Perhaps the best testimony to the effectiveness of the reforms of 1852 is the fact, that men of a slightly later generation, familiar with the working of the courts half a century after, find it difficult to believe that such abuses as are plainly described by the legislation of that year, should really have existed in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The process of specialization tends, almost inevitably, to narrow the sources from which the rules of any science are drawn; and English law is no exception from this rule.

But we remember that it was just precisely in the reign of Richard II that the Peasants' War, following upon the changes wrought by the visitations of the Great Plague, virtually destroyed serfdom as a personal status.

The 'inquests' which resulted in the compilation of the Domesday Book made a vivid and unfavorable impression on the country. A similar effect was produced by the inquests of 1166 and 1170, before alluded to. Even to this day, the word 'inquisitorial' bears the burden of historical unpopularity.

But the fact that the word "chattel" has survived as the inclusive legal term for all movable goods, points, not merely to the great importance of cattle in primitive times, but to the importance of the notion of sale or barter in generating the institution of property.

It is true, that a Law of Contract based on causae will always be an arbitrary and inelastic law; but it is a kind of law with which some great nations are satisfied at the present day.

It was not long before English Law took the one step needed to produce the modern scheme of legal remedies. And when it did, it used the Writ of Trespass as the starting point.