ntages Europe must have reaped by its
inheriting at once from the ancients so complete an art, which was
also so necessary for giving security to all other arts, and which by
refining, and still more by bestowing solidity on the judgment, served
as a model to further improvements. The sensible utility of the Roman
law, both to public and private interest, recommended the study of it,
at a time when the more exalted and speculative sciences carried no
charms with them; and thus the last branch of ancient literature which
remained uncorrupted, was happily the first transmitted to the modern
world. For it is remarkable, that in the decline of Roman learning,
when the philosophers were universally infected with superstition and
sophistry, and the poets and historians with barbarism, the lawyers, who
in other countries are seldom models of science or politeness, were yet
able, by the constant study and close imitation of their predecessors,
to maintain the same good sense in their decisions and reasonings, and
the same purity in their language and expression.

What bestowed an additional merit on the civil law, was the extreme
imperfection of that jurisprudence which preceded it among all the
European nations, especially among the Saxons or ancient English.
The absurdities which prevailed at that time in the administration of
justice, may be conceived from the authentic monuments which remain of
the ancient Saxon laws; where a pecuniary commutation was received for
every crime, where stated prices were fixed for men's lives and members,
where private revenges were authorized for all injuries, where the use
of the ordeal, corsnet, and afterwards of the duel, was the received
method of proof, and where the judges were rustic freeholders, assembled
of a sudden, and deciding a cause from one debate or altercation of the
parties. Such a state of society was very little advanced beyond the
rude state of nature: violence universally prevailed, instead of general
and equitable maxims: the pretended liberty of the times was only an
incapacity of submitting to government: and men, not protected by law in
their lives and properties, sought shelter, by their personal servitude
and attachments, under some powerful chieftain, or by voluntary
combinations.

The gradual progress of improvement raised the Europeans somewhat above
this uncultivated state; and affairs, in this island particularly, took
early a turn which was more favorable to