Since the classical period of Roman law there has never been a constitution of affairs more apt to foster the free and intelligent criticism of legal… - Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet

When Charles Darwin created the philosophy of natural history (for no less title is due to the idea which transformed the knowledge of organic nature from a multitude of particulars into a continuous whole), he was working in the same spirit and towards the same ends as the great publicists who, heeding his field of labour as little as he heeded theirs, had laid in the patient study of historical fact the bases of a solid and rational philosophy of politics and law. Savigny, whom we do not yet know or honour enough, and our own Burke, whom we know and honour, but cannot honour too much, were Darwinians before Darwin. In some measure the same may be said of the great Frenchman Montesquieu, whose unequal but illuminating genius was lost in a generation of formalists.

Our lady the Common Law will note other people's fashions and take a hint from them in season, but she will have no thanks for judges or legislators who steal incongruous tags and patches and offer to bedizen her raiment with them. Assimilation of foreign elements, we have already seen, may be a very good thing. Crude and hasty borrowing of foreign details is unbecoming at best, and almost always mischievous. When you are tempted to make play with foreign ideas or terms, either for imitation or for criticism, the first thing is to be sure that you understand them.

Our Constitution is popular in that the life of the English people, from the greatest to the least, has gone to make it what it is; and it has at almost all times combined the tenacity of tradition with a great power of assimilating fresh elements, and of adapting existing organs to new purposes. For some considerable time our national institutions and our national character have been confirming one another in this habit.