plaintiff's right; a result which, in general, cannot be reached by common law process. But "the greatest and most useful head" of chancery jurisdiction, as Lord Hardwicke has styled it, is the power of decreeing the specific performance of contracts. It is evident that the first justice between contracting parties, where the hands of the one demanding justice are (in the phrase of the court) clean-where his contract is fair and honest, and he has done all that under the circumstances can be asked of him--and where there has been no material change in events subsequently to make it inequitable-is to oblige the defaulting party to do the very thing he has contracted to do. This, in general, cannot be done by the common law courts. With some exceptions, the most they can do is to give the injured party an equivalent in damages for the injury he has suffered, and leave him to collect it from the person or estate of his opponent:-a remedy which is often illusory, and more frequently in its nature inadequate.

The difficulties in the way of reducing to a written code, the jurisprudence under which we lie, as has been proposed by some eminent men, seem to grow out of the system. Those learned jurists who have advocated a code, cannot, for a single moment, entertain the opinion that they can make all men lawyers. If they intend that such a work shall be a mere digest of the existing law, they cannot expect it to be accomplished without error and imperfection. In determining the law upon any one point, commissioners cannot enjoy the advantages of a court, in having the question discussed before them by counsel, with their zeal and ability excited by the pecuniary interests of their clients at stake. But if it be the intention only to give legislative sanction to points which have already received judicial determination, it is submitted that the case will be made no better than it is. If, however, it is meant --either upon the basis of the old or upon a new foundation-to form another system, then we protest that he would be a bold man, who would undertake to form a code to take the place of that which we have, in the former part of this article, feebly attempted to sketch.

There is one remark worth being made in relation to the civil law. It has been a system of codes from the beginning. It has always needed too those safeguards of certainty, the trial by jury and the stare decisis. An examination will show, that, admitting the entire success of the principle of code-making in countries whose jurisprudential basis is the civil or Roman law, (which is done for argument's sake only,) it forms no good rule or precedent to be applied to the case in hand.

The foundation of the Roman law was, on the one hand, the Twelve Tables, and on the other, the Prætorian Edict. To

these succeeded the responsa of the jurists and the constitutions of the emperors. In the beginning of the fifth century, the legal sources are said to have been theoretically the old enactments of the comitia-the senatus consulta, the edicts of the Roman magistrates, the constitutions of the emperors, and the unwritten customs--the Twelve Tables being considered as the basis of the whole, and all later changes being referred to them as additions or alterations. Practically, however, the writings of the great jurists and the constitutions were alone consulted as authority. The writings of the jurists were very voluminous and expensive. A profound writer, speaking of this period, after remarking that the jurists, on many subjects, entertained very different opinions, observes, that "the decision of law suits in these circumstances, must infallibly have been either exceedingly difficult or unsteady and arbitrary." It was at this period that Valentinian III. established his celebrated constitution, A. D. 426, which was intended to remedy the inconvenience. By it the works of the five jurists, Papinian, Paulus, Gaius, Ulpian, and Modestin, received the sanction of legal authority, with the exception of the notes of Ulpian and Paulus on Papinian. In points upon which there was a difference of opinion, the majority was to prevail: if equally divided the opinion of Papinian was to be taken as law, and when he was silent, the case was referred to the judge. Upon the extinction of the western empire, there were to be added to the legal sources already enumerated, the Gregorian and Hermogenian codes, the code of Theodosius II., and the separate Novellæ-and as even these were beyond the impaired mental powers of the age, they were soon succeeded by the edict of the East Goth, Theodoric, the West Gothic Breviarium of Alaric II., the Papian among the Burgundians, and the laws promulgated by Justinian, at first only for the Eastern empire. Such was the mass of the Roman laws:-of its character we can have little doubt, when we consider how large a portion must have consisted of the imperial constitutions, the rescripts, decrees, and edicts; or the opinions and decisions of such ignorant princes as Commodus and Caracalla upon questions of law. These were the materials upon which Tribonian and his associates were compelled to work.

About three centuries after the death of Justinian, the Basilics of Basilius Macido, and his son, Leo Philosophus, superseded all former publications, and were the only laws in force throughout the eastern empire till its final extinction. Indeed, it is affirmed that so entirely were the works of Justinian sunk into oblivion in the east, that among the multitude of books brought into the west after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, not a single volume of them was found except of the

