Some Bibliographical Difficulties of English Law

by Percy Henry Winfield

190

SOME BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DIFFICULTIES OF ENGLISH LAW.¹

THE view adopted in this paper of a perfect legal bibliography is that it should constitute a critical and historical account of every known source of the law of the state with which it assumes to deal. This may appear to be an ambitious view, and perhaps an unpractical one, but it is submitted that its fulfilment is mainly a matter of time, and, in a less degree, one of expense. At any rate, a generous idea as to the greatness of the completed work will force us to lay spacious foundations for it. Such a bibliography should begin with the dawn of our law. There is no question as to when it should end, for even when it is brought down to our own time it will need periodic revision.

There are, of course, valuable guides to the materials of English law already in existence. To mention some only, there are Brunner's Sources of English Law,² Maitland's Materials for the History of English Law,³ Soule's Year Book Bibliography,⁴ Thomas Ashe's Promptuary,⁵ Jenks's Sources of Mediaeval European Law,⁶ the list of texts given in the forefront of Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law, the Appendices to the periodic Reports of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Scargill-Bird's Guide to the Public Records, Marvin's Legal Bibliography,⁷ Reeve's History of English Law, Worrall's Bibliotheca legum Angliae,⁸ Reed's Bibliotheca nova legum Angliae,⁹ and Jelf's Where to find your Law. But these either do not profess to be more than essays in bibliography, or deal with the bibliography of some special compartment, period, or form of the law. There has been an inevitable lack of co-ordination in the construction of these guides, and some of them are not easily procurable. Quite apart from this, another serious obstacle to finding the law is the imperfect internal condition of some of the sources of the law itself. Indeed, defective indexing of a book is often as great a trouble in ascertaining the law as the lack of reference to the book as a whole may be. Thus,

¹ The author wishes to acknowledge with thanks valuable hints from the editor of the L. Q. R., Mr. Harold D. Hazeltine, and Mr. L. H. K. Bushe-Fox.

² Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, ii. 1-52.

³ Ibid., 53-95. Also in Maitland's Collected Papers, ii. 1-60.

⁴ Harvard Law Review, xiv, no. 8. Reprinted, 1902.

⁵ London, 1614.

⁶ Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, ii. 155-63.

⁷ Philadelphia, 1847.

⁸ London, 1788. Part II, by Edward Brooke.

⁹ London, 1809.

Some Bibliographical Difficulties of English Law. 191

it is the fault of the bibliographer if he omit all reference to a given book on a particular topic; but it is no fault of his if the book have no index. Yet this will make his task much more difficult if the contents of the book, or series of books, are a miscellany of different legal topics, such as the Year Books, or the Parliament Rolls.¹ He can, if he likes, take refuge in a general reference to the whole series, and leave the searcher after information to find it for himself; but this involves an amount of labour on the part of generations of searchers quite disproportionate to the time needed for anyone with an average legal education to make an index once and for all.

The list of sources must begin, as already said, with the law itself. But where does that begin? 'Such is the unity of all history', we are reminded, 'that any one who endeavours to tell a piece of it must feel that his first sentence tears a seemless web.'² This drawback applies to a history of the sources of the law as much as to the history of the law itself. But a beginning must be made somewhere, and the date falls naturally in the Anglo-Saxon period.

The sources of Anglo-Saxon law are traceable with some wealth in the works of Brunner, in Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law, in other English, American, and German books, and, above all, in Liebermann's Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. In his preface to the first volume, Liebermann tells us that he consulted 180 MSS.,³ and gives a list of these with all additions necessary for their identification.⁴ This is in itself an inestimable bibliography of Anglo-Saxon law. It is true that it is not quite complete, for the author states that he has omitted ecclesiastical sources, charters, and other texts. Most of these, as has been pointed out in a recent review of Liebermann's book,⁵ are already accessible in printed editions.⁶

Many of the documents in which our law after the Conquest is contained have been printed in careful editions, but a vast mass remains in MS. form. Some of the earlier attempts to catalogue MSS. are instructive as throwing light on the trouble that beset such an undertaking.

In 1697, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, by Edward Bernard, was published at Oxford. This, the preface admits, is not exhaustive. To take the case of

¹Rot. Parl. in six folio volumes had been printed for nearly fifty years, before an index was added to them in 1832.

²P. & M. i. 1.

³p. vii.

⁴Ibid., pp. ix et seq.

⁵L. Q. R. xxix. p. 387 (H. D. Hazeltine).

