tions and affairs of property and contract. There also is canon law, which is still employed in the regulation of the functions of clerics, but has lost the importance attached to it in the middle ages. Modern law owes much to the Romans, who organized their laws into several codes, the most complete and celebrated of which was the code of Justinian, completed in 533 A. D. The famous code of Hugo Grotius, a Dutch scholar of the sixteenth century, also is of great importance as a factor in the development of modern systems. The codes and commentaries of Puffendorf, Vattel, Coke, Blackstone and others, with the famous Code Napoleon of France (1804-1810), should also be mentioned.
The technical name for the science of law is jurisprudence. Under jurisprudence the following types of law are recognized: (1) Admiralty law, which deals with crimes and contracts in which any member or branch of the navy is concerned. (2) Bylaws, which literally are town-laws, but include the laws of societies and corporations. (3) Civil law, which is based on the whole upon Roman law and needs to be distinguished from criminal law. (4) Common law, very important in the United States and England, which is based upon judicial records and not upon statutes. (5) Constitutional law, by which the sovereign body in the state (in the United States the people, in England Parliament) regulates the government. (6) Criminal law, which relates to crime and belongs to municipal public law. (7) Law of merchants, which is a principal part of the common law, founded on mercantile usages. (8) Law of equity, under which technicalities which might interfere with the course of justice (in civil suits only) are overruled. (9) Law of nations, which regulates international relations and is based in part upon custom, in part upon reason and in part upon treaty. (10) Martial law, which refers to military discipline, a state of hostilities or exceptional public danger. (11) Municipal law, a very general term of the statutory law regarded as regulating social activities. (12) Parliamentary law, which is the body of rules and restrictions by which the proceedings of deliberative assemblies are governed. A working acquaintance with these forms of law usually requires a three years' or four years' course of the most diligent postgraduate study. The procedure and usages of the courts are to be mastered only in the courts and by practice.
Law, John, originator of the “Mississippi scheme,” financier and projector, was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, on April 21, 1671. At 20 he went to London, but was compelled to leave on account of a duel in which he killed his opponent. He then proceeded to Amsterdam, and there began studying the system of bank credits, and in 1700 he returned to Edinburgh to advocate the use of paper currency before the unfavorable Scottish Parliament. Law then traveled over the European continent, gambling and speculating, until in 1716 he founded a private bank in Paris with his brother William. In 1718 the duke of Orleans, regent of France, adopted Law's system of paper currency and issued enormous amounts which received great credit, while the national bonds remained below par. In 1719 Law originated the Mississippi scheme. This was a plan for colonizing and exploiting the region of the Mississippi, a sort of wild-cat project, the chief motive of which was to raise money to meet exigencies of the time in France. In the speculative mania that ensued stocks and shares soared to fabulous heights, and for a time the financial world of France lost all reason and parted from sober sense. Next year Law was made councilor of state and comptroller-general of finance; but when his system met with popular disfavor and his bubble scheme was pricked, he fled to Brussels, thence to England and finally to Venice, and there remained, poor and forgotten, until his death on March 21, 1729. See Perkins' France under the Regency and Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions.
Law′rence, the county-seat of Douglas County, Kan., lies on Kansas River, 34 miles southwest of Leavenworth by rail and 38 west of Kansas City. It is the seat of the state university, founded in 1864, and of Haskell Institute, a government institution for the education of Indian youth. It is the center of trade for a fertile and populous section, and has manufactures of flour, castings, furniture, paper, barbed wire and shirts, besides sash and door factories and machine shops. Porkpacking is extensively carried on. Lawrence was founded in 1854 by free-soil settlers, shared in the violent struggle against slavery, and was partly burned by Quantrell's guerrillas in 1863. The city is served by the Union Pacific; Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé; and Southern Kansas railroads, and is the terminus also of two branch railways. Population 12,374.
Lawrence, an important manufacturing city in Massachusetts, one of the county-seats of Essex Co., is built on both sides of Merrimac River, 26 miles north of Boston, with which it is connected by two railroads. The river, which here falls 28 feet in half a mile, is crossed by two railroad and two other bridges and by a dam of granite, 900 feet long and forty feet high; canals on either bank conduct the water to the mills. The mills, some of which are among the largest in the world, manufacture cotton and woolen goods, cloth and paper; and engines, boilers, machinery,
