The conclusions here stated with regard to the Scottish Parliament are, however, not entirely negative. The work of the Estates has left some positive and definite results of more than incidental character. The long series of administrative enactments, dealing mainly with police methods and with trade, helped the rise and growth of the Scottish burghs, and, even outside the burghs, they added something to the forces that made for peace and good order. There are occasional measures which found a lasting influence upon the character of the people. The Education Act of 1496, which provided that "all barons and freeholders that are of substance put their eldest sons and heirs to the schools, fra they be aught or nine years of age, to remain at the grammar schools until they be competently founded and have perfect Latin, and thereafter to remain at the schools of art and jure (_i.e._ the universities), so that they may have knowledge of the laws," forms a fitting conclusion to a century in which the spirit of poetry had deserted England for her northern neighbour, and in which the successors of Chaucer are to be found beyond the Tweed. It was not obeyed in the letter (although we do find the barons of the sixteenth century possessed of clerkly skill), but its influence may be traced in the provision for education made at the Reformation. Even when the definite results were less clearly marked, the existence, in the statute book, of words and phrases to which a constitutional meaning might conceivably be attached (like the existence of parliamentary institutions themselves), served as a rallying cry for men who desired reform, and gave to what was really a new demand the advantage of ancient tradition. As we proceed, we shall note some instances of this. The greatest and most lasting effect of the Scottish Parliament is, however, the judicial system of the country. Alone among European countries, Scotland still possesses a judicature which is the direct descendant of a Committee of the Estates. The College of Justice, which, in its present form, was established in the year 1540, ultimately derives its powers from the Scottish Parliament, which, in 1370, first appointed a small committee to deal with its judicial work. The system of Scots law, which the Senators of the College of Justice are appointed to administer, is, in so far as it differs from the law of England, the product, direct or indirect, of the wisdom of the Scottish Estates, working on the material supplied by the civil and the canon law. In the thirteenth century, the law of Scotland, which had supplanted the ancient customs of the Picts and Scots, was largely based on English law. The Saxon and Norman influences, which had altered the Scottish Church and the Scottish language, had introduced into Scotland many of the leading features of Anglo-Norman law. "It seems clear enough," says Professor Maitland,[6] "that, at the outbreak of the War of