Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/365

 10. BRYCE: ROME AND ENGLAND 351 causes. The struggle which overthrew the old monarchy effected two things. It extinguished the claims of the Crown to a concurrent legislative or quasi-legislative power. The two Houses of Parliament were established as an engine for effecting legal changes, prompt in action and irresistible in strength.^ Towards this England had long been slowly tending, as during a century before Augustus Rome slowly tended to a monarchy. The work was completed at the Boyne and Aughrim, but the decisive blow was struck at Naseby. And, secondly, it occasioned the accomplishment of several broad and sweeping reforms in institutions as well as in law proper. A Parliamentary Union of England, Scotland and Ireland was effected which, though annulled by the Restora- tion, was a significant anticipation of what the following century was to bring. The old system of feudal tenure and the relics of feudal finance were abolished. New provisions were made, and old ones confirmed and extended, for the pro- tection of the freedom of the subject in person and estate. Commercial transactions were regulated, perhaps embar- rassed, by a famous enactment (the Statute of Frauds) regarding the evidence required to prove a contract. Such of these things as lay outside the purely political sphere were due partly to the development of industry and commerce, which had gone on apace during the reign of James I, and was resumed during the government of Cromwell and Charles II, partly to that sense which political revolutions bring with them, that the time has come for using the impulse of liber- ated forces to effect forthwith changes which had for a long time before been in the air. On a still larger scale, it was the Revolution and Empire in France that led to the remodelling of French institutions and the enactment of Napoleon's Codes. 2 As usually happens, an era of abnormal activity in recast- ing institutions and in amending the law was followed by one of comparative quiescence. It was not till the middle of the " And that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to strike once and strike no more." completing work begun under Lewis the Fourteenth.
 * As Milton says : —
 * Although the Napoleonic government was in many things onljr