10. A COMPARISON OF THE HISTORY OF LEGAL DEVELOPMENT AT ROME AND IN ENGLAND ^ By James Bryce ^ IN the last preceding Essay the organs of legislation, and the methods whereby they were worked at Rome and in England respectively, were discussed and compared. A con- sideration of the course which legal change took, in its various phases of development, reform or decay, may be completed by inquiring into the general causes and forces which deter- mined and guided the process of change. To justify the selection of Rome and England for comparison it is necessary to recur to two points only in which the history of institutions in these two States presents a remarkable analogy. Both have been singularly independent of outside influences in the development of their political character and their legal insti- tutions. The only influence that seriously told on Rome was that of the Greeks : yet how thoroughly Roman all the insti- tutions that ever had been Roman remained down till the second century of the Empire, after Hellenic influence had for more than two hundred years been playing freely and fully upon literature and thought ! So English institutions have been far less aff'ected by external influences than have been those of any other part of European Christendom. In
- The following essay forms the fifteenth in the author's " Studies
in History and Jurisprudence," 1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, American Branch), pp. 745-781. 'His British Maiestv's Ambassador to the United States of Amer- ica. B. A. Oxford 1862, D. C. L. Oxford 1870; Fellow of Oriel College 1862; Barrister of I^incoln's Inn 1867; Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, 1870-1893; LL. D. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Michigan, St. An- drews, Harvard; Pol. Sc. D. Buda-Pest; I>itt. D. Victoria, Cambridge; D. C. L. Trinity (Toronto). Other Publications: The Holy Roman Empire, 1862; Trade-Mark Law, 1877; The American Commonwealth, 1888; Impressions of South Africa, 1897; Studies in Contemporary Biography, 1903. 332
