e class of codes I have been describing.
Their value did not consist in any approach to symmetrical
classifications, or to terseness and clearness of expression, but in
their publicity, and in the knowledge which they furnished to
everybody, as to what he was to do, and what not to do. It is, indeed,
true that the Twelve Tables of Rome do exhibit some traces of
systematic arrangement, but this is probably explained by the
tradition that the framers of that body of law called in the
assistance of Greeks who enjoyed the later Greek experience in the art
of law-making. The fragments of the Attic Code of Solon show, however,
that it had but little order, and probably the laws of Draco had even
less. Quite enough too remains of these collections, both in the East
and in the West, to show that they mingled up religious, civil, and
merely moral ordinances, without any regard to differences in their
essential character; and this is consistent with all we know of early
thought from other sources, the severance of law from morality, and of
religion from law, belonging very distinctly to the _later_ stages of
mental progress.

But, whatever to a modern eye are the singularities of these Codes,
their importance to ancient societies was unspeakable. The
question--and it was one which affected the whole future of each
community--was not so much whether there should be a code at all, for
the majority of ancient societies seem to have obtained them sooner or
later, and, but for the great interruption in the history of
jurisprudence created by feudalism, it is likely that all modern law
would be distinctly traceable to one or more of these fountain-heads.
But the point on which turned the history of the race was, at what
period, at what stage of their social progress, they should have their
laws put into writing. In the western world the plebeian or popular
element in each state successfully assailed the oligarchical monopoly,
and a code was nearly universally obtained _early_ in the history of
the Commonwealth. But in the East, as I have before mentioned, the
ruling aristocracies tended to become religious rather than military
or political, and gained, therefore, rather than lost in power; while
in some instances the physical conformation of Asiatic countries had
the effect of making individual communities larger and more numerous
than in the West; and it is a known social law that the larger the
space over which a particular set of i