CHAPTER XIII 
PERIOD OF MATURITY 
The Period of Maturity began about 1793, the year of the 
death of Lord Mansfield, and lasted until about 1875, the date 
of the passage of the Judicature Acts in England. This 
makes the Period of Maturity a comparatively short period 
of less than one hundred years. 
Characteristics. The end of the law in this period was the 
protection of property and freedom of contract. The social 
interests protected were the social interests in security and 
equality of opportunity. The emphasis now was upon rights, 
instead of upon duties as the emphasis had been in the Pe- 
riod of Equity. The social philosophy and economic theories 
of the last quarter of the eighteenth century were adopted 
by the courts. Men were thought to be endowed with certain 
“natural rights”. Liberty was associated with equality of 
opportunity, and it was thought that once political restric- 
tions and restraints upon liberty were cleared away nothing 
more would be needed. Government was regarded a neces- 
sary evil, and the less of it the better. The theories of 
competition, laissez faire, and individualism of Rousseau and 
Adam Smith were in reality for this period at least made a 
part of the common law. The period marked a revulsion 
against the Period of Equity, as that period had marked a 
revulsion against the Strict Period, and it is characterized 
by many of the things which characterized the Strict Period. 
Our Declaration of Independence and our bills of rights are 
documents of the Period of Maturity and embody the philoso- 
phy and economic theories of the period. 
The social interests above named were protected on the 
one hand by a reduction of the law to greater certainty and 
strictness, as in the Strict Period; and on the other hand by 
antecedent rights of contract, instead of by those created by 
the law without contract. What was wanted in this period 
was not more law, but less doubt about the law, and more 
freedom for individuals to make their own law. What de- 
velopment in the law occurred was consequently mostly in the 
realm of antecedent rights rather than in the realm of rem- 
edies or adjective law. 
( 116 ) 
