nstitutions is diffused, the
greater is its tenacity and vitality. From whatever cause, the codes
obtained by Eastern societies were obtained, relatively, much later
than by Western, and wore a very different character. The religious
oligarchies of Asia, either for their own guidance, or for the relief
of their memory, or for the instruction of their disciples, seem in
all cases to have ultimately embodied their legal learning in a code;
but the opportunity of increasing and consolidating their influence
was probably too tempting to be resisted. Their complete monopoly of
legal knowledge appears to have enabled them to put off on the world
collections, not so much of the rules actually observed as of the
rules which the priestly order considered proper to be observed. The
Hindoo code, called the Laws of Menu, which is certainly a Brahmin
compilation, undoubtedly enshrines many genuine observances of the
Hindoo race, but the opinion of the best contemporary orientalists is,
that it does not, as a whole, represent a set of rules ever actually
administered in Hindostan. It is, in great part, an ideal picture of
that which, in the view of the Brahmins, _ought_ to be the law. It is
consistent with human nature and with the special motives of their
authors, that codes like that of Menu should pretend to the highest
antiquity and claim to have emanated in their complete form from the
Deity. Menu, according to Hindoo mythology, is an emanation from the
supreme God; but the compilation which bears his name, though its
exact date is not easily discovered, is, in point of the relative
progress of Hindoo jurisprudence, a recent production.

Among the chief advantages which the Twelve Tables and similar codes
conferred on the societies which obtained them, was the protection
which they afforded against the frauds of the privileged oligarchy and
also against the spontaneous depravation and debasement of the
national institutions. The Roman Code was merely an enunciation in
words of the existing customs of the Roman people. Relatively to the
progress of the Romans in civilisation, it was a remarkably early
code, and it was published at a time when Roman society had barely
emerged from that intellectual condition in which civil obligation and
religious duty are inevitably confounded. Now a barbarous society
practising a body of customs, is exposed to some especial dangers
which may be absolutely fatal to its progress in civilisation. T