Various

“ The English constitutional rule, for example, that the king and parliament are the sovereign, cannot be called a law; for a law presupposes the fact which it asserts. And other rules, which are constantly observed in practice, but have never been enacted by the sovereign power, are in the same way constitutional laws which are not laws. It is an undoubted rule of the English constitution that the king shall not refuse his assent to a bill which has passed both Houses of Parliament, but it is certainly not a law. ”

“ At the same time, when viewed from the exterior, the main dome rises large, bold and commanding, with nothing of the squat appearance that mars the dome of St Sophia, with nothing of the petty prettiness of the little domes perched on the drums of the later Byzantine churches. The great mosques express the spirit of the days when the Ottoman empire was still mighty and ambitious. ”

“ The constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land as to the matters which it embraces. The constitution of each state is the supreme law of the state, except so far as it may be controlled by the constitution of the United States. Every statute in conflict with the constitution to which it is subordinate is void so far as this conflict extends. ”

“ In its modern use constitution has been restricted to those rules which concern the political structure of society. If we take the accepted definition of a law as a command imposed by a sovereign on the subject, the constitution would consist of the rules which point out where the sovereign is to be found, the form in which his powers are exercised, and the relations of the different members of the sovereign body to each other where it consists of more persons than one. ”

“ All that remains of the old rules in England is the necessity of valuable consideration, whatever be the form of the contract, and a strong presumption—but not an absolute rule of law—that an unqualified agreement not to carry on a particular business is not reasonable.
Where there is no reason in the nature of the contract for not enforcing it, the consent of a contracting party may still not be binding on him because not given with due knowledge, or, if he is in a relation of dependence to the other party, with independent judgment. Inducing a man by deceit to enter into a Fraud. ”

“ England has offered to the world the one conspicuous example of a long, continuous, and orderly development of political institutions. The early date at which the principle of self-government was established in England, the steady growth of the principle, the absence of civil dissension, and the preservation in the midst of change of so much of the old organization, have given its constitution a great influence over the ideas of politicians in other countries. This fact is expressed in the proverbial phrase—“England is the mother of parliaments.” ”

“ The object of the discipline enforced by the court by proceedings for contempt of court is not now, if it ever was, to vindicate the personal dignity of the judges or to protect them from insult as individuals, but to vindicate the dignity and authority of the court itself and to prevent acts tending to obstruct the due course of justice. ”

“ Enforcement of good faith in matters of bargain and promise is among the most important functions of legal justice. It might not be too much to say that, next after keeping the peace and securing property against violence and fraud so that business may be possible, it is the most important. Yet we shall find that the importance of contract is developed comparatively late in the history of law. The commonwealth needs elaborate rules about contracts only when it is advanced enough in civilization and trade to have an elaborate system of credit. ”

“ But the reader will look in vain for evidence of the philosophic insight which makes the Politics, even at the present day, the best text-book of political philosophy. It is perhaps hardly too much to say that there is not a single great idea in the whole work. He will look in vain, too, for any consistent view of the history of the constitution as a whole, or for any adequate account of its development. ”

“ Nature, indeed, cannot relieve men of their duty to be wise and brave, but, in the marvellous configuration of land and sea about Constantinople, nature has done her utmost to enable human skill and courage to establish there the splendid and stable throne of a great empire.
Byzantium, out of which Constantinople sprang, was a small, well-fortified town, occupying most of the territory comprised in the two hills nearest the head of the promontory, and in the level ground at their base. ”

“ A rule which can take effect against the judicially known will of the parties is not a rule of construction or interpretation, but a positive rule of law. However artificial some rules of construction may seem, this test will always hold. In modern times the courts have avoided laying down new rules of construction, preferring to keep a free hand and deal with each case on its merits as a whole. It should be observed that the fulfilment of a contract may create a relation between the parties which, once established, is governed by fixed rules of law not variable by the preceding agreement. ”

“ Attempts to lay down hard and fast rules on such questions are now discouraged, the aim of the courts being to give effect to the true substance and intent of the contract in every case. Nor will the court hold one part of the terms deliberately agreed to more or less material than another in modern business dealings. “In the contracts of merchants time is of the essence,” as the Supreme Court of the United States has said in our own day. ”

“ Again, there are cases where an agreement may be made and performed without offending the law, but on grounds of “public policy” it is not thought right that the performance should be a matter of legal obligation, even if the ordinary conditions of an enforceable contract are satisfied. A man may bet, in private at any rate, if he likes, and pay or receive as the event may be; but for many years the winner has had no right of action against the loser. ”

“ The proposer of a contract can prescribe or authorize any mode, or at least any reasonable mode, of acceptance, and if he specifies none he is deemed to authorize the use of any reasonable mode in common use, and especially the post. Acceptance in words is not always required; an offer may be well accepted by an act clearly referable to the proposed agreement, and constituting the whole or part of the performance asked for—say the despatch of goods in answer to an order by post, or the doing of work bespoken ”

“ Contract and conveyance, again, are distinct in their nature, and sharply distinguished in the classical Roman law. But in the common law property in goods is transferred by a complete contract of sale without any further act, and under the French civil code and systems which have followed it a like rule applies not only to movables but to immovables. In English law procuring a man to break his contract is a civil wrong against the other contracting party, subject to exceptions which are still not clearly defined. ”

“ To be impartial, and to be universally thought so, are both absolutely necessary for the giving justice that free, open and uninterrupted current which it has for many ages found all over this kingdom, and which so eminently distinguishes and exalts it above all nations upon the earth.” Again, “the constitution has provided very apt and proper remedies for correcting and rectifying the involuntary mistakes of judges, and for punishing and removing them for any perversion of justice. ”

