Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/597

 18. BRYCE: THE EXTENSION OF LAW 583 of Gauls or Spaniards, obtaining moreover a greater respect from the Romans, who felt their intellectual debt to the Greeks. It may be asked what direct legislation there was during this period for the provinces. Did the Roman Assembly either pass statutes for them, as Parliament has sometimes done for India, or did the Assembly establish in each prov- ince some legislative authority.'' So far as private law went Rome did neither during the republican period.^ The necessity was not felt, because any alterations made in Roman law proper altered it for Roman citizens who dwelt in the provinces no less than for those in Italy, while as to provincial aliens, the Edict of the governor and the rules which the practice of his courts established were sufficient to introduce any needed changes. But the Senate issued decrees intended to operate in the provinces, and when the Emperors began to send instructions to their provincial governors or to issue declarations of their will in any other form, these had the force of law, and constituted a body of legislation, part of which was general, while part was special to the province for which it was issued. Meantime — and I am now speaking particularly of the three decisively formative centuries from b. c. 150 to a. d. 150 — another process had been going on, even more im- portant. The Roman law itself had been changing its char- acter, had been developing from a rigid and highly technical system, archaic in its forms and harsh in its rules, prefer- ring the letter to the spirit, and insisting on the strict ob- servance of set phrases, into a liberal and elastic system, pervaded by the principles of equity and serving the practi- cal convenience of a cultivated and commercial community. The nature of this process will be found described in other parts of this volume.^ Its result was to permeate the origi- nal law of Rome applicable to citizens only (ius civile) with the law which had been constructed for the sake of dealinff exception, due to very special circumstances. cited above].
 * The Lex Sempronia mentioned by Livy, xxxv. 7, seems to be an
 * See Essay XI, and Essay XIV, p. 706 [in the Author's Studies, etc.,