in fact taken place in the moral
standard of the community being thus referred to an inherent elevation
in the moral sense of the sovereign. The growth of the English
constitution rendered such a theory unpalatable after a time; but, as
the jurisdiction of the Chancery was then firmly established, it was
not worth while to devise any formal substitute for it. The theories
found in modern manuals of Equity are very various, but all are alike
in their untenability. Most of them are modifications of the Roman
doctrine of a natural law, which is indeed adopted in tenour by those
writers who begin a discussion of the jurisdiction of the Court of
Chancery by laying down a distinction between natural justice and
civil.

CHAPTER IV

THE MODERN HISTORY OF THE LAW OF NATURE

It will be inferred from what has been said that the theory which
transformed the Roman jurisprudence had no claim to philosophical
precision. It involved, in fact, one of those "mixed modes of thought"
which are now acknowledged to have characterised all but the highest
minds during the infancy of speculation, and which are far from
undiscoverable even in the mental efforts of our own day. The Law of
Nature confused the Past and the Present. Logically, it implied a
state of Nature which had once been regulated by natural law; yet the
jurisconsults do not speak clearly or confidently of the existence of
such a state, which indeed is little noticed by the ancients except
where it finds a poetical expression in the fancy of a golden age.
Natural law, for all practical purposes, was something belonging to
the present, something entwined with existing institutions, something
which could be distinguished from them by a competent observer. The
test which separated the ordinances of Nature from the gross
ingredients with which they were mingled was a sense of simplicity and
harmony; yet it was not on account of their simplicity and harmony
that these finer elements were primarily respected, but on the score
of their descent from the aboriginal reign of Nature. This confusion
has not been successfully explained away by the modern disciples of
the jurisconsults, and in truth modern speculations on the Law of
Nature betray much more indistinctness of perception and are vitiated
by much more hopeless ambiguity of language than the Roman lawyers can
be justly charged with. There are some writers on the subject who
attempt to evade the fundamental difficulty b