m this calamity, and grafts from these stocks have
fertilised a few modern societies, but it is still true that, over the
larger part of the world, the perfection of law has always been
considered as consisting in adherence to the ground plan supposed to
have been marked out by the original legislator. If intellect has in
such cases been exercised on jurisprudence, it has uniformly prided
itself on the subtle perversity of the conclusions it could build on
ancient texts, without discoverable departure from their literal
tenour. I know no reason why the law of the Romans should be superior
to the laws of the Hindoos, unless the theory of Natural Law had given
it a type of excellence different from the usual one. In this one
exceptional instance, simplicity and symmetry were kept before the
eyes of a society whose influence on mankind was destined to be
prodigious from other causes, as the characteristics of an ideal and
absolutely perfect law. It is impossible to overrate the importance to
a nation or profession of having a distinct object to aim at in the
pursuit of improvement. The secret of Bentham's immense influence in
England during the past thirty years is his success in placing such an
object before the country. He gave us a clear rule of reform. English
lawyers of the last century were probably too acute to be blinded by
the paradoxical commonplace that English law was the perfection of
human reason, but they acted as if they believed it for want of any
other principle to proceed upon. Bentham made the good of the
community take precedence of every other object, and thus gave escape
to a current which had long been trying to find its way outwards.

It is not an altogether fanciful comparison if we call the assumptions
we have been describing the ancient counterpart of Benthamism. The
Roman theory guided men's efforts in the same direction as the theory
put into shape by the Englishman; its practical results were not
widely different from those which would have been attained by a sect
of law-reformers who maintained a steady pursuit of the general good
of the community. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose it a
conscious anticipation of Bentham's principles. The happiness of
mankind is, no doubt, sometimes assigned, both in the popular and in
the legal literature of the Romans, as the proper object of remedial
legislation, but it is very remarkable how few and faint are the
testimonies to this principle com