Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/354

 340 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S another or with Romans gave rise, and accordingly a Magis- trate (Praetor peregrinus) was appointed whose special function it became to deal with such disputes. He was a principal agent in building up by degrees a body of law and a system of procedure outside the old law of Rome, which received the name of lus Gentmm (the law of the nations) as being supposed to embody or be founded on the maxims and rules common to the different peoples who lived round Rome, or with whom she came in contact.^ Through the action of the older Urban Praetor much of this ius gentium found its way into the law administered to the citizens, in the way described in the last preceding Essay. Similarly the Pro- consuls and Propraetors, who held their courts in the subject provinces, administered in those provinces, besides the pure Roman law applicable to citizens, a law which, though much of it consisted of the local laws and customs of the particular province, had, nevertheless, a Roman infusion, and was prob- ably in part, like the iiLs gentium, generalized from the customs found operative among different peoples, and there- fore deemed to represent general principles of justice fit to be universally applied. The Edicts which embodied the rules these magistrates applied became a source of law for the respective provinces.^ These remarkable changes, which may be said to belong to the period which begins with the outbreak of the First Punic War (b. c. 264), started Roman law on a new course and gave birth to a new set of institutions whereby new territories, ultimately extended to embrace the whole civilized world, were organized and ruled. It was through these changes that the law and the institutions of the Italian City became so moulded as to be capable not only of pervading and trans- forming the civilizations more ancient than her own, but of descending to and influencing the modern world. Now these changes, like those which marked the period of the Twelve Tables, had their origin in political events. In the former case it was internal discontent and unrest that were the motive forces, in the latter the growth of dominion and of trade, volume].
 * As to the ius gentium see Essay XI, p. 570 sqq. [in the original
 * As to this see Essay II, pp. 77, 78 [in the original volume].