ious livelihood by
rapine and by the plunder of their neighbors. The feudal governments
also, among the more southern nations, were reduced to a kind of system;
and though that strange species of civil polity was ill fitted to insure
either liberty or tranquillity, it was preferable to the universal
license and disorder which had every where preceded it. But perhaps
there was no event which tended further to the improvement of the age,
than one which has not been much remarked, the accidental finding of
a copy of Justinian's Pandects, about the year 1130, in the town of
Amalfi, in Italy.

The ecclesiastics, who had leisure, and some inclination to study,
immediately adopted with zeal this excellent system of jurisprudence,
and spread the knowledge of it throughout every part of Europe. Besides
the intrinsic merit of the performance, it was recommended to them by
its original connection with the imperial city of Rome, which, being the
seat of their religion, seemed to acquire a new lustre and authority by
the diffusion of its laws over the western world. In less than ten years
after the discovery of the Pandects, Vacarius, under the protection of
Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, read public lectures of civil law in
the university of Oxford; and the clergy every where, by their example
as well as exhortation, were the means of diffusing the highest esteem
for this new science. That order of men, having large possessions to
defend, was in a manner necessitated to turn their studies towards the
law; and their properties being often endangered by the violence of the
princes and barons, it became their interest to enforce the observance
of general and equitable rules, from which alone they could receive
protection. As they possessed all the knowledge of the age, and were
alone acquainted with the habits of thinking, the practice as well as
science of the law fell mostly into their hands: and though the close
connection which, without any necessity, they formed between the canon
and civil law, begat a jealousy in the laity of England, and prevented
the Roman jurisprudence from becoming the municipal law of the country,
as was the case in many states of Europe, a great part of it was
secretly transferred into the practice of the courts of justice, and
the imitation of their neighbors made the English gradually endeavor
to raise their own law from its original state of rudeness and
imperfection.

It is easy to see what adva