about investigating, ab initio, a philosophy, or science, for each of the three branches. He did, with the received principles of each, what a good code would do with the laws themselves ;-extirpating the bad; substituting others; re-enacting the good, but in so much clearer and more methodical a form, that those who were most familiar with them before, scarcely recognised them as the same. Even upon old truths, when they pass through his hands, he leaves so many of his marks, that often he almost seems to claim the discovery of what he only systematized.

"In erecting the philosophy of the civil law, he proceeded not much beyond establishing upon its proper basis some of its most general principles, and cursorily discussing some of the most interesting of its details. Nearly the whole of what he has published upon this branch of the law is contained in the Traités de Législation, edited by M. Dumont. To the most difficult part, and that which needed a master-hand to clear away its difficulties, the nomenclature and arrangement of the civil code, he contributed little, except detailed observations and criticisms upon the errors of his predecessors. The "Vue Générale d'un corps complet de Législation," included in the work just cited, contains almost all that he has given to us upon this subject. In the department of the penal law, he is the author of the best attempt yet made towards a philosophical classification of offences. The theory of punishments (for which, however, more had been done by his predecessors than for any other part of the science of law), he left nearly complete. The theory of procedure (including that of the constitution of the courts of justice), he found in a more utterly barbarous state than even either of the other branches; and he left it incomparably the most perfect. There is scarcely a question of practical importance in the most important department which he has not settled. He has left next to nothing for his successors.'

His work on Judicial Establishments, is one of the best and the most important of those he published; and it will afford the great tests that must hereafter be applied to ascertain the progress of principles which he first expounded. His labours were so much a series of attacks upon the faults of existing institutions, accompanied at the same time with the specific reforms that should follow their correction, and related to matters generally so far removed from the studies of the great body of readers, that they could not be expected to obtain, for many years, that popularity for their writer which he deserved. It is, however, not difficult already to trace the progress of opinions which he was the first to advance, and we may

already observe changes suggested and adopted by the legislature, which he many years since proposed. The same reasons which have secured to Bacon a reputation upon questions of physical science, which his contemporaries refused to award to him, will, in legislative science, secure a similar reputation to Bentham. The talents of the latter will appear not less important than those of the former, when their effects shall, in the progress of time, be traced upon the opinions and the institutions of the people of this and of other countries.