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T. . Prelude XIII
A writer may be engaged in a tract disquisition <add></add> so dry & barren gloomy <add>dismal</add>, may
be pardoned any little excursions he may take to refresh like a <add></add>
himself little refreshment, tho' it were at from the cup of ,
who without which he together with and those patient persons
he draws after him can persuade to follow him must run the risk to perish with fatigue.
Those methods of elucidation which may be stiled
mechanical with a view to their application not to their invention where united to those which more immediately
render a composition perfect.
Many elaborate & well imagined specimens of this
kind are to be found met with in the Statute Book; furnishes many specimens
The
appendix to the Statute immediately preceding that under consideration
may be deemed furnishes 3 <add>each which may be termed</add> master pieces: in this species of composition.
Tis encreasing the Burthen instead of lessening it,
if the knowledge of what is abrogated is be made contained
necessary to the understanding of what is in force.
I know, that nothing can be more disgusting
than the minutiae of verbal critisism. but,
CONCLUSION Thus have I endeavoured to shew prove, by an investigation
of which the tedium prolixity & minuteness of which,
can only be apologized for by the importance
of the end, extent & competence of the result it has in view <add> at</add> [that what is most simple, is
at the same time most efficacious:] that the stile of legislative composition
gives no far from deriving any advantages from those peculiarities
whereby it is distinguished from ordinary
discourse derives many striking disadvantages -
that these peculiarities scarce serve less frustrate the ends to
which they seem more pos especially to be directed, than
any of those other ends which [a legislator ought to have
in view] must concur in order to give efficacy
to a Law
Whether I may venture to write Q.E.D.
under any of these propositions, it is now for
the reader to pronounce determine.
It is good, that litigation have a certain end; but
it is still better, that it never have a beginning.
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Few are thus animadversions observations will be found, that but what are
not applicable capable of <add>have an application</add> beyond the particular instrument
[in hand under consideration] passage which gave
occasion to them. The selection of the objects
of the a penalty, the measure of that penalty,
the &c &c are topics that run extend throughout
the Law.
There would be little advantage in taking
a Statute in force rather than one repealed.
since there could be no security for it's continuance,
& since the very one [main] end of what
is written must be that it may not
continue.
When there a man is no way means of finding out any passage
in an Act that may happen to have struck
him, but by reading the Act all through, when this labour is to be undergone afresh upon every occasion & when
the Act is of that enormous bulk which we have sometimes
seen, nobod no man nobody will read it over: so that instead of
being the act of the Legislature, it is the act of him
only who has been at the trouble to compose it. hence
When things come to this pitch By this means the more attention a it demands requires, the less it
will have — and things may come to such a pitch
that even to persons Legislators well-affected to the interests of the subject community
Any defect will be more tolerable than the labour
of [finding it out and] correcting it.
The Precedents same distribution might likewise
serve for such Precedents as it should be thought
proper to insert: which might be referred all along all along denominated from
to those the respective Sections & Articles to which they
relate.
Hence, upon any Article's undergoing any alteration
being made in any Article, one might
turn instantly to make the correspondent alteration
in the Precedent adapted to it. that Article.
If a Preced distinct Precedent of conviction were all along
adapted to each Article, or some general rules
laid down instead, Magistrates would be delivered
from the embarassment they often find themselves under
of determining what exceptions to the general
provision description of the offence with the general rule, or in a distinct one - in form of a proviso. it is necessary for them to put
an express negative upon, & what not: a point
that often turns upon accidental circumstances
in the framing of the Act as whether such an exception
shall have been inserted in the same enacting clause
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