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LAW REFORM.

INTRODUCTION.

LAW REFORM-MR. BENTHAM-MR. DUMONT-MR.

MILL-SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.

THE age of Law Reform and the age of Jeremy Bentham are one and the same. He is the father of the most important of all the branches of Reform, the leading and ruling department of human improvement. No one before him had ever seriously thought of exposing the defects in our English system of Jurisprudence. All former students had confined themselves to learn its principles,-to make themselves masters of its eminently technical and artificial rules; and all former writers had but expounded the doctrines handed down from age to age. Men, by common consent, had agreed in bending before the authority of former times as decisive upon every point; and confounding the question of, what is the law, which that authority alone could determine, with the question, what ought

to be the law, which the wisdom of an early and an unenlightened age was manifestly unfit to solve, they had taken it for granted that the system was perfect, because it was established, and had bestowed upon the produce of ignorance and inexperience their admiration in proportion as it was defective. He it was who first made the mighty step of trying the whole provisions of our jurisprudence by the test of expediency, fearlessly examining how far each part was connected with the rest; and with a yet more undaunted courage, inquiring how far even its most consistent and symmetrical arrangements were framed according to the principle which should pervade a Code of Laws-their adaptation to the circumstances of society, to the wants of men, and to the promotion of human happiness.

Not only was he thus eminently original among the lawyers and the legal philosophers of his own country; he might be said to be the first legal philosopher that had appeared in the world. For Justinian, when he undertook his great work of abridging and digesting the Roman law, in truth only methodised existing laws, and brought into a compendious and manageable form those rules which lay scattered over so many volumes, that they were said to be "the load of many camels." Whatever he found, or rather whatever Tribonian and his coadjutors employed by the Emperor found, in the edicts of Prætors,* the laws of the popular assemblies,† the rescripts of former Emperors,‡ or the opinions and other writings of lawyers, was deemed to be fixed

*Edicta Prætorum.
Rescripta Principum.

+ Leges et Plebiscita.
§ Responsa Prudentum.

law; and accordingly the Pandects, (or Digest,) any more than the Code and the Novels, contain nothing which is not specially avouched by the authority upon which it is given as law, and the Institutes, a work of matchless beauty as an abstract or summary of principles, is wholly drawn from the same sources. The like may be said of the modern Codes, of which the Frederician or Prussian is the most important that had been compiled before Mr. Bentham's time; and although that of Napoleon, the most perfect of them all, from being the growth of an age that had already profited largely by Mr. Bentham's labours, contains very considerable changes and improvements upon the former laws; yet these bear but a very insignificant proportion to the whole mass, which is in the main a digest of existing jurisprudence, and derives its principal claim to the public gratitude from its abolishing the local differences of the provincial systems, and giving one law to the whole empire. Mr. Bentham, professing to regard no existing law as of any value unless it was one which ought to have been made, wholly unfetters himself from any deference to authority-bringing the fundamental principles, as well as the details of each legislative rule, to the test of reason alone-trying all by the criterion of their tendency to promote the happiness and improve the condition of mankind-not only shewed in detail the glaring inconsistencies and the radical imperfections of the English system, but carrying his bold and sagacious views to their amplest extent, investigated the principles upon which all human laws should be constructed, and showed how their provisions should be framed for the better accomplishment of their great

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