growth and the form of the common law, it would not have been left, for the most part, to German scholars and to their few followers in England, of whom Sir Henry Maine has been the leader, to point out the only way in which that law can be successfully studied. The event which perhaps did more than all others to open a new pathway in the study of Roman law, was the accidental discovery by Bluhme in the cathedral library at Verona in the year 1816, of a copy of the Commentaries of Gaius, concealed under the epistles of St. Jerome, in a palimpsest. This book, previously known only by an imperfect abridgment in the Breviarium or West Gothic law, was an introduction to Roman law written in its best period, in the second century after Christ, by one of the five great jurists whose authority in that law had been recognized in Valentinian's "law of citations" three centuries after his death. (A. D. 417). It had also been employed by Tribonian and his associates as the model of the institutes: indeed, much of the later work is merely copied from Gaius. A comparison of the two, therefore, furnishes students with the best means of determining the changes which had come over Roman law in the four centuries between Gaius and Justinian: to say nothing of the fact that the legis actiones and other important topics of the earlier law, entirely omitted in the Corpus Juris, were here fully described. The effect of the discovery was to awaken an interest amounting to enthusiasm in the study of that law, and especially of its history. The other sources of the law, prior to Justinian, and not included in the Corpus Juris, were eagerly collected and carefully edited in the great edition at Bonn, A. D. 1834, et seq, and several minor ones, of which the edition of Huschke, Jurisprudentia ante-Justiniana, one volume, 12mo., is the most accessible and convenient. The law was regarded now not as a mere code prescribed by the sovereign power of the Roman emperor, as it had pre viously been, but as the creation of a thousand years and more, of a people in whom the juridical faculty was pre-eminent, and whose history had given the grandest opportunity for the growth and development of law that the world has ever known. It has given to the theories of the historical school not merely a triumph over their opponents, but the character of a well-grounded and definite science. It has enabled recent students to under stand English law better by tracing the strong analogies between the mode of development of both, instead of ` confining their attention to the accidental coincidences in particular rules, as was formerly the custom- -a method, it may be said with all respect, the defects of which are plainly seen even in the treatment of the Roman law by such great jurists as Kent and Story. And finally it has shown us how to answer, with some approach to finality, the long disputed question as to the indebtedness of the English law to the Roman, by a careful historical study of both systems. (34) Acts of parliament derogatory from the power of subsequent parliaments bind not, page 90. This general principle of legislative power, recognized by Lord Bacon in a remarkable passage of the history of king Henry VII. p. 241, vol. xi. Sped. E. & H., and often since, as limiting even the "omnipotent" parliament of England, is not affected by the constitutional limitations of that power in American states. The constitution rather confirms than modifies it. Each successive legislature, deriving its authority directly from the constitution, cannot recognize limits imposed upon it by a previous body of equally limited power. (Thorpe v. R. & B. R. R. R. Co. 27 Vt. 149.) But it is now the established doctrine of American courts that an act of the legislature, being itself within their constitutional power, may form a contract between the state and the persons for whose benefit it is passed, provided they accept that benefit and do some act which may be regarded as a consideration for such a contract. Thus the grant of a charter to a private corporation (though not to a municipal corporation) when accepted and acted on, becomes a contract between the state and the corporation, that the franchise so granted shall not be arbitrarily revoked or diminished. This was settled in the Dartmouth College Case. (Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, and followed by many others; The Binghamton Bridge, 3 Wall. 51.) But a grant of power or franchise to a corporation already existing, must have some distinct consideration to form such a contract, beside its mere acceptance. (35) That acts of parliament contrary to reason are void, page 91. This doctrine, even in its boldest form, is but the logical consequence of the theory stated by Blackstone himself, that reason is sufficient to show us the law of nature, and that