REVIEWS
| Published date | 01 May 1992 |
| Date | 01 May 1992 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1992.tb00925.x |
REVIEWS
W.R. Cornish
and
G.
de
N.
Clark,
Law and
Society
in England,
1750-1950,
London: Sweet
&
Maxwell,
1989,
xx
+
690
pp,
f42.00
hb,
f29.50
pb.
Maitland took as the subject of his inaugural lecture in
1888
‘Why the History of
English Law is not Written.’ One part of his explanation was the ‘traditional isolation
of the study of English law from every other study, an isolation which is illustrated
by the fact that it is only of late years
. . .
that English law has had a home in the
Universities.
’
Another was the difficulty of ‘combining the results of deep historical
research with luminous and accurate exposition of existing law
-
neither confounding
the dogma nor perverting the history
.
. .
.’
In a direct profession of faith, Maitland
told his audience that ‘the lawyer must be orthodox otherwise he
is
no lawyer; an
orthodox history seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. If this truth is hidden
from us by current phrases about “historical methods of legal study,” that
is
another
reason why the history of our law is unwritten. If we try to make history the handmaid
of dogma she will soon cease to be history.’ Maitland explored the social and
economic history and the history of morality and practical religion ‘concealed within
the hard rind of legal history’ from which he distilled ‘the common thought of
common things’ of our forefathers. That is to say, he wrote social history which
is the account of men and women in their social relationships and groupings.
If Professor Cornish’s own inaugural lecture in Cambridge had been delivered
before the publication of the work here under notice, instead of being listed for
early in
1992,
he could with little exaggeration have used Maitland’s title in respect
of his own field of historical study, ‘Why has the History of the Adaptation of English
Legal Institutions to Industrialism not been Written?’ There had been no major survey
of this subject. Moreover, the technical histories are unhelpful to the layman. If
he
turns,
for example, to the sixteen volumes of Holdsworth, he is likely to sympathise
with the conclusion of Sir Geoffrey Elton that this ‘great work has for years been
as
much an obstacle as an aid to the correct understanding of the themes he treated.’
As evidence of Holdsworth’s wider interests, we are sometimes reminded that he
contributed, in
1927,
to the first volume of The Economic History Review a note
on
a
neglected aspect of the relations between economic and legal history, but this
hardly went beyond the revelation that the relations had not been much investigated.
In
1966,
Mr Alan Harding published
A
Social
History
of
English Law with the aim
‘to
relate the development of law as a whole, and forwards, to the development
of English society, not to trace backwards a bundle of legal doctrines
. .
.
such a
discussion of the relationship of law to society is what students of both history and
law need and rarely get.’ The trouble was that students of the more recent period
got little help from Mr Harding because he devoted a disproportionately small part
of his text to their interests. Mr A.H. Manchester provided, in
1980,
a Modern
Legal
History, written, he explained, ‘as an introductory work for a general audience.’
This
is
far
too
unassuming a description of the first systematic account of his period
in one volume, even if
it
does run to more than four hundred pages. Mr Manchester
deserves great credit for being the first to open up the territory which Professor
Cornish has now colonised. Finally, mention must be made of the anthology of
essays, Law,
Economy
and
Society,
1750-1914,
edited by G.R. Rubin and David
Sugarman and published in
1984.
The editors provide an extended introduction under
the title ‘Towards a New History of Law and Material Society in England,
1750-
1914,’
which is especially useful as a critical bibliography bringing together a very
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