shortly be added; and thus we are brought close on the ideas
of our own day.

CHAPTER III

LAW OF NATURE AND EQUITY

The theory of a set of legal principles, entitled by their intrinsic
superiority to supersede the older law, very early obtained currency
both in the Roman state and in England. Such a body of principles,
existing in any system, has in the foregoing chapters been denominated
Equity, a term which, as will presently be seen, was one (though only
one) of the designations by which this agent of legal change was known
to the Roman jurisconsults. The jurisprudence of the Court of
Chancery, which bears the name of Equity in England, could only be
adequately discussed in a separate treatise. It is extremely complex
in its texture and derives its materials from several heterogeneous
sources. The early ecclesiastical chancellors contributed to it, from
the Canon Law, many of the principles which lie deepest in its
structure. The Roman law, more fertile than the Canon Law in rules
applicable to secular disputes, was not seldom resorted to by a later
generation of Chancery judges, amid whose recorded dicta we often find
entire texts from the _Corpus Juris Civilis_ imbedded, with their
terms unaltered, though their origin is never acknowledged. Still more
recently, and particularly at the middle and during the latter half of
the eighteenth century, the mixed systems of jurisprudence and morals
constructed by the publicists of the Low Countries appear to have been
much studied by English lawyers, and from the chancellorship of Lord
Talbot to the commencement of Lord Eldon's chancellorship these works
had considerable effect on the rulings of the Court of Chancery. The
system, which obtained its ingredients from these various quarters,
was greatly controlled in its growth by the necessity imposed on it of
conforming itself to the analogies of the common law, but it has
always answered the description of a body of comparatively novel legal
principles claiming to override the older jurisprudence of the country
on the strength of an intrinsic ethical superiority.

The Equity of Rome was a much simpler structure, and its development
from its first appearance can be much more easily traced. Both its
character and its history deserve attentive examination. It is the
root of several conceptions which have exercised profound influence on
human thought, and through human thought have seriously affected the
destinie