Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/239

This page needs to be proofread.
2I0
The Green Bag.

John Stuart Mill. The last lecture was delivered in 1832; and six lectures, entitled " The Province of Jurisprudence Determined," were published in that year, which happened to be the year of Bentham's death. It is clear enough that there was close con nection between Bentham and Austin. It does not follow that Austin was lacking in origin ality. His field was near Bentham's, but it was sufficiently distinct to be his own. Ben tham's province was to point out defects in exist ing law and to suggest reforms. Austin's province was to analyze and classify law, whether existent or non-existent. Austin was indebted to Ben tham for setting with wonderful clearness the example of independent thinking as to law; but, though that was a great debt, Austin was never theless as independent a thinker as Bentham. In fact, Austin was an enthusiast, an apostle, and almost a martyr. He dedicated his life to the development and teaching of a complete system of Analytical Jurisprudence, and when public interest flagged, — as was inevitable with such a subject, even though Austin had been, as he was not, a rhetorical lecturer, — he was much more fatally disappointed than he was willing to admit. In 1832 he voluntarily ceased lecturing; and although he lived until 1859, he could not be induced to publish the complete collection of his lectures, or even to revise the fragment that had appeared in 1832. Upon his death, his widow, Sarah Austin, with infinite labor and skill, made up from his manuscripts a fairly com plete work, and prefixed to it a preface that is one of the masterpieces of literature. When she died in 1867, a new edition was in preparation, with the aid of strangely full and accurate lecture notes that had been taken by John Stuart Mill. This edition was published in 1869, and it furnishes the accepted text of Austin's " Juris prudence," with which, either in abridged or in unabridged form, Englishmen and Americans are acquainted as a classic that ought to be read by every scholarly lawyer. The classics that ought to be read, however, are sometimes neg lected; and that is what has happened to Aus tin. Although on the surface there is little charm in Austin's numerous repetitions, pain fully accurate analyses, and somewhat unusual terminology, there is beneath the surface the

charm that attaches to the work of every enthu siast and creator. No one can read Austin for an hour without realizing that here is a master. Yet after all is said in favor of Austin, the fact remains that his work is too large for the beginner, and, indeed, too long for any one but a specialist. Besides, the investigations of Sir Henry Maine and others have shown that Aus tin's discussions, based largely upon the Roman law, do not take into account legal phenomena even now existing in some regions of retarded civilization. In short, there is need of a smaller and later work. This need has been supplied by Professor Holland's treatise, which first ap peared in 1880 and now has reached its ninth edition. The work is divided into five parts, entitled respectively Law and Rights, Private Law, Public Law, International Law, and The Application of Law. The first part is devoted almost exclusively to Analytical Jurisprudence, strictly so called; and the other parts are de voted largely to discussing, from the point of view of Analytical Jurisprudence, Torts, Con tracts, Agency, and other familiar branches, with incidental statements of propositions of law found either in the Roman or in the English systems. An American lawyer cannot refrain from regretting the prominence given, especially in the first part, to Roman law and to quotations from unlawyerlike sources, such as the Vedas, St. Thomas Aquinas, Hooker, Kant, and Hegel. Professor Holland is at his best when he shakes himself loose from such learning, and expresses his own thoughts. His eighth chapter, for in stance, is incomparably more enlightening than the first and the second. Yet viewed as a whole, there can be no question that the work performs well its purpose of opening to the student the modes of thought and expression essential to the science of Analytical Jurisprudence. It is not fairly to be called a shortcoming that Professor Holland fails to give a history of the science, and so renders necessary the short sketch contained in this review. Yet it is deeply to be regretted that some one with space at his disposal does not present this history in full. giving in detail due credit to Bentham, James Mill, John Austin, Sarah Austin, John Stuart Mill, Sir Henry Maine, and the later workers whom happily we have with us still.