to
precedents is the source of the most striking peculiarities of the
English common law. There can be little doubt that it was the rigid
adherence of the common law courts to established precedent which caused
the rise of an independent tribunal administering justice on more
equitable principles--the tribunal of the chancellor, the court of
chancery. And the old common law courts--the king's bench, common pleas
and exchequer--were always, as compared with the court of chancery,
distinguished for a certain narrowness and technicality of reasoning. At
the same time the common law was never a fixed or rigid system. In the
application of old precedents to the changing circumstances of society,
and in the development of new principles to meet new cases, the common
law courts displayed an immense amount of subtlety and ingenuity, and a
great deal of sound sense. The continuity of the system was not less
remarkable than its elasticity. Two great defects of form long
disfigured the English law. One was the separation of common law and
equity. The Judicature Act of 1873 remedied this by merging the
jurisdiction of all the courts in one supreme court, and causing
equitable principles to prevail over those of the common law where they
differ. The other is the overwhelming mass of precedents in which the
law is embedded. This can only be removed by some well-conceived scheme
of the nature of a code or digest; to some extent this difficulty has
been overcome by such acts as the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, the
Partnership Act 1890 and the Sale of Goods Act 1893.

The English common law may be described as a pre-eminently national
system. Based on Saxon customs, moulded by Norman lawyers, and jealous
of foreign systems, it is, as Bacon says, as mixed as the English
language and as truly national. And like the language, it has been taken
into other English-speaking countries, and is the foundation of the law
in the United States.

COMMON LODGING-HOUSE, "a house, or part of a house, where persons of the
poorer classes are received for gain, and in which they use one or more
rooms in common with the rest of the inmates, who are not members of one
family, whether for eating or sleeping" (_Langdon_ v. _Broadbent_, 1877,
37 L.T. 434; _Booth_ v. _Ferrett_, 1890, 25 Q.B.D. 87). There is no
statutory definition of the class of houses in England intended to be
included in the expression "common lodging-house," but the above
definition