We sometimes say that English Common Law is built on the Roman Law, but
I can not find that Alfred ever studied the Roman Law, or ever heard of
the Justinian Code, or thought it worth while to establish a system of
jurisprudence. His government was of the simplest sort. He respected the
habits, ways and customs of the common people, and these were the Common
Law. If the people had a footpath that was used by their children and
their parents and their grandparents, then this path belonged to the
people, and Alfred said that even the King could not take it from them.

This deference to the innocent ways, habits and natural rights of the
people mark Alfred as supremely great, because a great man is one great
in his sympathies. Alfred had the imagination to put himself in the
place of the lowly and obscure.

The English love of law, system and order dates from Alfred. The
patience, kindliness, good-cheer and desire for fair play were his,
plus. He had poise, equanimity, unfaltering faith and a courage that
never grew faint. He was as religious as Cromwell, as firm as
Washington, as stubborn as Gladstone. In him were combined the virtues
of the scholar and patriot, the efficiency of the man of affairs with
the wisdom of the philosopher. His character, both public and private,
is stainless, and his whole life was one of enlightened and magnanimous
service to his country.

* * * * *

In the age of Augustus there was one study that was regarded as more
important than all others, and this was rhetoric, or the art of the
rhetor. The rhetor was a man whose business it was to persuade or
convince.

The public forum has its use in the very natural town-meeting, or the
powwow of savages. But in Rome it had developed and been refined to a
point where the public had no voice, although the boasted forum still
existed. The forum was monopolized by the professional orators hired by
this political clique or that.

It was about like the political "forum" in America today.

The greatest man in Rome was the man who could put up the greatest talk.
So all Roman mammas and matrons had their boys study rhetoric. The
father of Seneca had a school of oratory where rich Roman youths were
taught to mouth in orotund and gesticulate in curves. He must have been
a pretty good teacher, for he had two extraordinary sons, one of whom is
mentioned in the Bible, and a most exemplary daughter.

Oratory as an end we no