cessary promoter of all true progress. Our statute books are a permanent record of numberless schemes of political and social improvement, and of attempted ameliorations of those laws which have been established by the common sense and common usage of the people. We have a national legislature in annual session. We have more than thirty state legislatures, most of them also convening annually, and all employed in devising new rules for individual conduct. The results of their labors are seen in the numerous volumes of statutes which pour from the press, already too numerous to find space in any private library. It is a noteworthy fact, that legislation begets legislation; that notwithstanding the real and imaginary improvement which has been made in society, and notwithstanding all that written law has attempted to accomplish, the work to be done remains undiminished. Each legislator addresses himself to a task greater than that which engaged the attention of his predecessors. The body of the statute law grows in magnitude with every year. The work done by one legislature is often undone by its successor, and a new structure raised upon its ruins. All this is under the pretence of improvement. It avows a purpose to meliorate the condition of society; to give to the community a better system of laws than their experience has devised, and to change those customs and usages which necessity introduced, and which are the ligaments that bind society together.

We would not be understood as asserting that all which is done by our many legislative assemblies is an invasion of the common usages of society. Our political system requires that short lived provision should be made for the maintenance of government, and that its different departments should be reminded of their dependence by annual or biennial grants of the means of administering public affairs. These grants, usually called appropriation bills, contribute to swell the statute book. So also much of the attention of our legislative bodies is directed to private objects. Still these are partial innovations upon the general usages of the community. Not taking them into account, however, there emanate from our

lawgivers multitudinous enactments of general application, experimental in character, designed to substitute a theoretical future for a practical present. Surely, if positive institutions, if legislative enactment could make any system of domestic law perfect, ours would long ere this have been in a high state of perfection. Surely, if anything could have destroyed those usages which gave early character to our people, and which have been the rules of civil conduct in all our history, the legislation of the last seventy years should have acccomplished the work of destruction. But it is the legislation that perishes. The customs of a people cannot die a violent death. Originating in physical necessity, in peculiar location or dangers, or in a tried experience of what is convenient and useful, they are perpetuated by the same causes which gave them birth. They are susceptible indeed of modification, they accommodate themselves to advancing civilization; they yield to the plastic hand of science and of religion, yet they maintain more than an equal struggle with legislation.

It is no uncommon observation that certain legislative acts are in conflict with popular sentiment, or in advance of it. Such laws are not expected to prove enduring. If not soon obliterated from the statute book, they remain there a dead letter, nominally law, but truly powerless, the form without the life. No power, not even that of a despot, can force upon an unwilling people laws subversive of their customs and their faith. The attempt involves a conflict between a rule which is a part of themselves, and an artificial regulation obligatory only because of the mode of its enactment. All the instincts of self-preservation revolt against it.

The authors of the code Napoleon, men of no common wisdom, and men who, while intent upon their great work, kept steadily in view the results of human experience, remarked that "no legislator can escape that invisible power, that silent judgment of the people, which tends to correct the mistakes of arbitrary legislation, and to defend the people from the law, and the lawgiver from himself."

Attempts to elevate a people in the arts, in science, or in morals, by statutory enactments greatly in advance of their

usages and general sentiment, have always proved abortive. Such attempts not only fail to accomplish their purpose, but they often induce serious mischiefs. Their tendency is to bring all law into disrepute, to diffuse a spirit of insubordination, and thus endanger the continued existence of orderly society. A law upon the statute book, which cannot be executed, is a standing proclamation of license to disorder. There is far less permanency in the legislation of this country than is generally supposed. That silent judgment, of which the authors of the code Napoleon spoke, pronounces its decree upon every act of legislation, and many fail to pass the stern ordeal. Some are forced out of existence, and others submit to modification to render them more consonant with popular sentiment and habits. How few are the statutes in any of our books of laws which have survived unaltered a quarter of a century? Even our constitutions perish in the lifetime of their framers, and constitutions, far less than other laws, interfere with the social habits and everyday life of the people. How few, if any, of the old thirteen states have preserved their original constitutions? Some of those who but recently came into the sisterhood have more than once reconstructed their organic law. Change is the characteristic of all that is artificial in our system of government. There is however a substratum of popular usages, which lies deep below all written laws, incapable of being disturbed by any great convulsion. Upon this the lawgiver must build, if he would raise an enduring structure. We have dwelt long upon this part of our subject, because, in our judgment, it is intimately connected with all the other influences which are felt by legislation,-itself affected by them and in return qualifying their efficiency.

