whole, the abode of a civilizing influence. Representation of
dependencies in the sovereign assembly of the imperial country was
unknown, and would have been impracticable. Conquest had not so far put
off its iron nature. In giving her dependencies municipal institutions
and municipal life, Rome did the next best thing to giving them
representation. A Roman province with its municipal life was far above a
satrapy, though far below a nation.

Then how came Rome to be the foundress and the great source of law?
This, as we said before, calls for a separate explanation. An
explanation we do not pretend to give, but merely a hint which may
deserve notice in looking for the explanation. In primitive society, in
place of law, in the proper sense of the term, we find only tribal
custom, formed mainly by the special exigencies of tribal self-
preservation, and confined to the particular tribe. When Saxon and Dane
settle down in England side by side under the treaty made between Alfred
and Guthurm, each race retains the tribal custom which serves it as a
criminal law. A special effort seems to be required in order to rise
above this custom to that conception of general right or expediency
which is the germ of law as a science. The Greek, sceptical and
speculative as he was, appears never to have quite got rid of the notion
that there was something sacred in ancestral custom, and that to alter
it by legislation was a sort of impiety. We in England still conceive
that there is something in the breast of the judge, and the belief is a
lingering shadow of the tribal custom, the source of the common law. Now
what conditions would be most favourable to this critical effort, so
fraught with momentous consequences to humanity? Apparently a union of
elements belonging to different tribes such as would compel them, for
the preservation of peace and the regulation of daily intercourse, to
adopt some common measure of right. It must be a union, not a conquest