Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/70

 / 56 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST Frederick III. and Maximilian make a gallant attempt to restore its prestige, it never becomes the normal law-declaring organ for German3^ Only in Scandinavia does the success of the Riksdaag at all bear comparison with the work of the English Parhament. In Scandinavia there is a rapid and brilliant display of legal activity in the thirteenth century. The folk-laws of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland are collected, and are rapidly followed by true national laws, the Landslog of King Magnus Lagabotir for Norway, and King Magnus Eriksson's Landslag (the so-called "MELL") for Swifeden. Thenceforward, through the Union of Calmar, the modern idea of Parliamentary law seems to be making its triumphant way, until it is checked by the political troubles of th« sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But, unhappily, the history of Scandinavia is too obscure a subject to be handled safely by any but a specialist. It is from France and Germany that we learn most clearly and unmistakeably the results which followed from a failure to grasp the Edwardian idea of Law. In France and Ger- many, the law which prevailed from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries was feudal, local, municipal, royal; but not natio nal. The feudal and local laws begin to appear in the thirteenth century in the form of text-books, evidently the work of private compilers, though in some cases in an imper- sonal guise. Thus we get the Tres Ancien Coutumier of Normandy and its successors, the Conseil of Pierre de Fon- taines for the Vermandois, the Livre de Jostice et Plet and the JEtablissemens le Roy for the Orleanais, the customs of Cler- mont in Beauvoisis by Philippe Beaumanoir. Thus also we get the Saxon Mirror of Eike von Repgowe, the German Mirror, the Suabian Mirror, and the Little Kaiser^s Law for Germany. But there is a curious difference between the fates of the two groups. For while, in France, the purely exposi- tory character of the text-books is rarely lost sight of, while Boutillier, as previously pointed out, expressly tells us that the authoritative law must be searched for in the grejfe of 'the court or the enquete par tourbe, in Germany the Rechts- bucher seem to have been accepted, in all good faith, as actual law. The reason for this curious difference is not easy to