it was necessary to reject not a little of what for England had
already been definitely settled and universally accepted. The
legislatures of the colonies and States rejected much, but the
courts rejected more. The legislatures also added much, but the
courts added yet more.

Usages grow up rapidly in new settlements and along frontiers
bounded by territory held by savages. Of such usages, under the
rulings of the courts, many were soon crystallized into law.

New inventions and new political conceptions in the eighteenth
century began to change the face of the civilized world. The
common law as to agency had to be adapted to the operations of
business corporations; that as to highways to railroads; that as
to contracts by mail to contracts by telegram, and later to
contracts by telephone. The whole law of master and servant,
which for the English people was bottomed on the relation of
land-owner and serf, was to be recast. Public assemblies were to
be regulated and their proceedings published with greater regard
to public and less to private interest.[Footnote: Barrows
_v._ Bell, 7 Gray's Reports, 301; 66 American Decisions,
479.] Along all these lines and many others the American courts
have now for nearly three hundred years been quarrying out
American law from the mine of the unwritten law of the people
within their jurisdiction. It has been their natural endeavor to
make each part of the new system of jurisprudence which they were
gradually building up harmonious with every other and to give a
certain symmetry to the whole. This has forced them to deduce
rule from rule and principle from principle with a freedom for
which in older countries of settled institutions there is less