choly perversion of talent, and the machinations of fraud. They give us the skilful debates at the bar, and the elaborate opinions on the bench, delivered with the authority of oracular wisdom. They become deeply interesting, because they contain true portraits of the talents and learning of the sages of the law. *497 We should have known but very little of the great mind and varied accomplishments of Lord Mansfield, if we had not been possessed of the faithful reports of his decisions. It is there that his title to the character of "founder of the commercial law of England" is verified. A like value may be attributed to the reports of the decisions of Holt, Hardwicke, Willes, Wilmot, DeGrey, Camden, Thurlow, Buller, Kenyon, Sir William Scott, Grant, and many other illustrious names, which will be immortal as the English law. Nor is it to be overlooked as a matter of minor importance, that the judicial tribunals have been almost uniformly distinguished for their immaculate purity. Every person well acquainted with the contents of the English reports, must have been struck with the unbending integrity and lofty morals with which the courts were inspired. I do not know where we could resort, among all the volumes of human composition, to find more constant, more tranquil, and more sublime manifestations of the intrepidity of conscious rectitude. If we were to go back to the iron times of the Tudors, and follow judicial history down from the first page in Dyer to the last page of the last reporter, we should find the higher courts of civil judicature, generally, and with rare exceptions, presenting the image of the sanctity of a temple, where truth and justice seem to be enthroned, and to be personified in their decrees.

THE reports of adjudged cases are admitted to contain the highest and most authentic evidence of the principles and rules of the common law; but there are numerous other works of sages in the profession which contribute very essentially to facilitate the researches and abridge the labor of the student. These works acquire by time, and their intrinsic value, the weight of authority; and the earlier text-books are cited and relied upon as such, in the discussions at the bar and upon the bench, in cases where judicial authority is wanting.

Glanville.

One of the oldest of these treatises is Glanville's Tractatus de Legibus Angliæ, composed in the reign of Henry II., in which he was chief justiciary, and presided in the aula regis. It is a plain, dry, perspicuous essay on the ancient actions and the forms of writs then in use. It has become almost obsolete and useless for any practical purpose, owing to the disuse of the ancient actions; but it is a curious monument of the improved state of the Norman administration of justice. (a) It is peculiarly venerable, if it be, as it is said, the most ancient book extant upon the laws and customs of England. It has been cited, and commented upon, and extolled, by Lord Coke, Sir Matthew Hale, Sir Henry Spelman, Selden, Blackstone, and most of the eminent lawyers and antiquaries of the two last centuries. Mr. Reeves says that he incorporated the whole of Glanville into his History of the English Law.

Bracton.

Bracton wrote his treatise, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, in the reign of Henry II., and he is said to have been a judge itinerant in that reign, and professor of

(a) In the History of the Boroughs and Municipal Corporations of the United Kingdom, by Messrs. Merewether & Stephens, (vol. i. Int. 18,) all that is contained in the earlier Saxon laws, and in those of William I. and Henry I., and the charters of those periods, is said to be in a great degree repeated in Glanville, and again in Britton. Ibid. vol. i. p. 476. Dr. Irving, in his Introduction to the Study of the Civil Law, p. 93, says that Glanville's Treatise is under considerable obligation to the civil law.

*

*500 law at Oxford. He is a classical writer, and has been called by a perfect judge of his merits, (a) the father of the English law, and the great ornament of the age in which he lived. His work is a systematic performance, giving a complete view of the law in all its titles, as it stood at the time it was written; and it is filled with copious and accurate details of legal learning. It treats of the several ways of acquiring, maintaining, and recovering property, much in the manner of the Institutes of Justinian. The style clear, expressive, and sometimes polished, has been ascribed to the influence of the civil and canon law, which he had studied and admired; and the work evinces, by the freedom of the quotations, that he had drank deep at those fountains.

Sir William Jones says, he is certainly the best of our juridical classics, though he is perfectly aware that Bracton copied Justinian almost word for word. (b) In the reign of Edward I., Bracton was reduced into a compendium by Thornton, which shows, says Selden, (c) how great the authority of Bracton was in the time of Edward I. He continued to be the repository of ancient English jurisprudence, and the principal source of legal authority, down to the time of the publication of the Institutes of Lord Coke.

Staunforde, in his Pleas of the Crown, published about the time of Philip and Mary, bears strong testimony to the merits and to the authority of Bracton. It is stated in Plowden, (d) that neither Glanville nor Bracton were to be cited as authorities, but rather as ornaments to the discourse; and in several

other books the same thing was said. (e) But Mr. Reeves, *501 in his History of the English Law, (f) justly * vindicates the character of Bracton from such unmerited aspersion; and what is as much, and perhaps more to the purpose, the learned Selden, whose knowledge of English legal antiquities was unrivalled, declares, that this notion is founded in error.

