that English law, from its first to its latest phase, has never
possessed an authoritative, constructive, systematic, or approximately
exhaustive statement, such as was attempted by the great founders of
the civil or Continental law, by Justinian or by Napoleon Bonaparte.
Now this is true, even to-day, of our English and our American law.
That is, the great bulk of the law that is administered in our courts
is not "written," it is not in any code. There are, of course,
text-books on the subject, but they are of no binding authority. It
resides in the learning of the judges. It is what is called court-made
law--"_jus dicere_," not "_jus dare_." Our judges are still supposed
to tell what the law is, and they sometimes, as the common law is a
very elastic thing, have to make new law. That is, if the precise case
isn't covered by any previous decision or by any statute, the judge
or the court will say what the common law ought to be when applied
to that state of facts. So our law is a continually growing law, and
largely made still in the old Saxon way, by custom and the judges, and
still under the theory that the common law is an existing thing; that
the law exists and the judge only expounds. We have never lost sight
of that theory.

These early Anglo-Saxon laws mostly concern only matters of procedure
for the courts, or the scale of punishment. As they assume a knowledge
of existing law, they are often hard to understand. Here are some of
the laws of Wessex:

A.D. 690. WESSEX KING INI.

CAP. 11. "If any one sell his own countryman, bond or free, though
he be guilty, over sea, let him pay for him according to his
'wer.'"