That this question of digesting the law is to be considered as one which should interest all classes of Englishmen, and not the lawyer only, may be seen from an article in the Nineteenth Century (September, 1877) on the "Improvement of the Law by Private Enterprise," by the late Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, who did so much towards a complete digest of the law. He wrote:
"I have long believed that the law might by proper means be relieved of this extreme obscurity and intricacy, and might be displayed in its true light as a subject of study of the deepest possible interest, not only to every one who takes an interest in politics or ethics, or in the application of logic and metaphysics to those subjects. In short, I think that nothing but the rearrangement and condensation of the vast masses of matter contained in our law libraries is required, in order to add to human knowledge what would be practically a new department of the highest and most permanent interest. Law holds in suspension both the logic and the ethics, which are in fact recognised by men of business and men of the world as the standards by which the practice of common life ought to be regulated, and by which men ought to form their opinions in all their most important temporal affairs. It would be a far greater service to mankind than many people would suppose to have these standards clearly defined and brought within the reach of every one who cared to study them."
The following remarks will apply with equal force to a more general and universal index than that of the law:
"The preparation of a digest either of the whole or of any branch of the law is work of a very peculiar kind. It is one of the few literary undertakings in which a number of persons can really and effectively work together. Any given subject may, it is true, be dealt with in a variety of different ways; but when the general scheme, according to which it is to be treated, has been determined on, when the skeleton of the book has been drawn out, plenty of persons might be found to do the work of filling up the details, though that work is very far from being easy or matter of routine."
The value of analytical or index work is set in a very strong light by an observation of Sir James Stephen respecting the early digesters of the law. The origin of English law is to be found in the year-books and other series of old reports, which from the language used in them and the black-letter printing with its contractions, etc., are practically inaccessible. Lord Chief Justice Coke and others who reduced these books into form are in consequence treated as ultimate authorities, although the almost worshipped Coke is said by Sir James to be "one of the most confused, pedantic, and inaccurate of men."
A good index is that to the Works of Jeremy Bentham, published in 1843 under the dictation of Sir John Bowring. The Analytical Index to the Works of Jeremy Bentham and to the Memoirs and Correspondence was compiled by J. H. Burton, to whom it does great credit. The indexer prefixed a sensible note, where he writes:
"In some instances it would have been impossible to convey a notion of the train of reasoning followed by the author, without using his own words, and in these no attempt has been made to do more than indicate the place where the subject is discussed. In other cases where it has appeared to the compiler that an intelligible analysis has been made, he may have failed in his necessarily abbreviated sentences in embodying the meaning of the original, but defects of this description are indigenous to Indexes in general."
But here all is utility, and it is to the literary index that we turn for pleasure as well as instruction.
The index to Ruskin's Fors Clavigera, vols. 1-8 (1887), is a most interesting book, especially to Ruskin admirers. There are some specially delightful original and characteristic references under the heading of London, such as the following:
"London, Fifty square miles outside of, demoralised by upper classes
—— Its middle classes compare unfavourably with apes
—— Some blue sky in, still
—— Hospital named after Christ's native village in,
—— Honestest journal of, Punch.
—— crossings, what would they be without benevolent police?"