5. JENKS: EDWARD I 163 of persons. " The pleasure of the Prince has the force of Law," is one of the best-known maxims of the Institutes; and we can well imagine that the sentence would not be unac- ceptable from the hps of a courtier. As a fact, of course, the Corpus Juris of Justinian had been compiled in the days of a despotism the completest, though, it must be admitted, also the wisest, which the world has ever seen. In the sys- tem of the later Roman Empire, everything centred in the person of the Prince, and his will was final and abso- lute. How near, how very near, England was to the adoption of a system based on the principles of the Corpus Juris, few but professed historians know. Two facts, small in them- selves, but very significant, reveal the possibilities of the situ- ation more clearly than pages of vague description. One is, that Edward for years maintained in his pay, as his trusted adviser, Francesco Accursi, himself a learned student and professor of the Roman Law, and the son of the still more famous Accursi, the author of the Great Gloss, and the con- temporary and fellow townsman of that Azo to whom Brac- ton was indebted for so much of his language. The other is, that an anonymous, but highly popular law book, compiled in the late thirteenth century, figures the Law as Issuing from the mouth of the king. Evidently, there were symp- toms, in the thirteenth century, of a very powerful alliance between the philosophical and the military conceptions of Law. The humble alternative of these two lofty notions is the view, that Law is nothing but the formal expression of the common sense of the average man, as evidenced by his daily practice. In other words, Law is the formal shape into which the customs of average men are translated by the processes of legislation and judicial decision. It may be said that the conduct of the average man is influenced unconsciously by the teachings of religion and philosophy, and, consciously, by the commands of authority. That may be so ; and yet, just as it is true that the average man's conduct never pre- cisely conforms either to the ideals of the philosopher or to the wishes of authority, so it is true, that custom always