(a) 4 Reeve's History of the English Law, p. 570.

(b) Mr. Spence, in his Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, vol. i. 118132, considers that Bracton drew the learning of his treatise, not from the AngloSaxon or Anglo-Norman jurisprudence, but essentially from the Roman law.

(c) Dissertation annexed to Fleta, c. ii. sec. 1.

(d) P. 357, 358.

(e) 1 Show. 118; 11 St. Tri. 143.

(ƒ) Vol. iv. pp. 570, 571.

Glanville and Bracton are authors of great service to all who apply themselves to the study of the law, and are desirous of knowing its origin and progress from the very foundation. (a) They contain numberless things, said Selden, which in his day either remained entire, or were only partially abrogated; and they contain such information on ancient customs and laws, as to carry with them authority as well as illustration. Lord Holt, in the great case of Coggs v. Bernard, made free use of Brac ton, and spoke of him as an old author full of reason and good

sense.

Britton and Fleta, two treatises in the reign of Edw. Britton and I., were nothing more than appendages to Bracton, and Fleta. from whom they drew largely. Lord Coke says, (b) that Britton was bishop of Hereford, and of profound judgment in the common law, and that Fleta was written by some learned lawyer, while in confinement in the Fleet prison. (c) The dissertation which Selden annexed to the edition of Fleta, printed in his time, is evidence of the high estimation in which the work was then held; and it is a little singular that President Henault, in his chronological abridgment of the History of France, (d) should refer to this ancient English treatise of Fleta as an historical authority. (e)

Sir John Fortescue's treatise, De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, was written in the reign of Henry VI., under whom he was Sir John Forchief justice, and afterwards chancellor. It is in the tescue. form of a dialogue between him and the young prince, and he undertakes to show, that the common law was the most * reasonable and the most ancient in Europe, and superior *502 to the civil law. It displays sentiments of liberty, and a

(a) Selden's Dissertations, c. 1, sec. 3.

(b) Pref. to 10 Co.

(c) Lord Campbell, in his very interesting "Lives of the Lord Chancellors," says that Britton set the example of writing law books in French, which was followed for some centuries.

(d) Tom. i. p. 258.

(e) The Mirror of Justices was said, recently, by Ch. J. Tindal, (6 Bing. N. C. 237,) to be a book of great authority, and of the earliest, though uncertain date. Lord Coke spoke of its authority and antiquity in high terms, and that most of it was written before the conquest. Pref. to 9 Co. and Pref. to 10 Co. Mr. Reeves, author of the History of the English Law, speaks of it as a curious, and in some degree authentic tract, and as compiled by Horne, under Edw. II., from some work of that kind, and legal documents in the Anglo-Saxon times.

sense of a limited monarchy, remarkable, in the fierce and barbarous period of the Lancastrian civil wars, and an air of probity and piety runs through the work. He insisted, for instance, that the conviction of criminals by juries, and without torture, was much more just and humane than the method of the continental nations; and that the privilege of challenging jurors, and of bringing writs of attaint upon corrupt verdicts, and the usual wealth of jurors, afforded that security to the lives and property of English subjects, which no other country was capable of affording. He run a parallel, in many instances, between the common and the civil law, in order to show the superior equity of the former, and that the proceedings in courts of justice were not so dilatory as in other nations. Though some of the instances of that superiority which he adduces such as the illegitimacy of antenuptial children, and the doctrine of feudal wardships, are of no consequence, yet the security arising from trial by jury, and the security of life and property by means of the mixed government of England, and the limitations of the royal prerogative, were solid and pre-eminent marks of superiority.

This interesting work of Fortescue has been translated from the Latin into English, and illustrated with the notes of the learned Selden; and it was strongly recommended, in a subsequent age, by such writers as Sir Walter Raleigh and St. Germain. And while upon this author, we cannot but pause and admire a system of jurisprudence which, in so uncultivated a period of society, contained such singular and invaluable provisions in favor of life, liberty, and property as those to which Fortescue referred. They were unprecedented in all Greek and Roman antiquity, and, being preserved in some tolerable degree of freshness and vigor, amidst the profound ignorance and licentious spirit of the feudal ages, they justly entitle the common law to a share of that constant and vivid eulogy which the *503 English lawyers have always liberally bestowed upon their municipal institutions.

Littleton.

Littleton's Book of Tenures was composed in the reign of Edward IV., and it is confined entirely to the doctrines of the old English law, concerning the tenure of real estates, and the incidents and services relating thereto. In the first book, Littleton treats of the quantity of interest in estates, under the heads of fee simple, fee tail, tenant in dower, tenant by the curtesy, ten