Law is stable; the societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people depends on the degree of promptitude with which the gulf is narrowed.
The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another.
The most celebrated system of jurisprudence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a Code.
I need hardly say that the publication of the Twelve Tables is not the earliest point at which we can take up the history of law.