⁶e.g. T. D. Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, 1862, vol. i. It is interesting to compare his list of MSS. of the A.-S. laws (pp. 660 et seq.) with Liebermann's.

192 The Law Quarterly Review. [No. CXVIII

Cambridge alone, the author says that the libraries of four Colleges only are included, and that not all the writings in the University Library are mentioned. Bibliotheca legum Angliae, Part II (Edward Brooke, London, 1788), and Bibliotheca nova legum Angliae (Reed, London, 1809) contain bare references to the more famous collections of MSS. in England.

The title of Gustav Haenel's work, published in 1830, raises great hopes - Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum qui bibliothecis Galliae, Helvetiae, Belgii, Britanniae M., Hispaniae, Lusitaniae asservantur. The age of the book, of course, would make it of little practical value now; but the preface indicates that it was not even at the date of its issue quite so comprehensive as its name leads one to infer. Haenel enumerates heartrending obstacles that would have deterred many a less persevering man from spending his energy upon such a work. It was not the first step that cost - it was every step - the surliness of librarians, the perils of travel in some of the countries which he visited, the disappointment caused by the destruction or sale of libraries which he imagined to be still existing and accessible, the inconvenient hours at which some libraries were open, and the wretched internal confusion in others, where MSS. and printed books were in a disorderly heap. Spain and Portugal were so disturbed by political strife that Haenel thought that it was unsafe to inspect there any but the best and most famous libraries. In some places the librarians were so awkward that not even the entreaties of his distinguished hosts could prevail upon them to reveal their treasures. In France, libraries were entirely closed during September and October.¹ The preface paves the way for understanding the unequal nature of the work itself. No list of MSS. can be styled complete which, in referring to the libraries of the Universities and Colleges of Cambridge, does little more than state that there is a catalogue of books and MSS. in the library of each particular institution.²

A generation later, the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records complained of the 'vexatious restrictions' to which librarians subjected him when he wished to catalogue their MSS. dealing with our pre-Norman history,³ and he seems to have met with

¹ It is gratifying to notice warm words of thanks to Thomas Phillips for his services rendered to Haenel while he was in England.

² His translated note on the MSS. in St. John's College library runs:-'MSS. none, except the life of St. Hieronimus, the life of St. John the Baptist, Tales of a parrot [Tútí-náma, strayed into unfamiliar Western company, qu. a Latin version], and a missal.' As far back as 1635, at least 200 volumes of Greek, Latin, French and English MSS. had been deposited in the library through the munificence of the Earl and Countess of Southampton; and many further additions had been made prior to the date of Haenel's book.

³ T. D. Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, 1862, introd. p. viii.

April, 1914.] Some Bibliographical Difficulties of English Law. 193

nearly as much difficulty as Haenel. Between them, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, and Holland possessed 259 libraries containing MSS. With the exception of a few in Germany, none of these had any reliable printed catalogues, whilst in one of them, where there were nearly 40,000 MSS., no catalogue was permitted to be made in obedience to the will of the founder, Cardinal Frederick Borromeo. Much caution and deference had to be used to conciliate the custodians of the foreign collections.¹

In our own times the maker of a catalogue is freer from the external circumstances that handicapped his predecessors. A comparison of Liebermann's preface with that of Haenel shows that libraries have become more orderly,² more accessible, and more hospitable. Again, proof of the courtesy of the owners of collections appears repeatedly at the end of the reports of the inspectors appointed by the Royal Commission on Historical MSS. to examine particular libraries.

But what may be called the geographical difficulty still remains. In Oxford and Cambridge alone there are at least forty separate repositories of books, and though admirable catalogues of the MSS. in most of these exist, the lack of re-editing some of them may involve tedious inquiry and occasional travel. To take a single instance, Mr. Holdsworth ³ has given us a description of a valuable MS. at St. John's College, Oxford, which supplements Maitland's account of the Registrum Brevium ⁴; its existence might easily have escaped general notice but for this.⁵

The quest does not, of course, cease there. The British Museum, the Inns of Court, and other university, chapter, and municipal libraries, as well as private collections,⁶ extend the voyage of research on what is still a largely uncharted sea. What is needed is not only a map of this portion or that, but a general map that completes and co-ordinates all the others.

The amount of travelling which Liebermann undertook in finding materials for Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen is instructive.⁷ He was able to procure prints prints of MSS. stored in Dublin, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Lincoln, Peterborough, Worcester, Exeter, Rouen, Alençon,

¹ T. D. Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, 1862, pp. lxi-lxii.