“ The liability for necessaries is now declared by legislative authority in the Sale of Goods Act 1893; the modern doctrine is that it is in no case a true liability on contract. There is an obligation imposed by law to pay, not the agreed price, but a reasonable price. Practically, people who give credit to an infant do so at their peril, except in cases of obvious urgency.
Married women were incapable by the common law of contracting in their own names. At this day they can hold separate property and bind themselves to the extent of that property—not personally—by contract. ”

“ CONSTANTINOPLE, the capital of the Turkish empire, situated in 41° 0′ 16′′ N. and 28° 58′ 14′′ E. The city stands at the southern extremity of the Bosporus, upon a hilly promontory that runs out from the European or western side of the straits towards the opposite Asiatic bank, as though to stem the rush of waters from the Black Sea into the Sea of Marmora. Thus the promontory has the latter sea on the south, and the bay of the Bosporus, forming the magnificent harbour known as the Golden Horn, some 4 m. long, on the north. ”

“ All great societies have been produced by the aggregation of small societies into larger and larger groups. In England the process of consolidation was completed before the constitution settled down into its present form. In the United States, on the other hand, in Switzerland, and in Germany the constitution is in form an alliance among a number of separate states, each of which may have a constitution and laws of its own for local purposes. In federal governments it remains a question how far the independence of individual states has been sacrificed by submission to a constitution. ”

“ The principle of canon being that one voice shall reproduce the material of another note for note, it follows that in a composition where all parts are canonic and where the material of the leading part consists of a pre-determined melody, such as a Gregorian chant or a popular song there remains no room for further consideration of the shape of the work. Hence, quite apart from their expressive power and their value in teaching composers to attain harmonic fluency under difficulties, the canonic forms played the leading part in the music of the 15th and 16th centuries ”

“ It was the result of causes long in operation, and had been foreshadowed, forty years before, in the policy of Diocletian. After the senate and people of Rome had ceased to be the sovereigns of the Roman world, and their authority had been vested in the sole person of the emperor, the eternal city could no longer claim to be the rightful throne of the state. That honour could henceforth be conferred upon any place in the Roman world which might suit the convenience of the emperor, or serve more efficiently the interests he had to guard. Furthermore, the empire was now upon its defence. ”

“ The Roman law of the empire dealt with contract, indeed, in a fairly adequate manner, though it never had a complete or uniform theory; and the Roman law, as settled by Justinian, appears to have satisfied the Eastern empire long after the Western nations had begun to recast their institutions, and the traders of the Mediterranean had struck out a cosmopolitan body of rules and custom known as the Law Merchant, which claimed acceptance in the name neither of Justinian nor of the Church, but of universal reason. ”

“ In some classes of cases even inadvertent omission to disclose any material fact is treated as a misrepresentation. Contracts of insurance are the most important; here the insurer very seldom has the means of making any effective inquiry of his own. Misdescription of real property on a sale, without fraud, may according to its importance be a matter for compensation or for setting aside the contract. Promoters of companies are under special duties as to good faith and disclosure which have been worked out at great length in the modern decisions. ”

“ A country where a large portion of the people has some considerable share in the supreme power would be a constitutional country. On the other hand, constitutional, as applied to governments, may mean stable as opposed to unstable and anarchic societies. Again, as a term of party politics, constitutional has come to mean, in England, not obedience to constitutional rules as above described, but adherence to the existing type of the constitution or to some conspicuous portions thereof,—in other words, conservative. ”

“ In more modern times the possibilities of the round in its purest form have enormously increased; and with the aid of elaborate instrumental accompaniments it plays an important feature in such portions of classical operatic ensemble as can with dramatic propriety be devoted to expressions of feeling uninterrupted by dramatic action. In the modern round the first voice can execute a long and complete melody before the second voice joins in. Even if this melody be not instrumentally accompanied, it will imply a certain harmony, or at all events arouse curiosity as to what the harmony is to be. ”

“ For precisely the same reason, supported by the general usage and understanding of mankind, common social engagements, though they often fulfil all other requisites of a contract, have never been treated as binding in law. ”

“ It is of extreme rarity in serious music; and, though it sometimes happens by accident that a melody or figure of uniform rhythm will produce something equally natural when read backwards, there is only one example of its use that appeals to the ear as well as the eye. This is to be found in the finale of Beethoven’s sonata, op. 106, where it is applied to a theme with such sharply contrasted rhythmic and melodic features that with long familiarity a listener would probably feel not only the wayward humour of the passage in itself, but also its connexion with the main theme. ”

“ On the other hand, there comes a point when the mechanical strictness of treatment crowds out the proper development of musical ideas; and the 7th fugue (which is one solid mass of stretto in augmentation, diminution and inversion) and the 12th and 13th (which are invertible bodily) are academic exercises outside the range of free artistic work. On the other hand, the less complicated stretto-fugues and the fugues in double and triple counterpoint are perfect works of art and as beautiful as any that Bach wrote without didactic purpose. ”

“ Since the theory of the persistence of the republican constitution was of the essence of the Principate, the consuls necessarily lost little of their outward position and dignity under the rule of the Caesars. The consulship was the only office in which a citizen, other than a member of the imperial house, might have the princeps as a colleague, and in the interval between the death or deposition of one princeps and the appointment of another the consuls resumed their normal position as the heads of the state (cf. Herodian ii. 12) . ”