Note 13 — Chapter I · HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION IN THE UNITED STATES

For examples of Maitland’s suggestiveness, see the English Historical Review, Vol. IX, p. 439, for a side light on the effect of money economy on the manor and consequently on feudal law. See also the closing pages of his Constitutional History of England, where he makes constitutional law in large part the history of the law of real property. “If we are to learn anything about the constitution, it is necessary first and foremost that we should learn a good deal about the land law. We can make no progress whatever in the history of parliament without speaking of tenure; indeed our whole constitutional law seems at times to be but an appendix to the law of real property” (p. 538). Maitland’s entire marvellous chapter on “The Definition of Constitutional Law” deserves the most careful study and reflection. He was entirely emancipated from bondage to systematists (p. 539).