Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/633

 18, BRYCE: THE EXTENSION OF LAW 619 directions, holds the field and rests upon religion, the ques- tion is less simple. The experience of the English in India suggests that European law will occupy the non-rehgious parts of the native systems, and will tend by degrees to encroach upon and permeate even the religious parts, though so long as Islam (or Brahmanism) maintains its sway the legal customs and rules embedded in religion will survive. No wise ruler would seek to efface them so far as they are neither cruel nor immoral. It is only these ancient religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, and especially Islam — that can or will resist, though perhaps only for a time, and certainly only partially, the rising tide of European law. X. Present Position of Roman and English Law in the World European law means, as we have seen, either Roman law or English law, so the last question is: Will either, and if so which, of these great rival systems prevail over the other ? They are not unequally matched. The Roman jurists, if we include Russian as a sort of modified Roman law. Influ- ence at present a larger part of the world's population, but Bracton and Coke and Mansfield might rejoice to perceive that the doctrines which they expounded are being diffused even more swiftly, with the swift diffusion of the English tongue, over the globe. It Is an Interesting question, this competitive advance of legal systems, and one which would have engaged the attention of historians and geographers, were not law a subject which lies so much outside the thoughts of the lay world that few care to study its histor- ical bearings. It furnishes a remarkable Instance of the tendency of strong types to supplant and extinguish weak ones In the domain of social development. The world Is, or will shortly be, practically divided between two sets of legal conceptions or rules, and two only. The elder had Its birth in a small Italian city, and though it has undergone endless changes and now appears In a variety of forms, It retains its distinctive character, and all these forms still show an