Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/608

 594 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY the legal realm of Rome. Poland, lying nearer Germany, and being, as a Catholic country, influenced by the Canon Law, as well as by German teaching and German books, adopted rather more of Roman doctrine than Russia did.^ Her students learnt Roman law first at Italian, afterwards at German Universities, and when they became judges, naturally applied its principles. The Scandinavian coun- tries set out with a law purely Teutonic, and it is chiefly through the German Universities and the influence of Ger- man juridical literature that Roman principles have found their way in and coloured the old customs. Servia, Bulgaria and Rumania, on the other hand, were influenced during the Middle Ages by the law of the Eastern Empire, whence they drew their religion and their culture. Thus their modern law, whose character is due partly to these Byzantine influ- ences — of course largely affected by Slavonic custom — and partly to what they have learnt from France and Aus- tria, may also be referred to the Roman type. V. The Diffusion of English Law England, like Rome, has spread her law over a large part of the globe. But the process has been in her case not only far shorter but far simpler. The work has been (except as respects Ireland) effected within the last three centuries; and it has been effected (except as regards Ireland and India) not by conquest but by peaceful settlement. This is one of the two points in which England stands contrasted with Rome. The other is that her own law has not been affected by the process. It has changed within the seven centuries that lie between King Henry the Second and the present day, almost if not quite as much as the law of Rome changed in the seven centuries between the enactment of the Twelve Tables and the reign of Caracalla. But these changes have not been due, as those I have de- ^ Tn Lithuania the rule was that where no express provision could be found governing a case, recourse should be had to "the Christian laws." Speaking generally, one may say that it was by and with Christianity that Roman law made its vvav in the countries to the east of Germany and to the north of the Eastern Empire.