no human laws should be suffered to contradict the law of nature or the law of revelation. (Ante, pp. 40, 42, 121.) Lord Coke, to whom the law of nature and the common law were only two terms for the same thing, has drawn this conclusion directly: "And it appears in our books that in many cases the common law will control acts of parliament, and sometimes adjudge them to be absolutely void: for when an act of parliament is against common right and reason, or repugnant or impossible to be performed, the common law will control it, and adjudge such act to be void; and therefore in 8 Edward III. fol. 30 a, b, Thomas Tregor's Case, and the second Stat. W. c. 38, et artic. super cartas, c. 9, Herle saith: "Some statutes are made against law and right, which those who made them perceiving would not put them into execution." (Bonham's Case, 8 Rep. 234.) And he illustrates this by several cases; in every one of which, however, the question was not as to the validity of a statute as a whole, but as to some particular application of its terms. Thus he concludes one of his illustrations with the words: "And because it would be against common right and reason for the heir to have a cessavit for the cesser in the time of his ancestor (vide F. N. B. 209, F; Plow. 110, A; 2 Inst. 142; 2 Brownl. 265), the common law adjudges the act of parliament as to that point void." It is very instructive to see by what slow degrees this doctrine has been gradually done away with in English law. Blackstone himself stated it in his first edition thus: "Acts of parliament that are impossible to be performed are of no validity; and if there arises out of them collaterally any absurd consequences manifestly contradictory to common reason, they are with regard to those collateral consequences void. I lay down the rule with these restrictions, though I know that it is generally laid down more largely; that acts of parliament contrary to reason are void; but if parliament will positively enact a thing to be done which is unreasonable, I know of no power that can control it." (1 Comm. 91, ed. 1765.) It was not till the ninth edition, published after his death by Dr. Burns, that this was modified to read, "no power in the ordinary forms of the constitution that is vested with authority to control it." Mr. Serjeant Stephen in his New Commentaries, founded on Blackstone, has omitted the passage altogether; and Broom and Hadley in theirs have substituted for Blackstone's statement that the acts are "with regard to those collateral consequences void;" the phrase, “a more liberal construction would be put apon it (the act), so as to avoid if possible such collateral consequences." (Blackst. Com. rewritten by Broom and Hadley, vol. 1, p. 94.) Still earlier, Professor Christian had limited it still more carefully: "If an act of parliament is clearly and unequivocally ex pressed, with all deference to the learned commentator, I conceive that it is neither void in its direct or collateral consequences, however absurd and unreasonable they may appear:" and in another note, to the passage in which Blackstone asserts that no human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature (1 Comm. 41), Christian makes this strong statement: "And if an act of parliament, if we could suppose such a case, should, like the edict of Herod, command all the children under a certain age to be slain, the judge ought to resign his office rather than be auxiliary to its execution but it could only be declared void by the high authority by which it was ordained." It has been suggested, also, that Blackstone here had in mind only private acts, as to which, see 2 Comm. 346; but if these only were referred to, the passage need not have been so carefully qualified. Lord Campbell has repudiated the power of the bench under any circumstances to overrule an act of parliament: judicially, in Wood v. Watts, 2 El. & B. 458; and extra-judicially, in his Lives of the Lords Chancellor, vol. 1, p. 373; vol. 6, pp. 251, 329, 374: and he quotes in these pages interesting dicta upon the subject by Ellesmere, Hardwick, Camden, Northington, and Mansfield. (See, also, the reference of Chancellor Kent, 1 Comm. 448.) Yet an eminent living judge has said: "It is conceivable indeed that parliament might pass an act so outrageous, so unpopular, and supported by so narrow a parliamentary majority, that if the judge had and took an opportunity of declaring that it was void, upon any ground that had a solemn and plausible tone, as, for instance, that it was opposed to the elementary principles of justice or the laws of God and nature, an effective majority of the public at large might refuse to obey it, and so give effect to the judicial instead of the legislative view; but this would be anarchy in disguise," etc. (Mr. Justice Stephen, in his History of the |