Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/726

 712 V. BENCH AND BAR them knew anything of any other system of law. But a change was beginning to appear. Chief Justice Vaughan in Charles II. 's reign was once sitting in his court between his two puisnes, when a question of canon law arose. Both puisnes with some pride at once disclaimed any knowledge of that learning, but the Chief Justice, holding up his hands, exclaimed : " In God's name, what sin have I committed, that I am condemned to sit here between two men, who openly admit their ignorance of the canon law ? " Lord Nottingham had illustrated many of his decisions by refer- ences to the civil law. Holt obtained the reputation of enormous learning, by his knowledge of the Roman law. In short, from the Revolution onwards it will be found that the greatest of English lawyers are turning to the Roman jurisprudence and grafting its rules upon the indigenous law. Even Bracton comes into his own again, as the one worthy writer upon our jurisprudence. As we have noted in preceding essays, the law had hitherto attempted its own reform. Without the aid of statutes, the immense array of common-law actions had been trans- formed into the few actions which we have in contract, in tort, and for the recovery of specific property. The whole chancery system was a natural, not a legislative growth. Even where statutes had attempted some interference with the law, they had produced little result. A fact that is most difficult for the lay mind, or for the inadequately informed legal mind, to comprehend, but is proven by the history of the law, is that the distinctions between law and equity, the distinctions between forms of action, inhere in the very nature of duties and rights and cannot be obliterated by legislation. While the procedure may be generalized, while the forms of actions may be reduced to one general form, while but one tribunal may be provided for applying to a controversy all the relevant rules furnished by the law, nevertheless we must still talk of contract and tort, of law and equity, of damages and specific relief. The Revolution produced no changes in the legal pro- cedure, except two. The first gave to persons charged with high treason the benefit of counsel and the right to produce