² Not always. The MSS. in the Hatton collection 'were all in a state of chaotic confusion' (App. to 1st Rep. of Royal Commission on Hist MSS., p. 14).

³ History of English Law, ii. Appendix V (E).

⁴ Collected Papers, ii. 110-73.

⁵ It is umentioned in the list for St. John's College, Oxford, in App. to 4th Rep. of R. C. on Hist. MSS., p. 465. It may have been a later acquisition.

⁶ 'The amount of hitherto unknown manuscript material of historical value in private muniment rooms in England and Scotland seems practically limitless' (App. to 11th Rep. of R. C. on Hist. MSS., p. 42).

⁷ Vol. i, Preface, p. vii.

194 The Law Quarterly Review. [No. CXVIII.

Douai, Paris, Hamburg and Copenhagen; and so far he need not have left his own fireside. But he also personally visited London, Cambridge, Oxford, Rochester, Canterbury, Cheltenham, Holkham, Norwich, and Rome to consult MSS. there; and he examined, and to a large extent transcribed, all the Anglo-Saxon texts except two at Durham and York. It may be said that even a perfect bibliography of MSS. will not obviate travel on the part of those who wish to consult MSS. and not merely to be aware of their existence. This is true enough, but it does not affect the argument that in view of the imperfect catalogues of MSS. in many libraries, just as many journeys may be necessary to make a good index of them as to learn their contents.

Besides the geographical difficulty in cataloguing MSS., there is another one that will make the work more tedious - the imperfection or total absence of any internal index in so many of them. Even where the scribe included an index of any sort, it is occasionally on an initial or final folio which damp or constant use has rendered largely illegible. Sometimes, where the index is lacking or partly obliterated, labour can be saved by use of the headings or marginal notes on each folio. Thus, though it is necessary to turn through the whole volume, the time spent is materially less than on the most trying MSS. - those which have neither indexes, headings, or marginal notes.

It is idle to expect any aggregation in one accessible spot of the MSS. of all the libraries in the United Kingdom. Their local dispersion will always swell the toil and cost of those who must see them. But there is no theoretical reason why catalogues of all the MSS. in each library should not be made and printed; and a universal catalogue based on these would crown the work.

The first part of this enormous task is being done by the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. It was appointed on April 2, 1869, to make inquiry as to the places in which papers and MSS. belonging to institutions and private families are deposited, and to make abstracts and catalogues of such MSS. with the owners' consent. One hundred and eighty persons and heads of institutions at once expressed their willingness either to co-operate with the Commissioners or to request their aid in making known the contents of their collections.¹ A splendid record of cataloguing and calendaring stands to the Commission's credit in a series of over 150 volumes which is still current, and the continuance of which may prevent the casualties to which collections are liable 'from changes in families, from removal of MSS., and

¹ 1st Report, p. vii. The modest grant of £1,000 was soon increased to £1,200 (3rd Rep., p. ix).

April, 1914.] Some Bibliographical Difficulties of English Law. 195

ignorance of the localities to which they have been transferred'.¹ From the lawyer's standpoint, the separation of the purely legal documents from the others would be a great benefit.

For the national archives we have S. R. Scargill-Bird's Guide to the Public Records.² Their bulk is vividly illustrated by the fact that the Close Rolls of the Court of Chancery from 6 John to 1903 number nearly 21,000 rolls,³ whilst the Coram Rege and De Banco Rolls, which are also numbered by thousands, are frequently of huge size - a single roll of the Tudor and Stuart periods containing from 500 - 1,000 skins of parchment. Those who wish to consult the Close Rolls have the advantage of an index embodied in eighty-four manuscript volumes covering the period from John to 1848; but they have Mr. Scargill-Bird's monition that from Henry III to the end of Edward IV these volumes contain selections only.⁴

To a practising lawyer, the indexing and cataloguing of MSS. may seem to be of little importance, but to the researcher it is otherwise; for the road of research must, at the stage of development that we have reached, lead mainly to the 'piles, stacks, cartloads of documents' of which Maitland has spoken.⁵

The mediaeval scribe who did not round off his work with a table of contents had excuses which can scarcely be pleaded for the like defect in modern printed books. The two volumes of Palgrave's edition of Rotuli Curiae Regis are not to be neglected by any historian of the period; yet neither of them possesses an index of subject-matter. A more exasperating case is Sir Harris Nicolas's Proceedings and Orders of the Privy Council, 1386-1547, edited in seven volumes. Each volume has a good index of names and another of persons. The sixth volume has an index to the prefaces, and another to the offices and appointments. The seventh volume has what purports to be an index to itself, but it consists principally of names combined with a half-hearted attempt to include the subjects. There are 2,580 pages in the seven volumes, and it needs a stout heart to turn through them in order to find the matter wanted.

