The Evolution of Law. 121 



The business of those days was fighting : there was hardly 

 a beginning of trade and commerce ; the value of all the 

 personal property in the Kingdom was small ; the rules of 

 land law, compared with those of a later period, were 

 few and simple ; so the law of the time was crude and 

 rudimentary. There were only four forms of action in 

 the Common Law Courts which could be employed to 

 maintain a right or remedy a wrong. These failing to fit 

 the case, the plaintiff must go out of Court poorer than 

 he went in. These four remedies, as stiff and narrow 

 as they were simple, afforded poor showing for relief 

 in the manifold forms of what Coke used to call fraud and 

 covin. There was many a way by which the cruel over- 

 lord could oppress and defraud his poor tenant with im- 

 punity, because his act could not be described in the set 

 phrases of either of the writs of Debt, Detinue, Covenant 

 or Trespass. 



We read that at last some complainant, failing to get 

 redress in the Common Law Courts, but bound to push 

 his case, would somehow get access to the King, coming 

 down to London, or appearing before him on one of his 

 circuits through the kingdom, and would give his plaint, 

 and pray for relief. Whereupon the King summoned the 

 accused to make his plea, and, if found in the wrong, with 

 off-hand justice he granted the relief asked for. There 

 were besides, cases too difficult to be determined by the 

 ordinary courts, which were brought before the King for 

 decision. This kind of business grew, of course, and be- 

 came so heavy a burden that he must have help, and so 

 a Justiciary, or Chancellor, as auxiliary. In time the 

 work increased so that it became necessary to organize 

 a corp of assistants and subordinates. This was the 

 origin of the famous Court of Chancery an institu- 

 tion at first beneficent, remedial, and progressive, which 

 regarded justice as of more consequence that precedent, and 

 form as of little account when weighed against substance ; 

 but which became first conservative, then reactionary, 

 and at last an obstacle to right and justice, so that it 

 well deserved all the invective of Bentham and all the 

 satire of Dickens. 



The tliird agent in the modification and improvement 

 of law is Legislation, which in course of time becomes a 

 large part of the business of the State. The State is now 



