Sir Henry Maine | |
|---|---|
 The young Maine | |
| Born | (1822-08-15)15 August 1822 |
| Died | 3 February 1888(1888-02-03) (aged 65) |
| Alma mater | Pembroke College, Cambridge |
| Title | Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University;Whewell Professor of International Law |
| Predecessor | William Harcourt |
| Successor | John Westlake |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | History,law |
| Institutions | University of Oxford University of Cambridge University of Calcutta |
| Signature | |
 | |
Sir Henry James Sumner Maine,KCSI, FRS (15 August 1822 – 3 February 1888), was a BritishWhig[1]comparative jurist[2] andhistorian.[3] He is famous for the thesis outlined in his bookAncient Law that law and society developed "from status to contract."[4] According to the thesis, in the ancient world individuals were tightly bound by status dealing with(in) a particular group while in the modern one, in which individuals are viewed as autonomous agents, they are free to make contracts and form associations with whomever they choose. Because of this thesis, Maine can be seen as one of the forefathers of modernlegal anthropology,legal history andsociology of law.
Maine was the son of Dr. James Maine, ofKelso,Roxburghshire. He was educated atChrist's Hospital, where a boarding house was named after him in 1902, being the 7th block on the avenue, and 3rd on the East Side. From there he went up toPembroke College, Cambridge, in 1840. At Cambridge, he was noted as a classical scholar and also won theChancellor's Gold Medal for poetry in 1842.[5] He won a Craven scholarship and graduated as senior classic in 1844, being also senior chancellor's medallist in classics.[3][6] He was aCambridge Apostle.[7]
Shortly afterwards, he accepted a tutorship atTrinity Hall. In 1847, he was appointedRegius Professor of Civil Law,[8] and he was called to the bar three years later; he held this chair until 1854. Meanwhile, in 1852 he had become one of the readers appointed by theInns of Court.[3]
The post of legal member of council inIndia was offered to Maine in 1861; he declined it once, on grounds of health. The following year Maine was persuaded to accept, and it turned out that India suited him much better than Cambridge or London. He was asked to prolong his services beyond the regular term of five years, and he returned to England in 1869.[3]
The subjects on which it was Maine's duty to advise the government of India were as much political as legal. They ranged from such problems as the land settlement of thePunjab, or theintroduction of civil marriage to provide for the needs of unorthodoxHindus, to the question of how far the study ofPersian should be required or encouraged among European civil servants. Plans of codification were prepared, and largely shaped, under Maine's direction, which were implemented by his successors,Sir James Fitzjames Stephen andDr Whitley Stokes.[3]
Maine became a member of theSecretary of State's council in 1871 and remained so for the rest of his life.[3] In the same year he was gazetted aK.C.S.I.[9]
In 1869, Maine was appointed to thechair of historical and comparative jurisprudence newly founded in theUniversity of Oxford byCorpus Christi College.[10] Residence at Oxford was not required, and the election amounted to an invitation to the new professor to resume and continue in his own way the work he had begun inAncient Law.[11]
In 1877, the mastership ofTrinity Hall, Cambridge, where Maine had formerly been tutor, became vacant. There were two strong candidates whose claims were so nearly equal that it was difficult to elect either; the difficulty was solved by a unanimous invitation to Maine to accept the post. His acceptance entailed the resignation of the Oxford chair, though not continuous residence at Cambridge. Ten years later, he was elected to succeedSir William Harcourt asWhewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge.[11]
In 1886, he was elected as a member to theAmerican Philosophical Society.[12]
Maine's health, which had never been strong, gave way towards the end of 1887. He went to the Riviera under medical advice, and died atCannes, France, on 3 February 1888. He left a wife, Jane, and two sons, of whom the elder died soon afterwards.[11] An oil portrait of Jane remains in the possession of their descendants.[13]
Maine wrote journalism in 1851 for theMorning Chronicle, edited byJohn Douglas Cook. With Cook and others, in 1855, he then founded and edited theSaturday Review, writing for it to 1861.[14] Like his close friendJames Fitzjames Stephen, he enjoyed occasional article-writing, and never quite abandoned it.[11]
Maine contributed to theCambridge Essays an essay on Roman law and legal education, republished in the later editions ofVillage Communities. Lectures delivered by Maine for the Inns of Court were the groundwork ofAncient Law (1861), the book by which his reputation was made at one stroke. Its object, as stated in the preface, was "to indicate some of the earliest ideas of mankind, as they are reflected in ancient law, and to point out the relation of those ideas to modern thought." He published the substance of his Oxford lectures:Village Communities in the East and the West (1871);Early History of Institutions (1875);Early Law and Custom (1883). In all these works, the phenomena of societies in an archaic stage are brought into line to illustrate the process of development in legal and political ideas[11] (seefreedom of contract).
As vice-chancellor of theUniversity of Calcutta, Maine commented on the results produced by the contact of Eastern and Western thought. Three of these addresses were published, wholly or in part, in the later editions ofVillage Communities; the substance of others is in theRede lecture of 1875, in the same volume. An essay on India was his contribution to the composite work entitledThe Reign of Queen Victoria[11] (editorThomas Humphry Ward, 1887).[15]
His brief work in international law is represented by the posthumous volumeInternational Law (1888). Maine had published in 1885 his one work of speculative politics, a volume of essays onPopular Government, designed to show that democracy is not in itself more stable than any other form of government and that there is no necessary connexion between democracy and progress.[11]
In 1886, there appeared in theQuarterly Review an article on the posthumous work ofJ. F. McLennan, edited and completed by his brother, entitled "The Patriarchal Theory".[16] The article, though unsigned by the rule of theQuarterly at the time, was Maine's reply to the McLennan brothers' attack on the historical reconstruction of the Indo-European family system put forward inAncient Law and supplemented inEarly Law and Custom. Maine charged McLennan in his theory ofprimitive society with neglecting and misunderstanding of the Indo-European evidence.[11]
A summary of Maine's writings was inSir Mountstuart Grant Duff's memoir.[11]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Pollock, Frederick (1911). "Maine, Sir Henry James Sumner". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 432–433.
