5 THE ELEMENTS OF JURISPRUDENCE BY THOMAS ERSKINE HOLLAND, D.C.L. HON. LL.D. GLASGOW OF LINCOLN'S INN BARRISTER-AT-LAW CHICHELE PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND DIPLOMACY FOURTH EDITION Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M DCCC LXXXVIII [ All rights reserved ] L33357 AUG 1 8 1949 Amplissimum Iuris Oceanum ad paucos revocare fontes limpidos rectae rationis.-LEIBNITZ Ep. ad Magl. XXVII. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE legal systems of the continent owe to their common derivation from the law of Rome, not only a uniform legal nomenclature, but also a generally accepted method which at once assigns any newly developed principle to its proper place, and has greatly facilitated the orderly exposition of those systems in the form of codes. In England, on the other hand, legal nomenclature is a mosaic of many languages, and the law itself, as expounded by Coke and Blackstone, except so far as it has been deduced with much logical punctiliousness from the theory of feudal tenure, is little more than a collection of isolated rules, strung together, if at all, only by some slender thread of analogy. The practitioner has been content to find his way through it, as best he might, by the help of the indices of |