Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/729

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 715 The influence of the civil law was constantly increasing. Lord Talbot, the best beloved of all the Enghsh chancellors, was learned in the civil law. Lord Hardwicke studied the Corpus Juris Civilis and the Commentaries of Vinnius and of Voet. Lord Camden pursued the same systematic study of the civil law. Many of Thurlow's judgments are adorned by illustrations taken from the civil law; though it is said that those portions of his opinions were supplied by the learned Hargrave, who acted as Thurlow's " devil " for some years. Yet none of these men did anything for law reform. Hardwicke, as great a chancellor as Nottingham or Eldon, never proposed a single reform. Henry Fox, speaking of Hardwicke, said : " Touch but a cobweb of Westminster Hall, and the old spider of the law is out upon you, with all his younger vermin at his heels." Lord Camden spent his ener- gies in an attempt to make the jury judges of both law and fact in prosecutions for libel. In our helplessness in the presence of unjustifiable libels on every sort of person, we are to-day much inclined to regret his work and the sub- sequent legislation. Camden's insistence upon punitive dam- ages has made a large figure in the subject of our damage law. Lord Thurlow invented and perfected the equitable doctrine as to the separate estate of married women, which is the basis of to-day's married-women statutes. Lord Loughborough's attitude toward law reform is defined by his undisguised horror of Bentham; while Lord Eldon steadily set his face against every proposal of reform. The eighteenth century in Europe was the age of a benev- olent autocracy in politics and a cultivated optimism in literature. The latter trait is markedly apparent in Eng- land in the legal sphere. The great mass of the nation and of the lawyers was amply satisfied with the English constitution and its laws. The language used by the worshippers of our own consti- tution is apparently borrowed from the older worship of the English constitution. Blackstone delivered his famous lectures at Oxford in 1763, and published them from 1765 to 1769. In a broad and comprehensive way, with ample