r feature connected it. Whatever were
the practical advice given to the client, the _responsum_ treasured up
in the note-books of listening pupils would doubtless contemplate the
circumstances as governed by a great principle, or included in a
sweeping rule. Nothing like this has ever been possible among
ourselves, and it should be acknowledged that in many criticisms
passed on the English law the manner in which it has been enunciated
seems to have been lost sight of. The hesitation of our courts in
declaring principles may be much more reasonably attributed to the
comparative scantiness of our precedents, voluminous as they appear to
him who is acquainted with no other system, than to the temper of our
judges. It is true that in the wealth of legal principle we are
considerably poorer than several modern European nations, But they, it
must be remembered, took the Roman jurisprudence for the foundation of
their civil institutions. They built the _debris_ of the Roman law
into their walls; but in the materials, and workmanship of the residue
there is not much which distinguishes it favourably from the structure
erected by the English judicature.

The period of Roman freedom was the period during which the stamp of a
distinctive character was impressed on the Roman jurisprudence; and
through all the earlier part of it, it was by the Responses of the
jurisconsults that the development of the law was mainly carried on.
But as we approach the fall of the republic there are signs that the
Responses are assuming a form which must have been fatal to their
farther expansion. They are becoming systematised and reduced into
compendia. Q. Mucius Scaevola, the Pontifex, is said to have published
a manual of the entire Civil Law, and there are traces in the writings
of Cicero of growing disrelish for the old methods, as compared with
the more active instruments of legal innovation. Other agencies had in
fact by this time been brought to bear on the law. The Edict, or
annual proclamation of the Praetor, had risen into credit as the
principal engine of law reform, and L. Cornelius Sylla, by causing to
be enacted the great group of statutes called the _Leges Corneliae_,
had shown what rapid and speedy improvements can be effected by direct
legislation. The final blow to the Responses was dealt by Augustus,
who limited to a few leading jurisconsults the right of giving binding
opinions on cases submitted to them, a change which, though