Again, the thirty-eight volumes of the Acts of the Privy Council possess rather capricious indexes. There is one to each volume,

¹ 2nd Rep., p. xxi. The 17th Rep., pp. 167-210, gives a list of the owners upon whose collections reports had been made up to June, 1907.

² Ed. 3, 1908.

³ Ed. 3, introd. p. x. Cf. ed. 2, 1896, introd. p. iv.

⁴ Ed. 3, p. 30. It may be added here that the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University (Dr. M. R. James) has published descriptive catalogues of the MSS. in every college library in Cambridge except that of St. Catherine's. A catalogue of this college's MSS. is in the App. to the 4th Report of R. C. on Hist. MSS., p. 421. The C. U. Library catalogue of MSS. is useful, but admittedly incomplete (it dates back to 1856), and not always accurate.

⁵ Collected papers, ii. 60.

196 The Law Quarterly Review. [No. CXVIII.

but prominence is given to names and places rather than to topics. If one is researching on larceny it is rather provoking to find that a charge of horse-stealing in 1579 lies hidden in the index under 'Wiltshire', probably because it happened to be tried at the Assizes there. Why, again, if information be sought on the history of the law of mayhem, should there be a presumption that the seeker already knows that the name of the injured person is John Daye? A particulary curious reference was one to an Irish rebellion in which the rebels were pardoned on February 13, 1548; this was indexed under neither 'Pardon' not 'Rebellion' (though the latter word appeared in the index), and apparently the only guide to it was: 'Omore Patrick, wild Irishman'.

It is inevitable that a scheme like this must leave some of the information in this great work to the good luck of the finder. Maitland and others have written of the weariness that attends the mere physical labour of turning over skins of parchment. It is regrettable enough that a great scholar should have to spend any part of his energy in doing this, essential though it may be; but it is something worse than regrettable that in books which are printed for the benefit of scholars, on the text of which great care has been lavished, and the production of which has been costly and toilsome, the sole method of settling a particular fact should be the antiquated one of looking through every volume page by page.

The seventeenth-century printed editions of the Year-Books have many faults - mistakes in spelling, in Latin, in French, in wrong insertions, in bad cross-references, in binding, in paging, in dating. These faults in the subject-matter need no illustration; they are familiar to every one. But one further criticism is relevant; their indexes are very indifferent. They are only roughly alphabetical, they are inexact in classification, they occasionally refer to a plea when a folio is meant, or more often refer to a wrong folio altogether. They give the form of decisions to obiter dicta, or even to the mere arguments of counsel. No doubt all this is common knowledge, but at the risk of expounding the obvious a few examples may be given.

The Year Book of Edward IV consists of two parts, the first, 1-22 Ed. IV, the second (the Long Quinto), 5 Ed. IV. The first part has an unusually full Table of Matters, but in spite of its length it is as bad as any other in the Year Book series. The compiler seems to have wavered between two principles; the first was to give prominence to procedural catch-words in preference to those which would cover the substantive law; thus if a writ of deceit were abated, it would be more likely to appear under

April, 1914.] Some Bibliographical Difficulties of English Law. 197

'Abatement' than 'Deceit' in the Table of Matters:¹ the second principle (if it can be called on at all) was to abridge his labours, or to lessen the cost of printing, by omitting all reference to the case under a later alphabetical head if it had been included under an earlier one.²

The authors of these Tables of Matters are generally anonymous and, it may be thought, discreetly so. One, however, is identifiable. The index to the Year Book for Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII was compiled by William Fletewood, formerly Recorder of London. Even this does not appear to have been done faultlessly, for there are cases in the text which are not under their correct titles at the end of the book, if they are there at all.³

A book of considerable value as a guide to the contents of the Year Books and of the Abridgements of Brooke and Fitzherbert is the Promptuary, ou Repertory Generall de les Annales, et plusors auters livres del Common Ley Dengleterre, by Thomas Ashe of Gray's Inn, 'Professor del dit Ley' (London, 1614).⁴ Cases in Plowden, Dyer, Keilway, Coke, and the Book of Entries are also included in the references. On testing this book with 181 cases, six errors were detected, four of which were serious (i.e. misprints, the correction of which absorbed some time); and this proportion compares favourably with the frequent inaccuracies in Year Book Tables of Matters. There is a rough grouping of the references under the sub-headings of each branch of the law, the branches themselves being placed in alphabetical order. This is all that Ashe attempts in the way of summarizing the decisions, arguments, or obiter dicta which he indexes, and a good deal of ground may have to be beaten before one's quarry is discovered, but at least there are fewer false scents thrown of than in the indexes of the Year Books.

