law passed. Absolutely different is this idea from the old English
notion of law as something already existing. They have forgotten
that completely, and have the modern American notion of law, as
a ready-made thing, a thing made to-day to meet the emergency of
to-morrow. They have gotten over the notion that any parliament, or
legislature, or sovereign, should only _sign_ the law--and I say sign
advisedly because he doesn't enact it, doesn't create it, but signs a
written statement of law already existing; all idea that it should be
justified by custom, experiment, has been forgotten. And here is the
need and the value of this our study; for the changes that are being
made by new legislation in this country are probably more important
to-day than anything that is being done by the executive or the
judiciary--the other two departments of the government.

But before coming down to our great mass of legislation here it will
be wise to consider the early English legislation, especially that
part which is alive to-day, or which might be alive to-day. I
mentioned one moment ago thirty pages as possibly containing the bulk
of it. I once attempted to make an abstract of such legislation in
early England as is significant to us to-day in this country;[1] not
the merely political legislation, for ours is a sociological study.
We are concerned with those statutes which affect private citizens,
individual rights, men and women in their lives and businesses; not
matters of state, of the king and the commons, or the constitution of
government. Except incidentally, we shall not go into executive or
political questions, but the sociological--I wish there were some
simpler word for it--let us say, the _human_ legislation; legislation
that concerns not the government, the king, or the state, but each man
in his relations to every other; that deals with property, marriage,
divorce, private rights, labor, the corporations, combinations,