Among those other influences are such as result from the local situation and physical capabilities of the country which our people inhabit. As usages are the fruit of necessity, or of convenience, and earlier usages principally of physical necessity, it is of course to be expected that whatever is novel or unusual in the situation of any people, should operate upon their written law. Location directs the nature of their employments, and consequently of their relations to one another.

After all, the legislator has most to do with that which is material. No law can be equally fitted for all material interests, and legislation which is not adapted to the circumstances and employments of those to be affected by it, is unmeaning and absurd. There must from necessity be national dissimilarity. No one supposes that the laws which would suffice for an agricultural people, would meet all the wants of a manufacturing or a maritime nation. Every art has its peculiar customs, every employment its own necessities. So also the proximity of others, whose interests are diverse, and who are animated by a different spirit, imposes the necessity of peculiar laws. There is very much in our situation, which has contributed to the character we possess, and which has been speaking out in all our past legislation. We are far removed from any of the great powers of the world. Our position is one of security, fortified by distance, against force, and protected even from annoyance. We can hardly be said to have neighbors, or even acquaintances, except those of our own choice. We are at liberty to foster our industry, and advance our interests, in our own way, unchecked by the jealousy or interference of any external power. We need no standing army to repel sudden invasion. There is nothing here to awaken the conviction that any domestic policy we may adopt would be unsafe.

Moreover, we have such a domain of unappropriated land as no other nation has ever enjoyed, open to the occupation of all our people, and promising competency, if not wealth, to even moderate industry. All along our history this region has spread its broad acres before the eyes of the landless, inviting them to enter and to enjoy.

The products of our soil, too, are almost infinitely diversified, adapted to every variety of pursuit. Mines, fisheries, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures afford unwonted facilities to successful effort. Apart from all the effect which the physical advantages we possess are suited to produce upon the spirit and character of our people, it is impossible that they should not directly shape much of their legislation. No one would dream that the written law, which would be adapted

to Holland or the British isles, would answer well for our physical condition. It is not difficult to trace in our statute books many effects which have resulted from our remote situation, our immense landed possessions, and our diversified and peculiar physical interests. We select one. The change which American legislation has made in the law of descent of real estate, is one of its most important achievements. It is that which, perhaps more than any other, has been farreaching in its influence upon the spirit, the character, and the general development of our people. It has taken away the privileges of the Norman feud, and the Jewish birthright. It no longer permits the whole land of the father to descend, at his death, to his eldest son. It casts the inheritance upon all the children alike, and makes them all land owners. It thus restrains large accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many-breaks up the distinctions in families, which grow out of the unequal distribution of property-gives to merit a precedence over birth,-and fosters in the community a spirit of self-reliant independence. This great departure from the law of our English ancestry has, doubtless, been induced mainly by the fact that land here has always been abundant, that there has been enough for all, and though, within the older states, the influence of the great unappropriated region at the west is now felt but indirectly, yet in those states where there remain unappropriated or even unsettled lands, they continue to be a constant subject of legislation.

Nor do the effects of physical causes cease with the first legislative action. The abolition of the law of primogeniture prepared the way for other laws promotive of general education, and awakened a desire for the establishment of schools, common to the children of all. Who can say that without this, free public schools, our glory and our safety, could ever have found a permanent abiding place in this country?

Yet another influence that impresses itself upon our written law flows from the comparative shortness of our existence as a distinct people. Two hundred years are a brief period for maturing a nation, especially when its first efforts must be