The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-08-29

respect for the forms of legal pro ceedings and the precise wording of its rules This tendency has largely dis appeared from England, and from some of our States but am told that in others it still holds it's ground,
 ITO what are we to ascribe these qualities distinctive of the common law? The indwelling qualities of the race of men who built it up must have been a principal and indeed the prlm- ary cause.
 The mind and character of peo- pie are indeed more exactly and ade- quately expressed In and through It's jaws and institutions than they are through it's literature or it's art.
 Laws are the work of nation as whole, framed indeed by the ruling class, and shaped in their details by a professional class, but to large ex- tent created by other classes also, be- cause (excepting those few cases where a conqueror imposes his own law on the vanquished) the rules which govern the relations of the or dinary citizens must be such as fit and express the wishes of the ordinary cit izen, being in harmony with his feel ings and fitted to meet the needs of his daily life. They are the offspring of custom and custom is the child of the people. Thus not only the con- structive intellect of the educated and professional class but the half consci- ous thought and sentiment of the average man go to the making aud moulding of the law.
 Law Is the product, not of one or two generations, but of many, Ma tional character is always insensibly changing, and changing more rapidly the more advanced in civilization, the nation becomes, the greater the vicis- situdes in its fortunes, the more con stant its intercourse with other na- tions. Hence institutions become the expression not solely of those original gifts and tendencies of a race or a people which we observe when 1t emerges from prehistoric darkness. Time and circumstance co-operates in the work. Law is the result of the events which mould ss nation as we'll as of the mental and moral qualities with which the nation started on it's career. These two elements are so mixed and blend in their working that it is hard to describe them separately. Nevertheless let us try Let us begin by a glance at the inborn talents and temper of the race and then see how the course of history trained their powers and guided their action.
 Tt belongs to a strong race to have the power of self-control, Our fore fathers were fierce and passionate like other half-civtlized peoples, but they had this power and they restrain ed themselves from overriding the process of law and letting passion work injustice many time when men of other races, Greeks, or Slavs, or Celts, would have yielded to their inn pulses.
 "so too they had a latent solidity and steadiness which indisposed them to frequent or fitful change. Compared with their Slavonic neighbors to the East and their Celtic neighbors to the West, the Teutons have always been of a conservative temper. This may be --so we like to think-a mark of good ! sense and patience, or it may be attri.
 butes of dogged and slowly moving minds. Anyhow, there it is, and Gas already remarked) for the purposes
 of law building, it is merit of the first magnitude.
 Further, the mediaeval English mind was of a practical rather than ot a speculative type, It had plenty ot acumen, plenty of logical vigor Blu 1t did not run to the spinning of the, ories or the trying of experiments While new remedies were needed, bu not till then. new forms of writ were | devised.
 Here then we have noted five char acteristics of those to whom we ow; the common law They were strong men and pugnacious men, They re spected authority. They could at neet control their impulses. They were no given to change. They were not fertil,
 in theory or invention. With thes qualities they started on the work O making a law. How did the condi tions of England from the twelfth tC the eighteenth century effect then and so guide their action as to bring out in the fullness of time the lega product we have inherited-a frui very different from that which ripenet under the sun of Germany or France
 The English king in the Middle Ages was strong, stronger than thu
 kings of France or Castle or Aragon He was from the days of Henry Il on wards, effective master except fo
 brief intervals) of the whole realm His writ ran everywhere, His aim, ant that of his judges, was during thu | thirteenth and fourteenth centuries tt build up one law, Instead of the vari ety of diverse customs such as haf grown up in Continental Europe Thu: he and they must needs strive to make the law clear and certain. Such i became
 ! From good motives as well as ba(