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TURNPIKE ACT. New. Prelude VII
Notoriety to Persons at Large
. . . .that not only may know what he is to do,
who is to judge of what has been already acted; but he who
is to act in the first instance
It is not without strong Caustics, close applied if at all, that these
excresences if at all will be consumed eat away.
If regrets & wishes, & general complaints would Law
availed, the business had been done long ago: This the Public
may be of by the experience of so many ages, that
nothing but caustics close applied to can lay bare the true causes of the evil under which the Nation groans, the burthen of unintelligible Laws
From the reception this . . . . . meets with, I may
form some judgment whether my labours are likely to
be of utility to the public. If they are, they will not
be spared: if not, there is no such intrinsic pleasantness
in the subject of them, as to invite others a man to a continuance
of them for private his particular satisfaction amusement <add>entertainment</add>. as to point out to a man his private amusement in their continuance.
Some one whose profession office should be, not to meddle with laying aside as foreign
to it the outlines of the Policy, but to fill it up according to
a certain System of Rules, in a manner, which so soon as
that System shall have been duly constructed, may be
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termed mechanical. — who, not posses well admonished not to
presume to have interpolate thoughts of his own, should be occupied
and giving their full expression to the thoughts of others.
Unsteady Specifications.
Indeed amongst a Chaos of specifications, every most of
one of them different, & every one of them imperfect,
to talk justly it is impossible to talk in generals;
every Idea with it's necessary requisite extensions & limitations
when repres committed to paper stretches over
a line or two, & one finds one's self in the case
of those savages spoken of by the French Philosopher,
whose could not <add>term for</add> to express the number 3, either consisted
of many more syllables than that number
contains units.
Old & New printed littem sequali.
The Articles New Draught is printed in a type
occupying the same space as that of the original,
that their comparative bulk may be immediately
perceived.
. . . Whether that bulkiness reign of of which those
of Law will sometimes in common concert with the rest of
men complain, be the fault of the Act itself, or
in the manner in which it is is exercised by them.
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Redundancies not marked why
It was originally my intention to have marked
to have distinguished by a different letter the such
words & sentences as I apprehended to be redundant
I gave it up on considering that But this I found could be an inadequate
expedient: many words are necessary in a not <add>stand
connected with</del></add>
sentence the rest otherwise will stand their ground
as a necessary part of a sentenced from some
grammatical connection with the rest
A composition may deserve censure in this respect
by having its sentences constructed upon too bulky
a plan, although when at the same time neither any sentence
nor any word could be taken stricken out of it
without leaving rendering it imperfect as a man may
be blocked with a Dropsy, that would be but an ill
for him to cut off a limb
& a word thus coverd as it were from erasure, may give attachment to several even a number of propositions which without it might have been proscribed as useless
A collation of the original & the new draught, which
for this purpose are all along confronted columnwise
will sufficiently discover point out [& what is judged
superfluously in the former.] those which passages of the former
[which] are judged superfluous
Tis not merely on the account of their Bulk where that these unnecessary
specifications become mischievous; it is
on account of the distraction they cause to the
attention; which assisted sollicited at once by an increase
rarity of words, knows not on which to fix;
itself, but exhausting itself in giving chase to those
which are not sufficient, will very often lose sight of those
which are so.
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Apolog. Opus Neminis.
Acts of Parliament are
A composition of this sort is the more lawful genre, as
it bears the work of no one's ownership in particular.
In speaking therefore of the penner or the compiler, I shall
not be understood as having an eye to the particular
person who might have the of that ,
The compiler &c in any vocabulary, means to [any real person] nothing more than a mere John Doe &c John Doe or Richard Roe, one of those
straw-stuff Patients which in whom Anatomists
suppose all sorts manner of diseases wounds & fractures, that they may
exemplify on them the means of cure.
How smooth, how delightful would be the task of the Should <add>one ever live to see the time of with it's this happy reformation ever be accomplished</add>
Magistracy in comparison with what is at present!
The public then would not have so often to complain
of what it suffers from & integrity (too often allied
with an indolentce which there is so much at present
to excuse) withdrawing making way <add>quitting the field and </add> from the scene [to give place]
to the more active superior activity . . . . . .of Avarice or Revenge.
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