DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMON LAW persons of some independent social standing. They were largely the lesser land holders, and the younger sons or nephews of some of the larger land holders. They formed a link between the nobles and the middle classes. Unlike the lawyers of France, those of England did not generally depend on the Crown. Some of them no doubt did, and served the Crown in a way which the best men of their time condemned. But on the whole they were not dependent on the Crown and they were ready on occasion to oppose the Crown. Thus it came about that although the people at large knew little of the details of the law, the spirit of independ ent legality was diffused through the nation, and it was not the docile servant of power as it became in countries where both force and the function of making or declaring the law lay in the hands of the executive ruler. How great a part the conception of the legal rights of the subject or citizen against the Crown or the State power played in England and American history is known to you all. Still less need I dwell on the capital importance for the whole political system of the United States of that doctrine of Limited Powers which has been so admirably worked out in your Constitution, nor of that respect for a defined legal right which supports their provisions. The life of every nation rests mainly on what may be called its fixed ideas, those ideas which have become axioms in the mind of every citizen. They are stronger than funda mental laws, because it is they that give to fundamental laws their strength. They are, as the poet says, the hidden bases of the hills. Now, it was mainly by the Common Law that those fixed and fundamental ideas were moulded whereupon the constitutional freedom of America, as of England, rests. One hundred and thirty-one years have now passed since the majestic current of the Common Law became divided into two streams which have ever since flowed in distinct channels. Water is naturally affected by the rock over or the soil through
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which it flows, but these two streams, separated in 1776, have hitherto preserved almost the same tint and almost the same flavor. Many statutes have been enacted in England since 1776, and many more have been enacted here, but the broad character of the Common Law remains essentially the same and it forms the same mental habits in those who study and practice it. An American counsel in an English court, or an English counsel in an American court feels himself in a familiar atmosphere, and under stands what is going on and why it is going on, because he is to the manor born. We read and we quote your law reports, although we are sometimes embarrassed by the enormous quantity of the food, not all of it, perhaps, equally nutritious, but some of it highly nutritious, which you annually present to our appetite. So you quote our law reports, although they are, I am sorry to say, nowadays so largely filled by decisions upon recent statutes as to be less ser viceable for the elucidation of the Com mon Law than they at one time were. In nothing, perhaps does the substantial iden tity of the two branches of the old stock appear so much as in the doctrine and practice of the law. The fact that many new racial elements have gone to the making of the American people, and that in an increasing proportion during recent years, new elements from some of which you have gained enormously, causes in the sphere of law very little difference. And this unity in the law is a bond of union and of sym pathy whose value can hardly be over-rated. An English visitor who has himself been trained to the law can find few keener pleasures than that which my friends Lord Justice Kennedy, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir Frederick Pollock and your other English legal visitors and I enjoy in being here to-day among so many eminent members of our own profession, and in perceiving how high and respected a place the legal profession holds, and always has held, and I trust always will hold, in the United States.