novels. As to the west, the common tradition is, that they were disused and forgotten, after the extinction of the Roman power in Italy, until the discovery of the Pandects at Amalfi, A. D. 1137. However it may be as to the works themselves, the Roman law is to be traced before that period in the municipal constitutions of Italy and elsewhere. The conquest of the Romans by the northern nations, and their consequent intermixture, gave rise to that curious system, so paradoxical to modern ears, the law of personal rights. When we assume that the law, to which every individual owes obedience, is that of the country where he lives, and that the property and contracts of every resident are regulated by the law of his domicil, it is with some degree of wonder that any other principle could ever have been tolerated in any state of society. Yet in the middle ages, in the same country, and often in the same city, the Lombard lived under the Lombardic, and the Roman under the Roman law. The Frank, Burgundian and Goth, no matter where they might be, were each living under the rule of a different system. This is strongly expressed by the Bishop Agobardus in an epistle to Louis le Debonnaire: "It often happens," says he, "that five men, each under a different law, may be found walking or sitting together." Every person lived regularly according to the law of the nation from which he was descended on the father's side. It seems to have been maintained at one time that every one might, by free choice, and without regard to descent, elect the law by which he wished to live. This Lupi has endeavoured to explode, and his opinion, which has been adopted by a modern author of eminence, is that birth determined the law, and no choice was ever allowed unless in the uniformly excepted cases of married women and ecclesiastics; and in some countries, freedmen. The composition for crimes was regulated by the condition of the injured. In other suits, the law seems to have depended on that of the defendant. The validity of unilateral judicial acts was regulated by the law of the party, as in the case of oaths and testaments. Contracts were prepared according to the law of the debtor. The whole order of succession was arranged by the law of the testator or ancestor. Marriage must be celebrated according to the law of the husband. In questions affecting the property of landed estate, the personal law of the author was the rule. Runaway slaves were subject to the law of the reclaiming master. Whatever effect this system had upon the jurisprudence of western Europe, France liberally participated in it. The Roman law however gradually lost its authority as a personal law among the Franks of the north, owing to the preponderance of Franks, and the same reason operated to produce the converse effect in the south, where the Romans, by their

numbers, had retained the supremacy. In the north, the direct authority of the old national laws ceased. Even the name of the Salic law fell into disuse, and systems merely local, coutumes, occupied its place. In the south, on the contrary, the Roman law continued to prevail in its old form and exclusive character. Hence France, until the introduction of the code Napoleon, was divided into two districts governed by different systems :-le pays de droit écrit and le pays coutumier.

This brief sketch has been drawn from a few authentic sources, for the purpose of evincing that the circumstances under which the codes Justinian and Napoleon were promulgated were such, that they can afford no precedent for a proposed common law code. The common law does not present that jumbled mass, which imperatively calls for authoritative order and arrangement. Nor has their principal object been attained by the codes referred to. Though, with a view no doubt to maintain its simplicity, Justinian prohibited all notes and comments upon his code, it was, soon after its revival, overladen with the commentaries of civilians, so that at the date of the code Napoleon, it was estimated that as many camels could have been loaded with law books as in the time of Justinian. A distinguished legal writer states that the present law of France is to be sought from the following sources: -1. Those portions of the old law, which the codes Napoleon have adopted: 2. The portions of the old law, upon which the codes Napoleon have no operation, and which therefore are yet in force 3. The new law: 4. The written and unwritten law, which made a part of, or was applicable to, the enacted or continued portions of the old law: 5. Or which is applicable to it by fair argument or inference: 6. And the interpretation of the codes which has taken place since their promulgation, and which will of course continue.

But the same objections which may be conclusively made to every attempt to reduce to a code the unwritten or common law, have no application to a revision of statutes or positive legislation. The latter in every country is narrow compared with the former. Statutes are often "on a sudden penned by men of none or very little judgment in law." They often are unnecessarily verbose, complicated in their structure, "overladen with provisions and additions," and where many acts upon the same subject have been passed at different periods, it is not only difficult to ascertain what parts are in force and what repealed, but they are often inconsistent and irreconcileable in their character. They sometimes become worn out— the subject-matter and state of society for which they were made cease to exist-and they are dropped by general consent. To reduce this chaotic mass to something like order

and regularity-to frame the enactment in concise and yet precise language-to bring together the different acts upon one subject into one general law, fitting the parts symmetrically together, striking out all that is superfluous and obsolete, supplying what experience has shown to be needed, and remedying defects of the advantages to result from such a labour as this, when well executed, no one, whether lawyer or layman, can hesitate. Lord Bacon and Lord Hale were both earnest in their recommendations of a frequent revision. In England and the United States it has been done both in early and later times, either partially or in general.

The first settlers of Pennsylvania brought with them from England the common and statute laws of that kingdom, so far as they were applicable to the peculiar circumstances of a new country. Statutes passed in England since the settlement and prior to the revolution, are held to extend to Pennsylvania, when recognized by acts of assembly, and where they have been adopted and sanctioned by long-continued practice in courts of justice. The judges of the supreme court, in pursuance of a resolution of the legislature, reported, in 1808, nearly two hundred British statutes as in force; and many are believed, and some have been ascertained, by express judicial decision, to be in force, which are not comprised in that report. The report itself has, properly speaking, neither judicial nor legislative sanction. No action was had upon it, and although it is a paper of great value as an expression of the opinions of the eminent men who at that time composed the supreme bench, it is not an authority. It was the recommendation of that report to the legislature to re-enact "the substance of these statutes in language suitable to our present condition;" and it is remarked that such a re-enactment "might be attended with the additional advantage of simplifying the statute law, by reducing into one the several acts passed upon the same subject." Besides this, there has been no dearth of legislation by the provincial and state legislatures. It is said that there have been upwards of seven thousand statutes passed since 1700. While of course the great majority of these are of a private and local character, no small proportion are public and general. There is no uniform and complete edition of the statutes, so that an idea of their bulk cannot well be communicated. Many of the more ancient and valuable laws are not in print, and a complete collection up to 1800 would be a valuable accession to the library of the student of Pennsylvanian history and jurisprudence, as well as to the practical lawyer, and is an object well worthy of the munificence of the legislature. Such a work has been accomplished with public patronage in Virginia,