LAWS.
SECTION I.
It is difficult to point out a single nation living under a system of good laws. This is not attributable merely to the circumstance that laws are the productions of men, for men have produced works of great utility and excellence; and those who invented and brought to perfection the various arts of life were capable of devising a respectable code of jurisprudence. But laws have proceeded, in almost every state, from the interest of the legislator, from the urgency of the moment, from ignorance, and from superstition, and have accordingly been made at random, and irregularly, just in the same manner in which cities have been built. Take a view of Paris, and observe the contrast between that quarter of it where the fish-market (Halles) is situated, the St. Pierre-aux-bœufs, the streets Brisemiche and Pet-au-diable and the beauty and splendor of the Louvre and the Tuileries. This is a correct image of our laws.
It was only after London had been reduced to ashes that it became at all fit to be inhabited. The streets, after that catastrophe, were widened and straightened. If you are desirous of having good laws, burn those which you have at present, and make fresh ones.
The Romans were without fixed laws for the space of three hundred years; they were obliged to go and request some from the Athenians, who gave them such bad ones that they were almost all of them soon abrogated. How could Athens itself be in possession of a judicious and complete system? That of Draco was necessarily abolished, and that of Solon soon expired.
Our customary or common law of Paris is interpreted differently by four-and-twenty commentaries, which decidedly proves, the same number of times, that it is ill conceived. It is in contradiction to a hundred and forty other usages, all having the force of law in the same nation, and all in contradiction to each other. There are therefore, in a single department in Europe, between the Alps and the Pyrenees, more than forty distinct small populations, who call themselves fellow-countrymen, but who are in reality as much strangers to one another as Tonquin is to Cochin China.
It is the same in all provinces of Spain. It is in Germany much worse. No one there knows what are the rights of the chief or of the members. The inhabitant of the banks of the Elbe is connected with the cultivator of Suabia only in speaking nearly the same language, which, it must be admitted, is rather an unpolished and coarse one.
The English nation has more uniformity; but having extricated itself from servitude and barbarism only by occasional efforts, by fits and convulsive starts, and having even in its state of freedom retained many laws formerly promulgated, either by the great tyrants who contended in rivalship for the throne, or the petty tyrants who seized upon the power and honors of the prelacy, it has formed altogether a body of laws of great vigor and efficacy, but which still exhibit many bruises and wounds, very clumsily patched and plastered.
The intellect of Europe has made greater progress within the last hundred years than the whole world had done before since the days of Brahma, Fohi, Zoroaster, and the Thaut of Egypt. What then is the cause that legislation has made so little?