expense to the country, and the more vexation and loss and expense to the litigants are the immediate consequence. The two things are conspicuous each by itself, and it needs small intelligence to connect them. To the professional lawyer it must be a matter of indifference whether the materials he deals with are confused and intricate or methodical and easily understood, for the expense of elucidating and disentangling each complication falls on the client, be it much or little. If a lifetime must be spent in acquiring and retaining a good workmanlike knowledge, it is in the nature of things that the increased cost of the production must in some way be recouped by those who make use of so expensive a material. Though the public cannot reasonably expect to be provided with all the costly tools which lawyers must always use, there is a minimum which is essential to its own guidance and protection, and as to the limits and extent of which it is the best judge. If adults, who have capacity to comprehend how they are situated, are content to remain so much in the dark, guessing their way and taking the chance of its turning out the wrong way-if they cannot at present gratify a moderate demand lest the information supplied should not be so perfect and exhaustive as is conceivable for the expert, it is a matter for the public to settle for itself. The remedy lies altogether outside of the narrow precincts of a profession.1 It is perfectly conceivable, that a little of such knowledge is a useful thing, and can never be a dangerous, injurious, or immoral thing. The alphabet and the elements the primer and the outlines may be the common basis of every business, and must always be better than nothing at all; and are not the less useful and necessary, because somebody else can, by giving more time and care, carry their uses much further.

Not only are the subjects of the realm entitled to have some care taken, that they should have reasonable means of knowing the law, but there are thousands of justices of the peace constantly at work applying that law and enforcing it; and as to them, some consideration is preeminently due. They are not only left, like the rest of the

1 HOBBES maintained, with much reason, that it was the duty of a government to make the laws as accessible to the people as the Bible was.

community, to find out the law as best they may, but often to pay the costs of mistakes which they make from time. to time, and most of which arise from the confused state in which the law is found. And as they act gratuitously, and discharge important duties, which save the nation a great expenditure, it might be expected that some more precise and useful guide than copies of isolated acts of parliament would be presented to them.1

If laws are so obscure and intricate, that they cannot be stated in intelligible language, the time has come when they should cease to be laws. Lord Mansfield said that the property and daily negotiations of merchants ought not to depend on subtleties and niceties, but on rules easily learned and easily retained. But why this simplicity and clearness should be reserved for merchants alone, while the rest of the public are left to grope their way in the dark, it would baffle the wisest judge to explain. Erskine, with more comprehensive wisdom, said, that every man in civilised society has a right to hold his life, liberty, property, and reputation under plain laws that can be well understood. And even Blackstone said, that law, being intended for universal reception, ought to be a plain rule of action, and not a science of the greatest intricacy.3

Codification has always been treated as public benefit.The codification or digesting of the law of a community has always been marked in history as an epoch of progress, and even those kings and governors, who formed wise resolutions and held good intentions on the subject, have attracted the approving notice of mankind.*

1 A statute of Henry VIII. ordered the justices of the peace diligently together among themselves to peruse, examine, study, and know the effect and true intent of the laws and ordinances as to vagabonds, embraceries, bowstaves, archerie, unlawful games, forestallers, victuallers, and to divide themselves into two or more, and hold sessions and inquire into all offences, &c.—33 Hen. VIII. c. 10. It is true the statute said the justices would be paid for their services, but all payment to justices was abolished, even in name, in 1854.-18 & 19 Vic. 126, § 21. The justices of those days were expected to act the part of bailiffs, and search out and seize malefactors. 2 Ersk. Speeches. 3 4 Bl. Com. 417.

4 Solon took care that his laws should be written on revolving tablets, and hung up in the Prytaneum for all the public to read.Diog. Laert. Solon, Plut. Solon. The deep reverence of the Romans for law was maintained by their system of education, which obliged

Confused state of English law requiring code.-Yet the confused and chaotic state of the laws of England has

the children to repeat by rote the code of the decemvirs.-Cic. De Leg. ii. 4, 23. And Minos was praised by Plato for making it part of his system that the children should be taught the laws.-Plato, Leg. b. i. The passing of the Terentian law, when a universal demand sprung up among the Romans for a fixed body of laws, such that people could know what they were bound to do, and so as to limit the capricious decisions of the consuls, almost led to a civil war; and at last a body of deputies or commissioners were sent forth in galleys, magnificently adorned, to search for suitable laws in Athens, the wisest country then accessible to them, and the laws of the Twelve Tables were thus obtained, and written on brass tablets, and fixed in the forum.-Livy, b. iii.; Dion. Hal. According to Suetonius, Cæsar, disgusted with the uncertainty of legal opinions, had aimed at reducing the diffuse bulk of the law into a few volumes. Suet. Jul. Cæsar.

LIVY and TACITUS both complain of the infinite multiplicity of laws.-Livy, b. iii. ch. 34.; Tac. Ann. b. iii. c. 25.

