gh not always wisely, from current compendia
of the Roman and Canon laws. But that storehouse was closed so soon as
the points decided at Westminster Hall became numerous enough to
supply a basis for a substantive system of jurisprudence; and now for
centuries English practitioners have so expressed themselves as to
convey the paradoxical proposition that, except by Equity and Statute
law, nothing has been added to the basis since it was first
constituted. We do not admit that our tribunals legislate; we imply
that they have never legislated; and yet we maintain that the rules of
the English common law, with some assistance from the Court of
Chancery and from Parliament, are coextensive with the complicated
interests of modern society.

A body of law bearing a very close and very instructive resemblance to
our case-law in those particulars which I have noticed, was known to
the Romans under the name of the Responsa Prudentum, the "answers of
the learned in the law." The form of these Responses varied a good
deal at different periods of the Roman jurisprudence, but throughout
its whole course they consisted of explanatory glosses on
authoritative written documents, and at first they were exclusively
collections of opinions interpretative of the Twelve Tables. As with
us, all legal language adjusted itself to the assumption that the text
of the old Code remained unchanged. There was the express rule. It
overrode all glosses and comments, and no one openly admitted that any
interpretation of it, however eminent the interpreter, was safe from
revision on appeal to the venerable texts. Yet in point of fact, Books
of Responses bearing the names of leading jurisconsults obtained an
authority at least equal to that of our reported cases, and constantly
modified, extended, limited or practically overruled the provisions of
the Decemviral law. The authors of the new jurisprudence during the
whole progress of its formation professed the most sedulous respect
for the letter of the Code. They were merely explaining it,
deciphering it, bringing out its full meaning; but then, in the
result, by piecing texts together, by adjusting the law to states of
fact which actually presented themselves and by speculating on its
possible application to others which might occur, by introducing
principles of interpretation derived from the exegesis of other
written documents which fell under their observation, they educed a
vast variety of canons