Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 73

The task which faced the law was to meet these new requirements. Land was no longer to be its principal concern; other forms of wealth were demanding protection. As the growth of machinery proceeded, the cost of equipping a factory became considerable and usually exceeded the resources of a single manufacturer. Various forms of co-operative effort had been inherited from the middle ages which had long been familiar, at least on the continent, where there was a developed law of partnership in several varieties. Such forms of joint enterprise in seventeenth-century England were usually employed in colonial expansion or distant foreign trade. The law had now to consider some means of placing these advantages within the reach of smaller men who did not require the elaborate organisation of such bodies as the East India Company, or the Bank of England. It was also a growing necessity that banking should be developed, and out of the practice of the London goldsmiths who would receive deposits and issue against them interest-bearing notes,¹ there arose, first of all, the Bank of England (1691), and soon a large number of private banks in different parts of the country. The law had, therefore, to consider all the complicated relationships which were being created through the machinery of credit and joint enterprise. It is to the eighteenth century, therefore, that we must look for the rise of most of the law which is of a distinctly modern character, that is to say, of personal property in general (and especially of stock, shares and the like), of companies and their stock, partnerships, of negotiable instruments, contract, bankruptcy, and master and servant. In effecting these developments the eighteenth century achieved the transition from mediaeval to modern times.

Politics had its part in the history of this development. The fall of James II had been due, in some measure at least, to the fact that the City of London and the financial interests thoroughly distrusted his policy. Although his opponents were, of course, drawn largely from the nobility, nevertheless City interests played a considerable part. One of the most significant results of the Revolution of 1689 was the foundation of the Bank of England, which was designed primarily to finance the French War, the founders lending a considerable sum of money to the government and using this government debt as part of their capital. In consequence the bank was closely connected with the Revolution settlement; it was generally felt through the country that any restoration of the Stuarts would imperil the bank, and as the bank’s activities grew wider the country was less and less inclined to take this risk. The Whig party had, therefore, a marked commercial character, while the Tories were still apt to be representative of the landed interest.

The legal consequences of the industrial revolution were effected, partly through legislation, but more largely through the development of case law, and a little group of judges who were far-sighted enough to divine the direction in which events were moving were able quietly and without commotion to perform the great work of taking over the existing mercantile law and custom, and incorporating it into the law of the land. Of this we shall speak more in treating of the history of the law merchant.

One other great result of the industrial revolution has been to produce a new internationalism. Internal commerce in many different nations was to develop along parallel lines, and the basis of the new commercial law was in every case to be the old custom of merchants, and one of the features of this custom had been its growing international character. There was, therefore, a tendency for commercial law in different countries to proceed broadly upon parallel lines. Local diversities there were inevitably; they had been even more serious in the middle ages. But in spite of this some general features remained constant. At the same time international trade was taking a much greater place. More and more commodities passed from country to country and an increasing number of merchants were engaged in foreign business. This also emphasised the tendency for commercial problems to be considered from an international standpoint. The movement is one of the most striking features of our own day; international trade and finance are having their effect upon commercial law, and the time seems not far distant when commercial law will regain its mediaeval aspect of internationalism. This progressive feature of our eighteenth-century law is admirably shown in the life of Lord Mansfield,¹ who tried to treat some of the ancient portions of the common law in the same liberal spirit as the newer commercial law which he was so instrumental in developing.

His contemporary, Sir William Blackstone,² although an admirer of Mansfield, and at times a critic of the law as it then existed, was not a reformer by temperament, and his Commentaries (1776) then, as now, leave the impression of almost indiscriminate praise for the great bulk of the old law which the courts had been accustomed to administer. The law of real property, notably, was undergoing immense elaboration with results which were by no means satisfactory. If the landed interests were to retain their dominant place in national affairs, then agriculture would have to compete with the newer forms of commercialism. Great improvements were made during the eighteenth century in scientific farming, and agriculture made rapid strides as a source of wealth. The effective output, both in crops and herds, was increased and improved enormously, until it became clear that agriculture afforded opportunities for commercial enterprise. This development, however, could only be achieved by considerable capital outlay upon improvement, and was seriously hampered by the law of real property. Land could not take its place in a commercial scheme of things as long as it was so difficult to deal with it. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century lawyers had developed elaborate methods of placing land beyond the control of the tenant in possession, and when they tried to retrace their steps in an endeavour to give the great landlord powers to charge and to sell, their remedies were equally cumbersome, uncertain and expensive. It is not until the close of the eighteenth century that any substantial progress was made towards providing a simpler law of land, and to this day the process is still going on.

At the same time there was a movement, not fully effective until the early years of the nineteenth century, for radically reforming the whole of the procedural side of law.