effects upon law of a mere mechanical improvement in land registration is a very impressive warning that this position is certainly doubtful, and possibly not true. The legal notions which I described as decaying and dwindling have always been regarded as belonging to what may be called the osseous structure of jurisprudence; the fact that they are nevertheless perishable suggests very forcibly that even jurisprudence itself cannot escape from the great law of Evolution.

CHAPTER XI.

CLASSIFICATIONS OF LEGAL RULES.

ALMOST the first thing which is learnt by the student of Roman law is, that the classical jurists of Rome divided the whole body of legal rules into the Law of Persons, the Law of Things, and the Law of Actions. Although, however, his studies, as law is now taught amongst us, may soon introduce him to some vehement disputes as to the meaning of this classification, he may be long in becoming alive to the extent and importance of the literature to which it has given birth. It would seem, in fact, that in the seventeenth century, which was a great juridical era, theories of legal classification took very much the place of those theories of law reform which so occupied the minds of the last generation of Englishmen. continuous activity of legislatures is an altogether modern phenomenon; and, before it began, an intellect of the type of Bentham's, instead of speculating on the possibility of transforming the law into conformity with the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or with any other principle, speculated rather

The

on the possibility of rearranging it in new and more philosophical order. The improvement in view was thus rather a reform of law-books than a reform of law. The most extreme example of such theories is, perhaps, to be found in the attempt of Domat to distribute all law under its two great commandments' as set forth in the twenty-second chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel-love to God and love to one's neighbour. But on the whole the arrangement in which the compilers of Justinian's ' Institutes' followed Gaius, distributing law in Law of Persons, Law of Things, and Law of Actions, became the point of departure for theories of legal classification. Its history has been not unlike that of several equally famous propositions. After long neglect, it came to be regarded as an expression of absolute truth, and an essential and fundamental distinction was assumed to exist between the three great departments into which the Romans divided law. English jurisprudence was, no doubt, very little affected by this assumption, but English lawyers occasionally come across the inferences from it when they have to deal with Private International law, or, in other words, with the conditions upon which one community will recognise and apply a portion of the jurisprudence of another. At a later date certain difficulties were observed in the rigorous application of the Roman doctrine, and much ingenuity was expended in removing

them, or explaining them away. Finally, it was pronounced to be theoretically untenable, and only deserving of being retained on account of its historical importance. According to the general agreement of modern writers on jurisprudence, the Roman distribution of law into Law of Persons, Law of Things, and Law of Actions, must be regarded as now exploded.

As a perfect classification of legal rules would distribute them according to their real relations with one another, and would therefore be founded on a complete analysis of all the legal conceptions, the subject has not lost its interest for very powerful minds in this century. The speculations of Austin on classification almost fill such writings of his as remain to us, and a valuable essay of John Stuart Mill on these speculations may be read in the third volume of his Dissertations and Discussions.' On the Continent of Europe a more practical interest has been given to such questions by the gradual codification of the law of the whole civilised world, except England and the countries under the influence of the English legal system; for a Code must be arranged somehow, and few would deny that the more philosophical the arrangement the better. But the great majority of writers on the subject, whatever their title to be heard, are agreed in depreciating the Roman classification and all classifications de

scended from it, and sometimes their censure is surprisingly strong. This modern fashion of decrying, and even of reviling, the arrangement of the Roman Institutes threatens to produce some reaction, and I see that a manful attempt to rehabilitate it has been made in America. A book published at Chicago, and written by a Law Professor of the State University of Iowa, is not likely perhaps to come into the hands of many English readers, but Mr. Hammond's Preface to the American issue of Mr. Sandars's wellknown edition of the Institutes of Justinian' contains much the best defence I have seen of the classical distribution of law. My own opinion is that the now common depreciation of this distribution is not so much mistaken as misplaced. The legal classifications proposed by the most modern thinkers on these subjects are classifications of legal Rights. Every one of such systems has legal Right for its centre and pivot. But, singular as the fact may appear to those unacquainted with it, the Romans had not attained, or had not fully attained, to the conception of a legal Right, which seems to us elementary. According to the general usage of the Roman lawyers Jus meant not 'a right,' but 'law,' and usually a particular branch of law. There are, undoubtedly, certain senses of Jus in which the meaning of 'right' is approached, and even closely approached; but, on the whole, the Romans must be