Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/80

 66 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST times, indeed, the Parliament did make very new law. It I made the Statute of Uses, in defiance of a long-established f custom. We happen to know the ostensible objects of the statute; for its framers were careful to record them in the preamble to their work. - They were, first, to prohibit secret conveyances of land, second, to put an end to bequests of land by will. The formal recognition of secret conveyances and the formal recognition of the validity of bequests of land, were the direct results of the passing of the statute. The lesson is obvious. The English Parliament was a splendid machine for the declaration of Law; when it tried to make Law it ran the risk of ignominous failure. The truth must not be pressed too far, but a truth it is, that, even now. Law is rather a thing to be discovered than a thing to be made. To think of a legislator, or even a body of legislators, as sitting down, in the plenitude of absolutism, to impose a law upon millions of human beings, is to conceive an absurdity. How shall such a law be enforced? By a single ruler? By a group of elderly legislators? By a few' hundred officials? By an army? We know the power of discipline; and we may grant that a comparatively small ^ but well-disciplined army can control an immense mass of unorganized humanity. But the army must have laws too, and how are these to be enforced? Perhaps by another army? The simple truth of the matter appears to be this. The making of Law is a supremely important thing ; the declar- ing of Law is an important, but a very different thing. Law is made unconsciously, by the men whom it most concerns; it is the deliberate result of human experience working from the known to the unknown, a little piece of knowledge won from ignorance, of order from chaos. It is begun by the superior man, it is accepted by the average man. But it will not do for the inferior man to spoil the work of his betters, by refusing to conform to it. So Law must be declared, and, after that, enforced. This declaration and enforcement are the work of the official few, of the authorities who legislate and execute. There was plenty of Law in the Middle Ages ; but it was, for the most part, ill-declared and badly enforced. The great problem which lay before the statesmen of the