, England was uncon- sciously reproducing that history. " Of the value of such comparative studies, and their immense power to lift the different subjects of our law into a clear and ani- mating light, no competent person who has once profited by them can ever doubt. But, again, observe what this means. It means adding to the wide and difficult researches already marked out another great field of investigation. If it be said that our teacher of English law may profit by the labor of others, and has only to read his " Ancient Law, " and his " History of English Law, " I reply that the field is still largely unexplored ; and, furthermore, that, for the scholar, such books are helps and guides for his own research, and not substitutes for it. So much for this head of what I have to say. Over these vast fields the competent teacher of law must carefully and minutely explore the history and development of his subject. I set down first this thorough historical and chronological exploration, because in this lie hidden the explanation of what is most troublesome in our law, and because in this is found the stimulus that most feeds the enthusiasm and enriches the thought and the instruction of the teacher. The dullest topics kindle when touched with the light of historical research, and the most recondite and technical