The Progress of Uniform Legislation critic, the quotation from whose works I have borrowed from Professor Pound. We have endeavored to put into statu tory form the well settled conclusions of the best and weightiest authorities on those subjects that have been selected for reduction to statutory form. But under pressure of the sentiment of the business community we have made some advances in conservative and care ful fashion on the rules of existing law in recognition of that common sense of justice, which we may hope becomes clearer as the years go on. Modern social and political conditions have in recent years caused a general re-examination of the basic concepts of all of our institutions. It could not be expected that municipal law would be overlooked in the general criticism to which all institutions have been com pelled to submit. In the midst of an unparalleled industrial prosperity more widely diffused than has ever been known, so far as recorded history can tell us, our American communities have been almost suddenly brought face to face with a spirit of unrest that insists upon demonstration that our frame of government and our system of common and statutory law and legal procedure are the best for our day and generation. Lawyers and professors of the inexact science of the law must justify existing systems or the insistent sense of justice, too often blinded by passion and diverted into selfish channels by demagogues, conscious and unconscious, will shatter them without reverence for tradition or fear of future consequence. Naturally the philosophical lawyer, who is wont frequently to withdraw himself from the incessant demands of immediate duty to his client, to reflect upon the aim and purport of human laws, must take a cautious and conservative view of any proposal of change or reform; but it
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does not bespeak unselfishness if he resists such change because it may lay upon him the burden of learning a new system, when an old one has become a second nature to him; and it does not bespeak intelligence if he thinks that any system that has shown itself inade quate to meet the ends of enlightened justice can be preserved in the face of a thoroughly convinced public opinion against it. The end of all human law is to ap proach as nearly as may be possible by reason, aided by Revelation, to those immutable principles of justice which are of the essence of the Creator's will. To use the well worn words of Blackstone: These are the immutable laws of good and evil, to which the Creator Himself, in all His dispensations conforms; and which He has enabled human reason to discover, so far as they are necessary for the conduct of human actions. Such, among others, are these prin ciples: that we should live honestly [honor ably], should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his due; to which three general prin ciples Justinian has reduced the whole doctrine of law."
Never, perhaps, in the history of mankind has there been such an oppor tunity to construct a perfect political constitution, so far as human endeavor could avail, as was afforded the gifted and patriotic men who formed the con vention that met in Philadelphia in 1787; and never, we may believe, was such statesmanship crowned with more brilliant success. Imperfect as the fed eral Constitution necessarily was, when compared with an ideal, excepting as it left open the question of slavery, it pro vided a system under which the Ameri can people have flourished beyond all precedent. Interpreted in a broad and tolerant spirit by the great court for which it made provision, it has proved "1 Bl. Com. 39.