The Abridgements of Brooke and Fitzherbert also rectify many of the errors in the Year Book Tables of Matters. But in partially exorcising one evil spirit, these Abridgements unfortunately raise another. Their authors had access to printed editions of the Year

¹ This is not unreasonable, when it is recollected how adjective law dominated substantive law throughout our legal history, and that these books were intended for practising lawyers.

² An argument which might be excusably mistaken by a reader for a decision appears in the Table of Matters for Y. B. Henry VI (Argument by Portingdon on a point of maintenance in Mich. 22 Hen. VI).

³ My acquaintance with the old printed Year Books is based on those editions in the libraries accessible to me. Possibly in some of Tottel's 225 editions of the Year Books adequate indexes are included.

⁴ This book in two volumes is not easy to procure. There is a copy in each of the libraries of the Inns of Court, none in the Camb. Univ. Library, and only the second volume in the Squire Law Library. It was through the kindness of Mr. Bushe-Fox (who lent me his copy) that the book was brought to my notice.

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198 The Law Quarterly Review. [No. CXVIII

Books,¹ and almost certainly to MSS. not identical with those available to the editors or publishers of many of the later issues of the Year Books.² There is case upon case in the latter which differs in important or unimportant variations, additions, or omissions from its version in the Abridgements; and till the Selden Society or the editors of the Rolls Series have sat in judgment on the different MSS. one is driven to making for one's own purposes eclectic reports of the Year Books, Brooke, and Fitzherbert.

After the close of the Year Book period, there is not so much reason to complain of bad indexes in the printed books on the Common Law. Such digests as the Abridgements of Viner and other lawyers make a good starting-point for search in the Tudor, Stuart, and Georgian sources of the law. Indeed, they often go back further, and include references to the Year Books and their Abridgements. This is naturally done with some lack of historical perspective, and we are confronted with a good deal of matter which even at the end of the seventeenth century must have been obsolete, but which, in the Abridgements, is closely linked with current rules. But this is a positive gain to one probing the origin of such rules.³

A general guide to printed law books, which is apparently little known in England, is J. G. Marvin's Legal Bibliography, or a Thesaurus of American, English, Irish, and Scotch Law Books, together with some Continental Treatises, Interspersed with critical observations upon their various editions and authorities (Philadelphia, 1847⁴). The critical notes are appended to such legal classics⁵ as Bracton, and to the various reporters; they are necessarily brief, and especially so on the Year Books. The book is also an index rather of authors than topics; and its date makes a fresh edition necessary.⁶

An essential characteristic of abridgements like Viner's is that there is no attempt to fix values in citing collateral reports. A seventeenth century case of any importance is usually reported (at a conservative estimate) three or four times over. As reporters varied in merit from Plowden to Barnardiston - from the excellent

¹ The Y. B. began to be printed shortly after the introduction of printing in England - about 1481-2. Soule, Year Book Bibliography.

² See note on first page of Fitzherbert's Abridgement (ed. 1577), and Marvin's Legal Bibliography, p. 150.

³ Rolle's Abridgement is not infallible; e.g. Lovett v. Faukner (Mich. 12 Jac. I. B. R.) 1 Rolle's Rep. 109, is so mangled as to be unintelligible.

⁴ This appears to be the only edition.

⁵ They are not limited to these; e.g. there is an estimate of the Law-French Dictionary (ed. 2, 1718) which is a little harsh (p. 450).

⁶ Worrall's Bibliotheca legum Angliae (London, 1788) and Reed's Bibliotheca nova legum Angliae (London, 1809) have already been noticed. They are little more than bookseller's catalogues.

