Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/369

 10. BRYCE: ROME AND ENGLAND 355 been, within historic times at least, a group closely bound to- gether as it was among the Italians, whereas the historical and political conditions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had in Western Europe made landholding the basis of nearly all social and economic relations. Hence the land customs then formed took a grip of the nation so tight that ages were needed to unloose it. The process may be said to have begun with a famous statute (Quia Emptores) in the reign of* Ed- ward I. Its slow advance was quickened in the seventeenth century by political revolution ; and the Act of 1660 which abolished knight service recorded a great change. The peace- ful revolution of 1832 gave birth to the series of statutes which from 1834 down to our own day have been reshaping the ancient land system, but reshaping it in a more piece- meal and perplexing fashion than that in which Justinian re- formed the law of succession by the 118th and 127th Novels. Problems connected with landholding still remain in England, as they do in nearly all States, especially where population is dense; but they differ from the old problems, and though disputes relating to the taxation of land give trouble, and may give still more trouble, questions of tenure have lost the special importance which made them once so prominent in our legal history. Both Rome and England have been, far beyond any other countries except Russia, expanding States. Rome the City became Rome the World-State. The Folk of the West Saxons went on growing till it brought first the other kingdoms of South Britain, Teutonic and Celtic, then the adjoining isles of Ireland and Man, then a large part of North America, then countless regions far away over the oceans under the headship of the descendants of Cerdic and Alfred. But in the case of Rome this expansion by conquest was the rulin,r^ factor in political and legal evolution, the determining influ- ence by which institutions were transformed. In England, on the other hand, it is the relations of classes that have been the most active agency in inducing political change, and the successive additions of territory have exerted a secondary in- fluence on institutions and an insignificant influence on law. Not only has English law been far less affected (save at the