Page:Why the History of English Law is Not Written.djvu/15

6 enormous, a literature the like of which is almost unknown in England. For our backwardness it is some excuse, though hardly a sufficient excuse, that we are overburdened by our materials, are becoming always better aware at once of their great value and of their unmanageable bulk. A Romanist may be able to say about some historical problem—I know all the first-hand evidence that there is, nay, I know it by heart; the truthful English historian will have to confess that he has but flitted over the surface. On the other hand, if we compare the task of writing English legal history with that which French and German historians have before them, there is a fact which goes far to outbalance any disadvantage occasioned by the heavy weight of our materials. The early centralization of justice gives to our history a wonderful unity; we have not to compare the customs of divers provinces, or the jurisprudences of rival schools; our system is a single system and revolves round Westminster Hall.

Well, I am afraid that it must be allowed that Englishmen have not done all that might have been expected of them by those who do not know them well. I believe that no attempt has ever been made to write the history of English law as a whole. The praiseworthy work of Reeves on the law of the later middle ages was done at a dark time and is long out of date. In some particular departments very excellent work has been done; the constitutional law of the middle ages has been fully explored; the same may be said of the constitutional law of later days if we give to 'constitutional' a narrow meaning, and