April, 1914.] Some Bibliographical Difficulties of English Law. 199

to the execrable - some form of critical notation in quoting the case would materially save time in consulting it. Competitive private enterprise in law reporting may have had some of the advantages which competitive railways now have; but while a passenger is likely to get somewhere near his destination whichever of several railway routes he may select, it is possible for the reader of three Jacobean reports to get nowhere at all, for all may be bad.¹

Wallace's Reporters is a good touchstone for the various reporters, but his criticisms are perforce of a broad character. What would be desirable, if it were possible, would be a scheme for citing cases which would graduate the value of the collateral reports in which they appear. This is wanted, because bad as some reporters are, they are not bad entirely. It is said that Barnardiston fell asleep over his note-book in Court, and that while he slumbered wags leaned over from the seat behind and scribbled nonsense in the book, some of which the printer may have reproduced.² But it does not follow that Barnardiston is utterly to be rejected.³ Again, Keble may make a judgement of Windham J.⁴ appear as discursive as one of Mrs. Nickleby's monologues, or may aggravate Park J. so much that he burns his copy of the reporter; yet Keble occasionally has a case more fully reported than anybody else.

The evils due to multiplied reports might be amended in three ways:-

(1) By making an eclectic report of each case from the several books containing it, and compiling the whole of these eclectic cases in a series of volumes. This method has been adopted to some extent⁵ in the Revised Reports, which begin with the year 1785. It should put the reports with which it deals within the reach of lawyers at a reasonable cost and in a concise form. It seems to be the only solution of the difficulty for the practitioner.

(2) By selecting the best report of each case, and annexing a reference to that alone in citing the case. But this is

¹ Clerk v. Day was reported in four different books, and in not one of them correctly - not even as to name (Wallace, The Reporters, p. 6). Protean spelling of the name of a case is the rule, but other curious freaks occur. In R. v. Tymberley, 1 Keble 254, the accused was indicted for falsely imputing A to be the father of a bastard child. This appears as R. v. Kimberty in 1 Levinz 62, as Timberley & Childe in 1 Sid. 68, and as Child v. North and Timberley in 1 Keble 203, the author of the last report having mistaken the bastard child for the name of the plaintiff in an imaginary civil action. Arbitrary spelling of the names of cases is a bibliographical irritation, and sometimes a difficulty; Fetter v. Beal, 1 Ld. Raym. 339, is a pretty good disguise for Fitter v. Veal, 12 Mod. 542.

² A reminiscence of Lord Lyndhurst.

³ Lord Manners and Lord Eldon thought that some of his cases were well reported.

⁴ R. v. Starling, 1 Keble 675

⁵ [It has been found necessary to apply it only in a very small proportion of the cases included in the Revised Reports. Since 1800 at latest there is generally one report good enough to be followed throughout though collateral reports have often supplied useful corrections in details.-F. P.]

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impracticable, for it excludes the good and bad alike in the inferior reports, and it requires in the compilers an almost impossible delicacy of discrimination.

(3) By collecting (but not editing¹) all reports of all the cases and publishing them verbatim in a series of volumes. This saves mechanical labour, and is the most that can be done for the legal historian; for excision of any portion of a case might involve the omission of matter which he ought to examine, however worthless it might be from a modern point of view. The series known as the English Reports is in some degree achieving this.

Thus, to hope that the older collateral reports will be standardized so as to satisfy the needs of all who are likely to use them is to betray an insufficient conception of the variety of those needs.

One feels diffident of recommending reforms for the difficulties which have been considered, much more of offering any complete scheme of bibliography; but the following suggestions are submitted:-

(1) That a comparative catalogue of all annual additions in Great Britain, Europe, or America, to our legal literature be made and revised annually.

(2) That thorough indexes of such publications as Rotuli Curiae Regis be made.

(3) That a catalogue be made of MSS. which deal principally with legal topics, and of which specific notices have already been published. A large part of this work would consist in extracting these notices from general catalogues of MSS. such as the Appendices to the Reports of the Royal Commission on Historical MSS. It is scarcely reasonable to expect more than this, as far as MSS. are concerned; for the rate at which the indexes to the collections of MSS. are now being made and published is not likely to be quickened till more funds are available. Such a catalogue might be combined with a bibliography of printed law books.

It is suggested further that the body of experts to whom the execution of this third project should be entrusted is the Selden Society, and, if they supervised the completion of the first two, it would be an encouragement to those who undertook a thankless and rather tedious piece of work. Should the plan proposed be accomplished, the lawyer might still justify George III's opinion that he does not know the law, but he would at least have a better opportunity of justifying that monarch's further opinion that he does know where to find the law.

PERCY H. WINFIELD

¹ Except for correcting misprints, verifying names of cases, and inserting all collateral reports of each case in the same volume.