The balance between the conservative and progressive tendencies is, however, at the best, always imperfect, and inclines too much sometimes in one and sometimes in the other direction. In England the conservative tendency has had on the whole too much preponderance. I do not speak of political institutions, for in these of late years the balance has been pretty equally preserved; but in practical matters there is still a good deal of old-fashioned stolid obstruction. This is most apparent in law and in education. The common or judge-made law, though on the whole well-intentioned and upright, is fettered by so many technicalities and musty precedents, that it fails in a great many instances to be, what civil law ought to be, a cheap, speedy, and intelligible instrument for enforcing honest dealings between man and man. One of our greatest railway contractors once said to me, ‘If I want to make an agreement which shall be absolutely binding, I make it myself on a sheet of note-paper; if I want to have a loophole, I send it to my lawyer to have it drawn up in legal language and engrossed on sheets of parchment.’ Another man of large experience in commercial and financial matters laid down this axiom: ‘If you want to know what is the law in a doubtful case, reason out what is the common-sense view of it, and assume that the direct opposite is probably the law.’ These may be extreme instances, as all such epigrammatic sentences generally are, but it is undeniable that they have a considerable basis of substantial truth; and that law, with its dilatory processes, its enormous expense, and its uncertain conclusions, may be, and often is, not an instrument of justice, but a weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous adventurer or of a dishonest rich man, to extort blackmail or to defeat just claims. Again, what nation but England would tolerate so long a system of land law, so bristling with antiquated technicalities, so tedious, and so expensive, as almost to amount to a prohibition of the transfer of land in small quantities; or could let the private interests of a mere handful of professional lawyers stand in the way of a codification of laws and a registration of titles?