Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/596

 582 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY which nobody asked for. It seems safe to assume from what we know of official human nature elsewhere, that the Roman officials took the line of least resistance compatible with the raising of money and the maintenance of order. These things being secured, they would be content to let other things alone. Things, however, have a way of moving even when officials may wish to let them rest. When a new and vigorous influ- ence is brought into a mixture of races receptive rather than resistent (as happened in Asia Minor under the Romans), or when a higher culture acts through government upon a people less advanced but not less naturally gifted (as hap- pened in Gaul under the Romans), changes must follow in law as well as in other departments of human action. Here twojforces were at work. One was the increasing number of persons who were Roman citizens, and therefore lived by the Roman law. The other was the increasing tendency of the government to pervade and direct the whole public life of the province. When monarchy became established as the settled form of the Roman government, provincial adminis- tration began to be better organized, and a regular body of bureaucratic officials presently grew up. The jurisdiction of the governor's court extended itself, and was supple- mented in course of time by lower courts administering law according to the same rules. The law applied to disputes arising between citizens and non-citizens became more copi- ous and definite. The provincial Edicts expanded and be- came well settled as respects the larger part of their con- tents. So by degrees the law of the provinces was imper- ceptibly Romanized in its general spirit and leading concep- tions, probably also in such particular departments as the original local law of the particular province had not fully covered. But the process did not proceed at the same rate in all the provinces, nor did it result in a uniform legal product, for a good deal of local customary law remained, and this customary law of course differed in different prov- inces. In the Hellenic and Hellenized countries the pre-exist- ing law was naturally fuller and stronger than in the West ; and it held its ground more effectively than the ruder usages