NEW LAW BOOKS.
THE ELEMENTS OF JURISPRUDENCE. By Thomas Erskitic Holland. Ninth edition. Oxford University Press, American Branch, New York. 1900. Cloth, $2.50. (xxiii. + 430 pp.) By jurisprudence, Professor Holland means the science that defines such words as law, right, duty, sovereign, ascertains the source of law: and divides law into its several branches, — in short, — Analytical Jurisprudence, the science that is identified with the name of John Austin as inti mately as Geometry is identified with the name of Euclid. It is a modern science, not quite a hundred years old; but it already has a history well worth telling. Long before its birth, it became indebted in a strange way to Sir William Blackstone. The first volume of the Commentaries contains much matter as to the nature, origin, classifica tion, and reason of law. This matter has liter ary charm, doubtless; but it clearly enough is not the result of historical investigation or of acute analysis. In fact, what Blackston ewas at tempting to do was simply to present, accurately and clearly, propositions of law; and his digres sions into analytical and historical disquisition were merely incidental and ornamental repeti tions of the commonplace statements of ordinary lawyers. These platitudes passed muster with most people then, and they pass muster with most people still; but, to the detriment of Blackstone's fame and to the benefit of mankind, it happened that in the Oxford audience to which, in the form of lectures, the Commentaries were originally addressed, there sat a young man to whom fictitious reasonings were as transparent and offensive as cobwebs. Yes, even in his youth Jeremy Bentham was an independent thinker and a vigorous writer; and in 1776, when he was only twenty-eight years of age, his "Fragmenten Government," while conceding the merit of Blackstone's style, attacked Blackstone's theorizing with the acuteness that characterized Bentham's writing as long as he lived, And Bentham lived a long while. For more than fiftv years after that memorable attack upon Blackstone, he was the militant enemy of loose thinking and of obsolete law. He died in 1832; and long before that year he had convinced his contemporaries of the need for reform in the
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law, and, still better, had made such an im pression upon younger men of ability as ren dered it certain that his modes of thought would long survive him. Trustworthy authori ties — among them, none more interesting or important than John Stuart Mill's " Autobio graphy and Mrs. Janet Ross' " Three Genera tions of Englishwomen" — make it clear that Bentham's influence, though exerted principally through his writings, was greatly enhanced by his position as the genial center of a small cir cle of influential friends. In tracing the history of Analytical Jurisprudence, it is not necessary to name all the members of the little group; but it is important to notice that as early as 1810 Bentham's fondness for James Mill had caused him to secure, as a next-door neighbor and almost constant associate, that famous father of a still more famous son. James Mill, though by twenty-five years Bentham's junior, was thirty-seven years of age, and already a man of note. John Stuart Mill was only four, but his intellectual feats had begun, or, according to the familiar story, even at that early age he had made substantial progress with the study of Greek. Both James Mill and John Stuart Mill continued in close social and intellectual com panionship with Bentham until his death; and in their writings on law reform they frankly took the attitude of disciples. To this little society of persons interested in close thought as to all subjects, and particularly as to the law, came in 1820, as another next-door neighbor, John Austin, of two years' standing at the bar, just married, thirty years of age, and already of high repute for acuteness. He was forty-two years younger than Bentham; but the venerable reformer was still active in mind and body, and had twelve years to live. The home of the Austins was a meeting place for Bentham, the Mills, Romilly, Erie, Bickersteth, and many other men whose names are not forgotten. In the winter of 182 1-22, about two years after Ben tham and the Mills and the Austins began to live side by side, John Stuart Mill then not quite six teen years of age, studied Roman law with Aus tin. In 1827 John Stuart Mill edited Bentham's "Rationale of Judicial Evidence." In 1828, Austin, after a residence of less than a year in Germany, began to deliver in London his lec tures on Jurisprudence. . One of his hearers was
