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cause the publication of his Rules and Decisions. When that monarch failed to do so, he lost his greatest opportunity to become a public benefactor, for Bacon was too poor to publish the manuscript at the time, and afterwards it was lost. It is reasonable to presume from what we know of Bacon's published works, that in the loss of the manuscript of his Rules and Decisions, the greatest and most useful system of Jurisprudence ever intended for man was lost. But the system of Coke did come to us.

It consisted of reports of English decisions in which were contained a number of the maxims of the Civil Law. Coke coming across them in the English cases thought them of English origin. He hated everything from Rome and was so intensely English that he could not conceive that any system of Jurisprudence could compare with that he found in England. His hatred for the Civil Law was no doubt intensified by the fact that Bacon advocated it. He hated Bacon with all the vigor of a strong, obstinate, jealous and venomous nature. He wrote on the fly leaf of a presentation copy of one of Bacon's philisophical works: "It deserveth not to be read in schools, but freighted only in the ship of fools." Nevertheless Coke was naturally a great lawyer and judge, where his prejudices were not involved. He arose to a sublime height and won the admiration of great judges and scholars, for bearding King James and his parliament, when he informed them, that "above them was the law;" and that "it was his power and authority to modify their acts and even nullify them, if required by reason, morals and common right." Hughes Pro. Vol. 2, p. 1003.

Bacon saw clearly that though Coke started with many good principles, nevertheless in the constant following of previous cases as precedents, the reason for the law would not be conserved. The trouble Bacon foresaw and attempted to provide against, has come upon us. Instead of going back to the fountain head we are following down the rivulets, the very thing the greatest Jurisprudents of the

world told us not to do over 2400 years ago. In the constant following of cases, the maxims in which was embodied the reasons for the laws, have been lost sight of and all but obliterated. As a result our cases are not decided upon principles, but in large measure follow blind precedent devoid of fundamental reasoning. In this way, error kept constantly increasing till the time of Mansfield. In order to reopen the channels of the law, Mansfield again introduced the maxims of the Civil Law. They again proved effective and evidenced the power of the Civil Law to promote justice. But Mansfield and Bacon, Kent, Story, and Bishop have been but partially understood and followed. The English system of jurisprudence has been established in America on the basis set up by Coke and Blackstone. The views of the latter are today predominant in the United States. Even our law schools teach that the maxims are misleading.

Had our law schools learned that the Civil Law of Rome had replaced the Common Law of England, they would have learned the maxim that: The beginning of a thing is the most important part of it; and would be teaching the maxims as the most important requisite to the beginning of a legal education.

Mansfield was, next to Bacon, the greatest benefactor of the English speaking race. His restatement of the principles of the Civil Law startled the English Bar, who regarded him as an innovator. Naturally there came forth the most bitter criticism from the English lawyers whose knowledge of jurisprudence was confined to Coke and Blackstone. In Mansfield's time English prejudice against the Civil Law still obtained, as was evidenced in the letters of Junius where some lawyer of his time says of Lord Mansfield: "He is fond of introducing into the Courts of the King's Bench any law which contradicts or excludes the Common Law of England; whether it be Common, Civil, Jusgentium or Levitical," and on page 97 id., "We are both agreed that Lord Mansfield has labored inces

santly to introduce new modes of proceeding in the court in which he presides; but you attribute it to honest zeal in behalf of innocence oppressed by quibble and chicane. I say he has introduced new law, too, and removed the landmarks established by old decisions. I say his view is to change a Court of Common Law into one of Equity and bring everything into the arbitrium of a praetorian Court." Strange as it may seem, we are just beginning to find this out. For example, a few days ago I forwarded to a friend of mine in Chicago the views I have just expressed. He is one of the most brilliant men I know and a lecturer in the law schools of both the University of Chicago and Michigan. He insisted that the common law of England was responsible for the doing away with the barbarisms of Feudal laws. While it is true that what is now the common law of England is responsible for the justice which has replaced the barbarisms of the Feudal system, it was the glory of Mansfield that he showed that this could be done by making the civil law of Rome the common law of England. Since Lord Mansfield opened the doors to the civil law in England it has been coming in like a flood, till today, Coke and Blackstone are practically obsolete there. The old practice in England has been superseded by the simpler practice of the "Pratorian Courts," and the books of Feudalism are left to mould on their shelves, relics of the selfishness which begat them.

