Willis: Anglo-American Law 
115 
of the eighteenth centuries law was a combination of Hebrew 
law and popular law. After the Revolution the United States, 
as states, adopted as our common law the common law of 
England so far as adapted to conditions here, the canon law 
so far as adopted by the Ecclesiastical Courts in probate and 
divorce cases and English statutes, either as of the date of 
1776 or as of the date of 1607 ; but it was too late to apply 
this law during the time which had already passed, and when 
they did come to apply English law they worshiped so blindly 
at the shrine of Blackstone, whose Commentaries had been 
published a short time before and in the law offices were 
largely substituted for other law books which practitioners 
did not possess, that they entered at once upon the Period 
of Maturity rather than the Period of Equity. But since 
equity and admiralty law had not reached their final form 
in England, the United States, thru the work of Chancellor 
Kent and Justice Story, contributed something in the nine- 
teenth century to the Anglo-American law of these subjects. 
