16
to study medieval law than it is for an Englishman; he has not before his mind the fear that he is saying what is not 'practically sound', that he may seem to be unsettling the law or usurping the functions of a judge. There are many good reasons for wishing that some parts of our law, notably our land-law, were thoroughly purged of their archaisms; of these reasons it is needless to say anything; but I am sure that the study of legal history would not suffer thereby. I do not ask for 'the gulph of a great revolution'; but it is to the interest of the middle ages themselves that they be not brought into court any more.
Are we to say then that the study of modern law and the study of legal history have nothing to do with each other? That would be an exaggeration; but it is true and happily true that a man may be an excellent lawyer and know little of the remoter parts of history. We can not even say that every sound lawyer will find an interest in them; many will; some will not. But we can say this, that a thorough training in modern law is almost indispensable for any one who wishes to do good work on legal history. In whatever form the historian of law may give his results to the world—and the prejudice against beginning at the end is strong if unreasonable—he will often have to work from the modern to the ancient, from the clear to the vague, from the known to the unknown. Of course he must work forwards as well as backwards; the stream must be traced downwards as well as upwards; but the lower reaches are already mapped and by studying the best maps of them he will learn where to look for the sources. Again I do not think that an Englishman
