Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/735

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 721 principle to have solved the puzzle of human life and des- tiny. His utilitarian formula of the greatest happiness of the greatest number is but a restatement of the tenet of a Grecian school of philosophy. The lawyers for centuries had been applying the principle under the form of their maxim, " solus poptdi est suprema lex." It was this dogma that gave a practical aspect to Bentham's views of law reform. He is one of the few reformers of law who was widely read and instructed in the matter he was trying to reform. He had the capacity of the jurist to grasp legal principles, but with keen logic and inventive mind, he threw a flood of new light upon old stock notions in the law. Hav- ing mastered the practical doctrines of the law he took (in Brougham's phrase ) " the mighty step of trying the whole provisions of our jurisprudence by the test of expediency." He tested its rules and arrangements by the circumstances of society, the wants of men, and above all by the promo- tion of human happiness. Long years of study are contained in Bentham's writings on legislation. In 1776, at the age of thirty-two, he pub- lished his Fragment on Government, of which Lord Lough- borough said that it formulated a dangerous principle. His Principles of Morals and Legislation came out in 1789. His Art of Packing was published in 1821. His Rationale of Judicial Evidence saw. the light in 1827, when he was seventy-nine. These works give but a small part of his labors on the law ; bold and hardy indeed is the man who will undertake to read all that Bentham wrote upon the deficiencies of our legal system. He had little respect for the law as he found it. The separate jurisdictions of law and equity were to him an absurdity. A bill in chancery he characterized as a volume of notorious lies. The technical common law procedure and the occult science of special pleading were relics of barbar- ism. He assaulted the rules excluding the testimony of par- ties and interested witnesses. His zeal to moderate the crim- inal law was a matter of humanity. The jury system did not meet his entire approval. He advocated local courts presided over by a single judge trained to judicial work,