Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/377

 10. BRYCE: ROME AND ENGLAND 363 land commerce is still growing, education is still advancing, new and complicated problems are still emerging, so that many forces continue to work for the development of law. Though we cannot foresee what lines this development will follow we may feel sure that some of the old causes of change are disappearing. The democratization of political institu- tions seems nearly complete, religious passions have grown cold, and all classes have been so fully admitted to a share in political power that any such bold reforms in central and local administration, in procedure, in penal law, and in one or two departments of private civil law as followed the Reform Bill of 1832, seem improbable. In some departments the pos- sibilities of further progress appear to be exhausted, though there are others, such as those concerned with questions of the right of combination among employers or among work- men, and the character which motive imparts to acts in them- selves lawful on which the last word is far from having been said.^ But there are at least two real difficulties which remain to be grappled with. One relates to the metliods of legal pro- ceedings. Their cost is so great as to deter many persons from the attempt to enforce just claims, to impose a heavy and unfair burden upon successful litigants, and to furnish opportunities for blackmail (especially in libel cases) to men who are equally devoid of money and of scruples. All efforts to cheapen them have so far failed. The other problem relates to a matter of substance. What are the general principles to be followed in empowering the State to regulate the con- duct of individuals or groups of individuals, in permitting the central government or a local authority to compete with individuals in industrial enterprises and in restricting the power of combinations formed for commercial or industrial objects? This group of problems are being daily pressed to the front by political forces on the one hand and by industrial progress on the other. They are as urgent in the United States as in Britain. Nor are they matters for legislation Philosopher. The action of his successors was largely directed to cut- ting down the old law into a shape better fitted for the changed condi- tions of the Empire, and the declining intelligence of the people. Company v. Macgregor and Allen v. Flood illustrates this.
 * The interest excited by cases such as those of the Mogul Steamship