LECT. II. THE PRACTICE OF DOTATION. 339 though the latter may have had a partially Germanic origin, and even though it occasionally assume (as it unquestionably does) a shape very different from the original institution. I myself believe that another effect of this persistent preaching and encouragement is to be found in the strong feeling which is diffused through much of Europe, and specially through the Latinised societies, in favour of dotation, or portioning of daughters, a feeling which seldom fails to astonish a person acquainted with such a country as France by its remarkable intensity. It is an economical power of considerable importance, for it is the principal source of those habits of saving and hoarding which characterise the French people, and I regard it as descended, by a long chain of succession, from the obligatory provisions of the marriage law of the Emperor Augustus. The importance and interest of our subject, when treated in all its bearings and throughout its whole history, are quite enough to excuse me, I trust, for having detained you with an account of its obscure beginnings. It has been said that the degree in which the personal immunity and proprietary capacity of women are recognised in a particular state or community is a test of its degree of advance in civilisation; and, though the assertion is sometimes made without the qualifications which are necessary to give it value, it is very far indeed from being a mere gallant com 340 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. LECT. XI. monplace. For, inasmuch as no class of similar importance and extent was, in the infancy of society, placed in a position of such absolute dependence as the other sex, the degree in which this dependence has step by step been voluntarily modified and relaxed, serves undoubtedly as a rough measure of tribal, social, national capacity for self-control-of that same control which produces wealth by subduing the natural appetite of living for the present, and which fructifies in art and learning through subordinating a material and immediate to a remote, intangible, and spiritual enjoyment. The assertion, then, that there is a relation between civilisation and the proprietary capacities of women is only a form of the truth that every one of those conquests, the sum of which we call civilisation, is the result of curbing some one of the strongest, because the primary, impulses of human nature. If we were asked why the two societies with which we have been concernedthe Hindoos on the one hand, and the Romans and all the races to which they have bequeathed their institutions on the other-have had so widely different a history, no reply can be very confidently given, so difficult is it, among the vast variety of influences acting on great assemblages of men, to single out any one or any definite number of them, and to be sure that these have operated more powerfully than the rest. Yet, if it were absolutely necessary to give an LECT. XI. ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 341 answer, it would consist in pointing to the difference in their social history which has been the subject of this lecture, and in observing that one steadily carried forward, while the other recoiled from, the series of changes which put an end to the seclusion and degradation of an entire sex. 342 JURISPRUDENCE IN ENGLAND. LECT. XII. LECTURE XII. SOVEREIGNTY. THE historical theories commonly received among English lawyers have done so much harm not only to the study of law but to the study of history, that an account of the origin and growth of our legal system, founded on the examination of new materials and the re-examination of old ones, is perhaps the most urgently needed of all additions to English knowledge. But next to a new history of law, what we most require is a new philosophy of law. If our country ever gives birth to such a philosophy, we shall probably owe it to two advantages. The first of them is our possession of a legal system which for many purposes may be considered indigenous. Our national pride, which has sometimes retarded or limited our advance in juridical enquiry, has kept our law singularly pure from mixture with the stream of legal rules flowing from the great fountain of the Roman Corpus Juris, and thus, when we place it in juxtaposition with any other European legal system, LECT. XII. THE ANALYTICAL JURISTS. 343 the results of the comparison are far more fruitful of instruction than those obtained by contrasting the various Continental bodies of law with one another. The second advantage I believe to consist in the growing familiarity of Englishmen with the investigations of the so-called Analytical Jurists, of whom the most considerable are Jeremy Bentham and John Austin. Of this advantage we have a monopoly. Bentham seems to be exclusively known in France and Germany as the author of an unpopular system of morals. Austin is apparently not known at all. Yet to Bentham, and even in a higher degree to Austin, the world is indebted for the only existing attempt to construct a system of jurisprudence by strict scientific process and to found it, not on à priori assumption, but on the observation, comparison, and analysis of the various legal conceptions. There is not the smallest necessity for accepting all the conclusions of these great writers with implicit deference, but there is the strongest necessity for knowing what those conclusions are. They are indispensable, if for no other object, for the purpose of clearing the head. An important distinction between Bentham and Austin is not as often recognised as it ought to be. Bentham in the main is a writer on legislation. Austin in the main is a writer on jurisprudence. Bentham is chiefly concerned with law as it might be |