* * * * *
In jurisprudence, which reluctantly admits any new adjunct, and counts
in its train a thousand champions ready to rise in defense of its
formularies and technical rules, the victory has been brilliant and
decisive. The civil and the common law have yielded to the pressure of
the times, and have adopted much which philosophy and experience have
recommended, altho it stood upon no test of the pandects and claimed no
support from the feudal polity. Commercial law, at least so far as
England and America are concerned, is the creation of the eighteenth
century. It started into life with the genius of Lord Mansfield, and,
gathering in its course whatever was valuable in the earlier institutes
of foreign countries, had reflected back upon them its own superior
lights, so as to become the guide and oracle of the commercial world.
JOSEPH STORY.