of two conflicting systems of law would have been destructive of all good government--such propositions only require to be stated to meet with acceptance. Yet it was left to Maitland to state them. The need for thus emphasising the essential unity of English law was due partly to the tendency of teachers to lay stress upon the cases in which there is a variance between the rules of common law and the rules of equity and partly to the fact that in the routine of his profession the practitioner would have his attention directed rather to such occasions of variance than to the necessary and intricate dependence of equity on common law. Perhaps there is no greater proof of originality than the discovery of truths, which have no surprising quality about them except the length of time during which they have gone unnoticed or obscured. FOOTNOTES: [20] _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxii., No. 2, p. 287. [21] _Cambridge University Reporter_, July 22, 1907, p. 1313. [22] _Cambridge University Reporter_, June 22, 1907, p. 1303. VI. Among the operations which belong to that wonderful period of activity which culminated in the _History of English Law_, two remain to be singled out, the first an enquiry of great delicacy and of crucial importance for the history of legal procedure, the second lying somewhat outside the ordinary sphere of Maitland's investigations but of great moment to the student of parliamentary institutions. We allude to the articles upon the "Register of Original Writs" contributed to the _Harvard Law Review_ in 1889 and to the _Memoranda de Parliamento_ edited for the Rolls Series in 1893. The Register of the wryttes orygynall and judiciall was first printed by William Rastell in 1531. "In its final form when it gets into print it is an organic book.... To ask for its date would be like asking for the date of one of our great cathedrals. In age after age bishop after bishop has left his mark upon the church; in age after age chancellor after chancellor has left his mark upon the Register.... To ask for the date of the Register is like asking for the date of English law." Yet this vast and important repertory had never been made the subject of critical examination. No one had examined the principles upon which the printed book was constructed; no one had gone behind the printed book to the manuscripts; no one had traced the life history of the organism, had fixed the chronological sequence of the successive styles in the cathedral. Yet until such critical work had been accomplished the history of the extension of royal justice and of the growth of English legal procedure could not be written in detail. Maitland's treatment of the problem is one of the most beautiful specimens of his workmanship.