Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/54

 40 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST if he be condemned, he shall bear the loss, not according to Ribuarian law, but according to his own law." Doubtless, even here, we may see foreshadowings of those influences which are soon to localize law. Doubtless, the mixing of races is rendering genealogical questions difficult, and we seem almost to discover a period in which a man may claim to live according to any law, may make any professio juris, that he likes, provided he does it in the proper way. But this is only a concession to practical difficulties. Law is at first as much personal as' is religion ; and a profession of law is much like a profession of faith. The second stage in the history of Teutonic Law is, appar- ently, very modern in character. It looks like positive po- litical legislation, as we understand it at the present day. The Capitularies of the Karolingian House, and of the Bene- ventine Princes, the statutes and edicts of the Lombard kings and dukes, and even some of the Dooms of the Anglo-Saxon kings, are alleged to be examples of this kind. But here we come upon one of the great sources of error in medieval history. The Frank Empire, in both its stages, was, in a very important sense, a sham Empire. It aimed at repro- ducing the elaborate and highly organized machinery of the Roman State. Just as a party of savages will disport them- selves in the garments of a shipwrecked crew, so the Mero- wingian and Karolingian kings and officials decked themselves with the titles, the prerogatives, the documents, of the Im- perial State. No doubt the wisest of them, such as Charles the Great, had a deliberate policy in so doing. But the majority seem to have been swayed simply by vanity, or ambition, or admiration. Their punishment was the down- fall of the Frank Empire; but they might have been con- soled for their failure, could they have looked forward a thousand years, and seen their pretensions gravely accepted by learned historians on the faith of documents pillaged from the Imperial chancery, which they scattered abroad without understanding their contents. The Frank Empire was, from first to last, a great anachronism. With a genuine civiliza- tion equal in degree to that of their kindred in Britain and Scandinavia, the Germans of continental Europe found them-