semi-civilized peoples. But the facts that the Alþing maintained so active a judicial life, that the field of law was cultivated so assiduously, and the details of procedure worked out with so much pains and art, that lawsuits were contested so keenly and skilfully—all these facts seem to prove that law must have in the main had its course and prevailed, for it is hard to suppose that all this time and pains would have been during two centuries or more devoted to a pursuit which had no practical result. The contemporary kingdoms and principalities of the earlier Middle Ages lived by the vigour of the executive. There was in them very little of a State administration, and the law was in most or all of them older than the State-that is to say, it had existed in the form of customs recog nized and obeyed before efficient means were provided for enforcing it. So far they resembled Iceland; and the same may be said of the city republics of Italy and Germany. But Iceland is unique as the example of a community which had a great deal of law and no central Executive, a great many Courts and no authority to carry out their judgements.

The process by which the law of Iceland grew, though less exceptional than was its political constitution, illus. trates very happily the origin of Customary Law and the first beginnings of legislation. Law springs out of usage. The gathering of the neighbours develops into the ping or local assembly of Norway and the Folk Mot of early England. It treats of all matters of common concern; and as it is the body before whom complaints of wrong are laid, it adopts by degrees regular set forms of words for the statements of a grievance, and for the

replies to those statements. The usages become recognized customs, prescribing the cases in which redress may be claimed and the defences by which the claims may be repelled. The forms of words grow more elaborate and come to be considered so essential that a variation from them vitiates the claim. The body of rules thus formed becomes so large that only a few men, devoting themselves to the subject, are able to carry the whole in their memory. These men, proud of their knowledge, elaborate the rules, and particularly the set forms of words, still further, and in their enjoyment of technicalities attach more and more importance to formal accuracy. Thus Custom, which was loose and vague while held in solution in the minds of the mass, becomes crystallized into precision by the labour of the few whose special knowledge gives them a sort of pre-eminence, and even a measure of power. Then it is found that there are diversities of opinion among the experts in the law, or instances arise which show that some custom generally accepted is inconvenient. By this time Custom has acquired so much authority that the assembly, which has been also, and perhaps primarily, a law court, does not venture to transgress it, the men of legal learning being of course specially opposed to such a course. It therefore becomes necessary formally to change the Custom by a resolution of the body which is at once the Assembly and the Court. As this body consists of those who use, and whose progenitors have created, the custom, and as it continues to settle other matters of common concern affecting the district, it is the proper and only body to make the change. This, then, is legislation in its early stage. The law

produced, which we may call Statute Law, is for many generations extremely small in proportion to the mass of law which rests upon Custom only. But the Statute Law is important because it is explicit, because it is sure to be remembered, because it deals with points comparatively large, since it would not be worth while to submit small ones to the assembly. Nevertheless legislation is among all peoples the smallest part of the work of primitive assemblies, be they pings or Folk Mots or Agorai or Comitia. And the growth of the law of Iceland by custom, preserved and elaborated by a succession of law-sages, occasionally (though rarely) altered or added to by the vote of the Alping, presents a lively picture of what must have been the similar process of the construction of early Roman law by the jurists (prudentes) and assembly (comitia).

Iceland, however, provided a means for the ascertainment and publicity of her law which Rome lacked. The Lögsögumaðr is an elegant (using the word in its strict Roman sense) complement to a system of Customary Law. His function was well designed to meet and cure the two chief defects in such a system, the uncertainty which existed as to what the rules accepted as law were and the difficulty which an individual desiring to take or defend legal proceedings found in discovering what the rule applicable to his case really was. The solemn recitation of the whole law fixed it in the recollections of those who busied themselves with such matters, and gave everybody an opportunity of knowing what it covered. The right to interrogate the living depositary of the law as to any special point whereanent the querist desired to be informed was a great boon

to private persons, who, since they might often have to suffer from the extreme technicality of procedure, needed all the more to be warned beforehand where the pitfalls lay. In these respects the Icelandic system contrasts favourably with those of early Rome and early England. Till the Twelve Tables were enacted the private citizen of Rome had no means of ascertaining the law except by asking some sage, who need not answer unless he pleased, and whose view had no authority beyond that which his personal reputation implied. Even after the Twelve Tables had reduced much of the ancient Customary Law to shape, and made it accessible to the citizens at large, many of the forms of procedure, and the rules as to the days on which legal proceedings could be taken, were kept concealed by the patrician men of law till divulged (at the end of the fourth century B. C.) by Cn. Flavius. In England there was indeed no similar effort to keep legal knowledge within the hands of a few. But the customs were numerous, and many of them were uncertain. There was no way of ascertaining them except by the judgement of a Court, a tedious and expensive process, which after all decided only the particular point that arose in the case that occasioned the judgement. That means of determining a custom to be valid and binding which the Icelanders had already secured through their official in the last half of the tenth century did not begin to be created by the action of the English Courts till the end of the twelfth, and centuries were needed to complete the process.

One of the things that most awakens our surprise in the Icelandic Constitution is its extreme complexity.

In one sense simple and even rude, since it omits so much we should have expected to find in a constitution, it is in another sense intricate, and puzzles us by the artificial character of the arrangements made for the composition of the various courts and of the legis lative body, while the multiplicity of pings, and the distribution of powers among them, has given rise to many controversies among historians, some still unsettled. This phenomenon, however, finds a parallel in some of the constitutions of the Greek republics, not to speak of the elaborate systems of such cities as Florence and Venice in the fourteenth century. In Iceland the strong sense of independence which distinguished the Norsemen, and the jealousy the chiefs had of one another, made it necessary to devise means for securing equality and for preventing the influence of any group or district from attaining predominance. Herein the spirit of the Icelandic Constitution is singularly unlike that of the Roman. There, the intense realization of the unity of the city and the need for giving its government the maximum of concentration against neighbouring enemies caused vast powers to be entrusted first to the King and then to the Consuls or to a dictator. In Iceland, where no such need of defence existed, where there was no foreign enemy, and men lived scattered in tiny groups round the edges of a vast interior desert, no executive powers were given to anybody, and elaborate precautions were taken to secure the rights of the smaller communities which composed the Republic and of the priest-chieftains who represented them.

A like intricate character recurs in the system of legal procedure, but the cause is different and not peculiar to