122 The Evolution of Law. 



mature. It has become sovereign, embodied in king, 

 emperor, or assembly, and supreme over its subjects to 

 determine action, compel obedience, and regulate rights 

 and duties. According to the theory of the English school 

 of jurisprudence there is no limit upon its power to make 

 law but in fact, and in apparent support of the doctrines 

 of the rival German school, the action of legislatures is 

 limited by the popular conscience and will. 



A distinctive characteristic of Legislation is that it is 

 supreme over all other methods of law-making. Its ad- 

 vantage is that it can make the will of the people effective 

 much more directly and expeditiously than the other 

 agencies. Many are the cases in which Legislation has 

 swept away the cobwebs of legal subtlety, simplified tech- 

 nical laws, and cleared from the path of progress the 

 obstacles of precedent and form. It has abolished im- 

 prisonment for debt, removed the disability of a party to 

 a suit to testify ; has given the prisoner the benefit of 

 counsel and the right to testify in his own behalf; has 

 converted the wife from a figment of law appurtenant to 

 the husband into a legal person, and is slowly bringing 

 woman to an equality with man in civil rights. 



In the progressive State the legislative function increases 

 rapidly in scope and application, until its share in law- 

 making becomes apparently, if not really, greater than that 

 of all other sources. After lai)S^ of time, perhaps of a 

 centur}', as in Kew York State ; perhaps of centuries, as 

 in England, the bulk of this statute law becomes very 

 great. At the same time the law of judicial decision has 

 also been growing rapidly, with constant accumulation of 

 additions, affirmations, reversals, and distinctions. There 

 may hav(^ been must have been a guiding principle 

 of growth in either case, which a master in analysis 

 might discover ; Imt none the less is the result in one case 

 a thicket, in the other a jungle, the, imperviousness and 

 cruel thorniness of which it enters into the heart of none 

 but a practicing lawyer to conceive. Statutes accumulate 

 by the myriads, with no order, no sequence except in date, 

 no interdependence ; in a word, there is nothing in print that 

 is so utterly incoherent as a collection of statutes. And it 

 takes thousands of volumes to contain the (lisjccta membra of 

 the behemoth of Common Law which some beaten and dis- 



