[26] Lord Bacon, Essay xxiv. Of Innovations. [Back to text]
[27] The reader will perceive that I allude to Montesquieu, whom I never name without reverence, though I shall presume, with humility, to criticise his account of a government which he only saw at a distance. [Back to text]
[28] This principle is expressed by a writer of a very different character from these two great philosophers; a writer, "qu'on n'appellera plus philosophe, mais qu'on appellera le plus éloquent des sophistes," with great force, and, as his manner is, with some exaggeration.
Il n'y a point de principes abstraits dans la politique. C'est une science des calculs, des combinaisons, et des exceptions, selon les lieux, les tems, et les circonstances.—Lettre de Rousseau au Marquis de Mirabeau.
The second proposition is true; but the first is not a just inference from it. [Back to text]
[29] The casuistical subtleties are not perhaps greater than the subtleties of lawyers; but the latter are innocent, and even necessary.—Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 558. [Back to text]
[30] "Law," said Dr. Johnson, "is the science in which the greatest powers of understanding are applied to the greatest number of facts." Nobody, who is acquainted with the variety and multiplicity of the subjects of jurisprudence, and with the prodigious powers of discrimination employed upon them, can doubt the truth of this observation. [Back to text]
[31] Burke's Works, vol. iii. p. 134. [Back to text]
[32] On the intimate connexion of these two codes, let us hear the words of Lord Holt, whose name never can be pronounced without veneration, as long as wisdom and integrity are revered among men:—"Inasmuch as the laws of all nations are doubtless raised out of the ruins of the civil law, as all governments are sprung out of the ruins of the Roman empire, it must be owned that the principles of our law are borrowed from the civil law, therefore grounded upon the same reason in many things."—12 Mod. 482. [Back to text]