What then is to be done with those names of classes that are purely technical?With offences,for example,against prerogative,with misprisions,contempts,felonies,praemunires?(23)What relation is it that these mark out between the Laws that concern the sorts of acts they are respectively put to signify,and that common end we have been speaking of?Not any.In a natural arrangement what then would become of them?They would either be banished at once to the region of quiddities and substantial forms;or if,and in deference to attach ments too inveterate to be all at once dissolved,they were still to be indulged a place,they would be stationed in the corners and bye places of the Synopsis:stationed,not as now togive light,but to receive it.But more of this,perhaps,at some future time.
To return to our Author.Embarrassed,as a man must needs be,by this blind and intractable nomenclature,he will be found,I conceive,to have done as much as could reasonably be expected of a writer so circumstanced;and more and better than was ever done before by any one.
In one part,particularly,of his Synopsis,(24)several fragments of a sort of method which is,or at least comes near to,what may be termed a natural one,(25)are actually to be found.We there read of `corporal injuries';of `offences against peace';against `health';against `personal security';(26)`liberty':`property':light is let in,though irregularly,at various places.
In an unequal imitation of this Synopsis that has lately been performed upon what is called the Civil Law,4all is technical.All,in short,is darkness.Scarce a syllable by which a man would be led to suspect,that the affair in hand were an affair that happiness or unhappiness was at all concerned in.(27)To return,once more,to our Author's Commentaries.Not even in a censorial view would I be understood to deem them altogether without merit.For the institutions commented on,where they are capable of good reasons,good reasons are every now and then given:in which way,so far as it goes,one-half of the Censor's task is well accomplished.Nor is the dark side of the picture left absolutely untouched.Under the head of `Trial by jury',are some very just and interesting remarks on the yet-remaining imperfections of that mode of trial:(28)and under that of `Assurances by matter of Record',on the lying and extortious jargon of Recoveries.(29)So little,however,are these particular remarks of a piece with the general disposition,that shews itself so strongly throughout the work,indeed so plainly adverse to the general maxims that we have seen,that I can scarce bring myself to attribute them to our Author.Not only disorder is announced by them,but remedies,well-imagined remedies,are pointed out.One would think some Angel had been sowing wheat among our Author's tares.(30)With regard to this Essay itself,I have not much to say.The insufficiencies of our Author.The business of it is therefore rather to overthrow than to set up;which latter task can seldom be performed to any great advantage where the former is the principal one.
To guard against the danger of misrepresentation,and to make sure of doing our Author no injustice,his own words are given all along:and,as scarce any sentence is left unnoticed,the whole comment wears the form of what is called a perpetual one.With regard to a discourse that is simply institutional,and in which the writer builds upon a plan of his own,a great part of the satisfaction it can be made to afford depends upon the order and connection that are established between the several parts of it.In a comment upon the work of another,no such connection,or at least no such order,can be established commodiously,if at all.The order of the comment is prescribed by the order,perhaps the disorder,of the text.
The chief employment of this Essay,as we have said,has necessarily been to overthrow.In the little,therefore,which has been done by it in the way of setting up,my view has been not so much to think for the Reader,as to put him upon thinking for himself.This I flatter myself with having done on several interesting topics;and this is all that at present I propose.
Among the few positions of my own which I have found occasion to advance,some I observe which promise to be far from popular.These it is likely may give rise to very warm objections:objections which in themselves Ido not wonder at,and which in their motive I cannot but approve.The people are a set of masters whom it is not in a man's power in every instance fully to please,and at the same time faithfully to serve.He that is resolved to persevere without deviation in the line of truth and utility,must have learnt to prefer the still whisper of enduring approbation,to the short-lived bustle of tumultuous applause.
