Page:Struggle for Law (1915).djvu/36

 far as possible, the existing confusion, both political and judicial, of the country. What was most to be wondered at, was that German lawyers who, it seems, should have had only one opinion on this subject, protested against this attempt, through the agency of one of their most illustrious representatives, Savigny, who, in support of this protest, published under the title: ‘Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft,’ (Berlin: 1814; 3d edition, 1840), a work not, indeed, very voluminous, but one of the most important in the history of German jurisprudence. Savigny’s object was to represent as unreasonable the desire of reducing the laws to a code. Collections of that kind, Savigny said, were after all more of an evil than a good. They are not thought of in happy times, because they are not necessary. Rome is an example of this (as if the laws of the XII. Tables and the Praetorian Edicts never had existed), and in unhappy times (like those in which he lived), people possess neither the necessary political education nor the ability