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32
C
Prefat.
Provisions should be comprehensive
In the English law there are numberless instances
to be found of provisions which are very excellent
where they stand in themselves, but and which could be equally so were
they applied to a multitude of other subjects, instead
of being confined to that which first suggested
them. In a Digest these imperfections would
of many of them find a remedy of course. At present
it is with a system of indigested Laws is like
a country where there are no roads: a great number
of an expedient which is found of
practised with great success in one part of
the country is unknown in another, merely for
want of communication. This must be the case
particularly whenever the law is undigested.
Sardinian Code un-ample.
The Sardinian Code is not compleat with regard
to Simple Personal Injuries: it contains
no provisions with regard to such injuries
when done in the course of a quarrel.
Digest-Lawyers interested contra The forming of a Digest of the Law is to Lawyers
what the making of a translation of the Bible was
to Church men
By opposing a digest on the ground of impracticability
they save their credit in point of public
spirit, and save their give themselves credit in point of sagacity and discernment
Laymen no right to interpret
For a Proof of the notion that none but a Lawyer has
any right to form a definitive positive opinion concerning the
import of the Law, see the Remonstrance of the 10 Admiralty
against the trial of Ad. Heppel Land. Chron Jan. 5, 1779
"Whether the Board of Admiralty hath by Law any such
discretion, we who are not of the profession of the Law, cannot
positively assent
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C
Prefat.
England has long been regarded (with envy) by
the nations and not altogether without justice, as
a pattern for good laws + the blessings that attend them of prosperity and good laws. Is it
so? if it be, it is by what the people have intorted,
not by what their rulers have conferred.
It is by the constitutional
branch, not by
any other:
In.17. a respectable magistrate went so
far as to propose that for the conveniencing of the
subject, the Laws relative to the same head maybe
here and there withstood changing the substance
it then be put into one. He was as much attended
to as if he had given in a for
His book has been read but it is because it has
so many other merits
Even the
has ventured to insinuate that if the subject lied
a possibility of being apprised of there decisions by
which he is to govern himself at the peril of his
life and fortune it might not be amiss. But
to those to whom it belongs to provide him with
such information it has all along seemed other.
The reformation [of the Laws] is not a work
This not a reforming age.
for the people in this age. The man who shall
execute this great work, the man who shall unite
zeal of a Sully, the disinterestedness of a [] Vane, the probity of a Clarendon with the favour of a Buckingham,
the legal knowledge of a , the eloquence
and popularity of a Pit, the philosophy of
a Bacon is yet to come.
England the fittest for giving birth to a good Code Digest
the least likely to adopt its
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