ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts only a very general or broad account of different schools of opinion. It contains nothing about the extreme forms either of individualism or of socialism. Extreme and logically coherent theories have, during the nineteenth century, exerted no material effect on the law of England. Legislative opinion must be the opinion of the day, because, when laws are altered, the alteration is of necessity carried into effect by legislators who act under the belief that the change is an amendment. Every law must of necessity be based on some general idea, whether wise or foolish, sound or unsound, and to this principle or idea it inevitably gives more or less of prestige. Laws of emergency often surreptitiously introduce or reintroduce into legislation, ideas which would not be accepted if brought before the attention of Parliament or of the nation.
