Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/522

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

508 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY some of Bentham's extreme views, and the extent to which the questions thus raised are profoundly agitating at this moment not only a few thinking minds but the body of the profession, — and this not only in England, but in every country which speaks the language and which has adopted the institutions of England. ^ This would lead to a considera- tion of the controversies between the analj^tical and the his- torical schools of jurisprudence, which their respective ad- vocates yet debate with much of their original warmth, tend- ing to the result, however, that there is, after all, truth in each; that properly understood the two schools are not an- tagonistic but complementary; and that the true course is to combine the logical or analytical with the historical and experimental, the former mainly supplying data for scientific arrangement, the latter mainly supplying the matter for a revised, improved, and systematic jurisprudence. I must life misfortunes led Livingston in 1804 to quit the home of his ancestors in New York and to make a new home in New Orleans, then recently acquired by the United States. The question whether the procedure in Louisiana should be according to the common law or continue upon the basis of the civil and Spanish law having been judicially determined in favor of the latter, Livingston drew up what is in effect a Code of Pro- cedure, which was adopted by the Legislature in 1805, consisting of twenty sections and of about twenty-five printed pages. In its essen- tial features it anticipated the codes of nearly half a century later. Under an act of the General Assembly of Louisiana, approved February 10, 1820, which provided that a person learned in the law shall be ap- pointed to prepare a Code of Criminal Law, Evidence, and Procedure, Livingston was on February 13, 1821, elected by the joint ballot of the Legislature to discharge this duty. He reported his plan to the next Assembly, which " earnestly solicited him to prosecute this work accord- ing to his report." In 1829 Livingston had an interesting correspondence with Bentham, in which the former acknowledged that he received his first impulse " to the preparation of an original, comprehensive, and complete system of penal legislation from Bentham's works which had appeared in the French of Dumont in 1802." Hunt, " Life of Edward Livingston," p. 96, note. " The perusal of your works," said Livingston to Bentham, " first gave method to my ideas, and taught me to consider legislation as a science governed by certain principles, applicable to all its different branches, instead of an occasional exercise of its powers, called forth only on particular occasions without relation to or connection with each other." He thus concludes: "Hereafter no one can in criminal juris- prudence propose any favorable change that you have not recommended, or make any wise improvement that your superior sagacity has not suggested." Hunt, p. 96, note; Bentham's Works (Bowring's Ed.), vol. X., p. 51. Livingston prepared a complete Code of Crimes and Punish- ments, of Procedure, of Evidence, and of Reform and Prison Discipline ; but having been elected to Congress and practically ceasing to reside