Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/593

 18. BRYCE: THE EXTENSION OF LAW 579 paratively early period extended their own private civil rights to many of the cities which had become their subject alhes. Still it continued to influence them at the time (b. c 230 to 120) when they were laying out the lines of their legal policy for the provinces. Of that legal poHcy I must speak quite briefly, partly because our knowledge, though it has been enlarged of late years by the discovery and collection of a great mass of inscriptions, is still imperfect, partly because I could not set forth the details without going into a number of tech- nical points which might perplex readers unacquainted with the Roman law. It is only the main lines on which the con- querors proceeded that can be here indicated. Every province was administered by a governor with a staff of subordinate officials, the higher ones Roman, and (under the Republic) remaining in office only so long as did the governor. The governor was the head of the judicial as well as the military and civil administration, just as the consuls at Rome originally possessed judicial as well as mili- tary and civil powers, and just as the praetor at Rome, though usually occupied with judicial work, had also both military and civil authority. The governor's court was the proper tribunal for those persons who in the provinces en- joyed Roman citizenship, and in it Roman law was applied to such persons in matters touching their family relations, their rights of inheritance, their contractual relations with one another, just as English law is applied to Englishmen in Cyprus or Hong Kong. No special law was needed for them. As regards the provincials, they lived under their own law, whatever it might be, subject to one important modification. Every governor when he entered his province issued an Edict setting forth certain rules which he proposed to apply during his term of office. These rules were to be valid only during his term, for his successor issued a fresh Edict, but in all probability each reproduced nearly all of what the preceding Edict had contained. Thus the same general rules remained continuously In force, though they might be modified in detail, improvements which experience had shown to be necessary being from time to time intra-