In America we have clung to the English common law of procedure till it has led us into a jungle of conflicting opinions, where both Bench and Bar have been lost. In our law schools we have been taught that the common law of Coke and Blackstone is a consummation of human wisdom just as those worthies claimed it to be, and that the law of America is the common law of England. Even to this hour the greatest portion of Bench and Bar in America is startled and amazed when the truth is brought to them, that the English common law (not its procedure) has been practically swept away. They have been so profoundly

engaged in the business of the law that they have not learned what has really taken place. Though they have seen the confusion, they have not understood the source of it. Another reason for it is this: We have been so in the habit of accepting everything from England as English common law that we have not noticed that it has been civil law with which England has been replacing the old Feudal customs which Coke and Blackstone represented. England discarded its old rules of procedure sixty-five years ago. What our bench and bar need is to be wakened to a realization of what has happened. The object of this article is to show that though Bacon's manuscript was lost, yet his Rules and Decisions have come to us. We have been amazed at what scholars have read from the walls of cities, buried for thousands of years, as well as what has been deciphered from tablets and cylinders found under the ruins of old Babylon. To decipher Bacon is a much easier task. Bacon gave us the clue when he told us his system consisted of Rules and Decisions. We find that his hundred rules for equity jurisprudence are maximized rules. They have been in use in the high courts of chancery in England, just as they came from the pen of that great master, and they are followed also in the courts of chancery, both Federal and State, in the United States. We have shown how Judge Tuley saw enough in the maxims on which to base a system of jurisprudence and that Hamilton saw in the maxims, a study of government. We know that our own John Marshall saw as Hamilton did, that in the maxims were to be found the conserving principles of government and that when he found it necessary to justice he did not hesitate to read them into the constitution. (Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137; McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat 316).

If it is true that the civil law of Rome has been made the common law of England and America and also true that the civil law was built upon the maxims, how then shall we understand our common law unless we understand the max

ims? It should not require much calculation to see that it is necessary to go to the fountain head. We wonder at the brilliant genius in jurisprudence of John Marshall. The explanation of it is, that he had learned the genius of Roman jurisprudence and went to the fountain head for inspiration. Marshall constantly resorted to the maxims. Had Bacon's Rules and Decisions come to us in the place of the system of Coke and Blackstone, we would have learned the true source and philosophy of jurisprudence. We have been led to believe by the law schools that we are in debt for the law we have, to Coke and Blackstone, whereas, as a matter of fact, scarcely anything of Blackstone and Coke is taught in them at the present time.

Following these cues, Mr. William T. Hughes has worked out a system of Rules and Decisions, with so profound a knowledge of the maxims and their relationships, and so careful a study of cases both American and English, that it would seem that the spirit of his great ideal and master, Bacon, had guided and inspired his efforts. Mr. Hughes has drunk deeply of the history of the world, and the philosophy thereof, knows the great epochs and what they portend, and thereby is prepared, as only a great master may be prepared, to proclaim the unity and inviolability of fundamental law. He has accordingly shown us that the great fundamental maxims of the civil law are practically the same as those of Christianity, and our own law is based upon them.

The civil law of Rome was based upon those principles which underlie the Mosaic Law. Each was the product of a republic. Napoleon, too, built well when he, aiding in the founding of a republic, caused the Code Napoleon to be based on the principles of the civil law. It was the selfishness of the Feudal laws that produced the French Revolution. It is not strange that planted in the soil of France to replace the laws of Feudalism the civil law grew, blossomed and fruited into a republic. But it was not only in France that the Code Napoleon took root, but in all Eu

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