Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny.

The Roman jurisprudence has the longest known history of any set of human institutions.

It is true that the aristocracies seem to have abused their monopoly of legal knowledge and at all events their exclusive possession of the law was a formidable impediment to the success of those popular movements which began to be universal in the western world.

The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing.

The epoch of Customary Law, and of its custody by a privileged order, is a very remarkable one.

When primitive law has once been embodied in a Code, there is an end to what may be called its spontaneous development.

Law is stable the societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people depends on the degree of promptitude with which the gulf is narrowed.