The Unification of American Law merce, and their advice to Congress be demanded and admitted concerning all bills before Congress, as far as the same
may eject the trade of the states. . . Besides the benefits which Congress may receive from the institution, a chamber
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system, resting on the “uniformity" of
law, has been thwarted by the existence of independent sovereignties who stand to each other, so far as their domestic codes are concerned, almost like foreign nations. Out of that condition of things has arisen a “Conflict of Laws" whose
of commerce, composed of members from all trading towns in the states, if prop
embarrassments are endless.
erly instituted and conducted, will prove
those embarrassments the commercial
very many, I might almost say, innumer able advantages of singular utility to all
elements of this country are now struggling as never before, because as
the states. It will give dignity, uni formity and safety to our trade." That recommendation was the only funda mental part of Pelatiah Webster's plan which the Convention of 1787 failed to adopt. But a century later his wisdom and foresight in that respect were fully vindicated by the creation of the Depart
the commercial relations of the states become more intimate and more com plex, the disadvantages incident to the
ment of Commerce and Labor, which is
now performing in a general way the func tions which were to have been performed by the Chamber of Commerce outlined
in his original plan. Thus it appears that the first modern effort to give unity to law in Germany was made by the merchant class as a prelude to the move
ment for national unity; thus it appears that the Annapolis convention called to
establish a uniform commercial system really forced the meeting of the Federal Convention of 1787; thus it appears that the “wholly novel theory” of federal government which was embodied in the
work of that immortal assembly was the invention of a Philadelphia merchant whose plan rested on two fundamental concepts—a uniform and self-executing system of federal taxation, and a uni
conflict deepen in intensity.
Against
Why such
embarrassments are not actually greater
than they are it is hard to understand when we consider the number of law making bodies and the number of su preme tribunals in active operation. N0
country in the world has ever been inun dated by such floods of law, statutory and judge-made, as are now streaming
from the forty-five state sovereignties and the one federal sovereignty by which we are governed. Nothing could be more appalling than the sight presented
by an American law library, necessarily a vast one, containing all the statutory and judge-made law of those sovereign ties as it now exists. In comparison the books containing the statutory and judge-made law of England are a mere handful.
The late and lamented Judge
W. W. Howe of New Orleans called attention not long ago to the fact that, comparing the size of the pages, the
forty-sixth volume of Louisiana Annual Reports for the year 1894 contains as
form commercial system that would “give dignity, uniformity and safety to
much matter as the entire Digest or
our trade.”
judge-made law evolved at Rome during
While Pelatiah Webster's dream of a uniform system of federal taxation, en—
a thousand years.
Pandects, into which was condensed the
Nothing can so illus
federal government, has been fully real
trate the gravity of our present condition as that contrast. It is generally under stood that the first cause of a tendency
ized, his dream of a uniform commercial
to codify Roman law and make it more
forceable by a self-sustaining system of
