Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/543

 THE GREEN BAG the law is, take it all in all, as high as that philosophy and analysis and the sense of of any modern system, and in some few historical development at their command." Twenty-two years later in delivering his points higher than our own. By its con valedictory address he was constrained to sistency, I mean the harmony and sym metry of its parts, the maintenance through admit the occasions on which the practic a multiplicity of details of the leading ing lawyer in England can make a profes principles, the flexibility with which these sional use of Roman law are but rare. principles are adapted to the varying needs "Once." he says, "in addressing the House of time, place and circumstance. So the of Lords on a Scotch appeal, I discovered a excellence of the jurists resides in their pretext for quoting the Digest, which that august body received with grave approval as clear practical sense, in the air of enlighten ment and of what may be called intellectual not unbefitting the large survey they are urbanity which pervades them. Most of wont to take of every matter which comes them express themselves with a concise before them: but he bated not one jot of his neatness and finish which give us the claims on behalf of the Civil Law as an truth of their view in the fewest and simplest educational discipline and as an interpreter words. They dislike what is arbitrary or of all the modern continental systems. artificial, taking for their aim what they call elegance (elegantia juris), the plastic ROME AND GREAT BRITAIN. skill, so to speak, in developing a principle which gives to law the character of art, In the Studies in Comparative Law — preserving harmony, avoiding exceptions which contain Mr. Bryce's most valuable and irregularities. Yet they never sacrifice contributions to jurisprudence — he has practical convenience to their theories, drawn a series of instructive parallels nor does their deference to authority pre between Rome and Great Britain — in vent them from constantly striving to the "History of their Legal Development," correct the defects of the law as it came in their "Methods of Law," and their "Mar down from their predecessors. riage and Divorce." One of the most Compare Lord Coke, for instance or Lord striking of these parallels is a comparison St. Leonards with Papinian or Gaius. of the Roman Empire and the British Lord St. Leonards was a man much Empire in India as conquering and ruling admired by the profession and his books powers acquiring and administering domin seemed an authority unsurpassed or indeed ions outside the original dwelling place of equalled by any other legal writers of the their peoples and impressing upon those century. His knowledge was immense and dominions their own type of civilization. it was minute. His treatises show the Among other points of similarity he notes same acuteness and ingenuity in arguing their road making, their tolerant attitude from cases, which his forensic career towards religion, their beneficent despotism displayed. But these treatises are a mere in the case of subject races; but he finds accumulation of details, unillumined and the vital secret of their success in the unrelieved by any statement of general character of the conquerors. "Both tri principles. In literary styles and no less umphed by force of character. The triumph in the case and quality of his intellect of the Romans was a triumph of character he is harsh and crabbed. How different as their poet felt when he penned the famous are the Roman jurists. They reason and line: they write as men who have been thoroughly "Moribus antiquis stat res Romana viris trained, who have been imbued with a large and liberal view of law, who have qui."