ing, Appendix, note 35.) Hallam, in his " His tory of the Middle Ages," p. 1045, note 4, says : " No early lawyer has contributed so much to form our own system as Bracton; and if his definitions and rules are some times borrowed from the Civilians, as all admit, our common law may have indirectly received greater modification from that in fluence than its professors were ready to acknowledge, or even than they knew. A full view of this subject is still, I think, a desideratum in the history of English law, which it would illustrate in a very interest ing manner." Hallam admits that he him self, in deference to English notions, formerly deprecated the study of the civil law too much. I think the probability is greater that Bracton modified the English law by incor porating in it new and feudal ideas than by importing into it the notions of the civil law; and that the common law after Bracton was less like the civil than before. It was about one hundred years before Bracton's day that the great revival of learning and literature in Europe commenced, as well as the study of the civil law. Books were very scarce; and the Justinian collections of law furnished not only law, but language and literature as well, to the students. The Latin language was the chief written language of Europe, and the Pandects and Code were studied for the sake of the literature as well as the law, and exercised a mighty influence on Europe; and it is extremely probable that the civil law, modified by the feudal law, was the common law of England as well as of France and Italy or Germany. England had been acquainted with the
Roman arms for more than one thousand years; why should she be ignorant of the Roman law? Vacarius had taught it at Oxford, and the opposition of the times to the teaching of this law was directed rather against the clergy than the law. We are told that the English barons in Parliament were unwilling to change the laws of Eng land and adopt the civil law. What laws had they, that they were not willing to change? So far as any sufficient or prac ticable body of municipal law is concerned, neither history nor tradition has ever given us any intelligible account of these peculiarly English laws. Long previous to the time of Vacarius, we are informed by Tacitus that Agricola, the Roman Governor of Britain, taught the wild inhabitants to build temples, courts of justice, and convenient 'dwelling-houses. (Life of Agricola, chap, xxi.) The courts of justice (Jora) were necessa rily Roman courts, where the Roman law with suitable modifications was adminis tered. The further fact that the civil law took root in Scotland and remains there to this day is also significant. The " common law " of Coke upon Littleton contains little more than the law of real estate under the feudal system, and not a general system of law. These researches conduce to the opinion that the law of England in Bracton's time was nothing but the Roman law modified by the introduction of the feudal customs, and that there was no such thing in exist ence as the common law of England, as a distinct system.