TERTULLIAN praises the firmness of Severus for thinning the gloomy and intricate forest of laws without regard to their age or authority. Tertul. Apol. c. iv. The Twelve Tables, at the end of five centuries, had swelled into 3000 brass plates, deposited in the Capitol.-Suet. Vesp. But the Tables were deemed in their day a wise and prudent selection of the best things in other existing codes.Tac. Ann. b. iii. c. 27. In the fourth century the law books had accumulated so as to be many camel-loads.-Eunap. in Vet. Edes. 72. In ten centuries, GIBBON observes, "the infinite variety of Roman laws and legal opinions had filled many thousand volumes, which no fortune could purchase and no capacity could digest. The perpetual edict became buried under the weight of commentators."Gibbon, Rom. Emp. ch. xliv.

FERDINAND OF CASTILE, in the thirteenth century, ordered a collection of laws, which was completed by his son, and called Las Partidas. A Chinese Emperor, about 1394, gained great renown by ordering the ancient and modern laws to be reduced into one body of 300 volumes, though it took a century to complete that collection.—Du Halde, 3 Univ. Mod. Hist. 725. The ancient customs of France and of Portugal were digested and collected so as to be memorable improvements.-1 Butler, Rem. 48; 8 Univ. Mod. Hist. 432. Historians relate how Denmark enjoyed a pre-eminent felicity in having its laws contained in one small volume so plain and intelligible that all could be understood almost without a comment, and lawyers were scarcely needed, and lawsuits were determined within a year and a month.-11 Univ. Mod. Hist. 659.

It was to satisfy the popular desire to know the law, that the government by degrees discovered that if the statutes were expressed in good native language rather than in bad Latin, or other foreign tongue, the result would be no prejudice, but much advantage to the people. The Germans dismissed the Latin language from statutes in

long been the ridicule of foreigners, the lamentation of our own intelligent legislators and citizens, a standing confession of weakness to many a government, which has constantly postponed to a more convenient season addressing itself to what Bacon said even in his time would be a heroic work-the making of a digest of the law.1 It is true that the apathy on this subject has never yet been traced to any poverty in the material, and it has been shared by the classes whom a code would most sensibly benefit, and who seem only dimly conscious of a loss from never having enjoyed the possession. A petty state, having little to boast of, may well keep its laws, or what are called laws, hidden in obscurity. But a great country loses half its dignity and strength, when it cannot in an orderly and methodical way give some account to all whom it may concern of the main reasons, why its own social progress and the contentment of its citizens have been so well assured.

1235.-3 Camerar. Hist. Med. b. iv. ch. 5. The Castilians, a few years later, and the French in the time of Francis I., about 1539.Mariana, b. xiv. ch. 7; Mezerac, Hist. b. iii. p. 446. A statute of Edward III. ordered the pleadings to be in English, so that parties might know what was said for and against them.-36 Ed. III. Our statutes were first printed in the reign of Richard III.

JAMES I., in a speech, recommended that the books of common law be written in the mother tongue, so that the people might not be kept in ignorance (1609).—Wilson's Life of Jas. Ì. 47 ; see Barr. Stat.

291.

WHITELOCKE, after the Restoration, complained that in his day, owing to the multiplicity of statutes, few students or sages could find perspicuity or clearness.-1 Whitelocke, Com. 409. And even GLANVILLE, so far back as 1188, wrote, in his "Treatise on the Laws of England," that to reduce in every instance the laws and constitution of this realm into writing would, in his time, be absolutely impossible, as well on account of the ignorance of writers as of the confused multiplicity of enactments.

A code does not dispense with the legal profession. When Frederick the Great published his code, he was so convinced of its being clear to the lowest capacity, that he prohibited professors and others, under severe penalties, from making commentaries, either on the whole law or on any part of it, and they were not allowed even to point out to youths whom they instructed the amplifications, limitations, or exceptions. And even advocates and judges were to cite in their arguments and judgments the pure text of the law and nothing else, the authority and dicta of doctors being viewed as an abomination.Pref. to Fred. Code. 1 De Augm. b. viii.

Definitions of some current phrases and words used in the law.-Now that the leading definitions, distinctions, and phrases current in legal literature have been noticed, it remains to give some definition of the technical meaning of one or two words, which constantly occur in every page of the law. Such are the words-right, duty, obligation, equity, wrong, tort, crime, treason, felony, misdemeanor. These are, so to speak, the tools and common implements used in manipulating the great variety of matters in which the law concerns itself.

Definition of "right," "duty," "obligation."-The words "right" and "wrong," when used as terms of legal art, have nothing in common with the same words as used by moralists and divines. With the latter these words indicate distinctions which, according to some, are innaté, eternal, and indelible; and according to others are gradually formed by experience, and indicate those things that are found to be conducive to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the reverse; and so are objects of pursuit or aversion. A "right," in the language of the municipal law, means nothing else than a claim or demand which one individual can enforce against another, that is to say, so far as it is practicable for the law to enforce anything. As already explained, the law can enforce some specific thing only by operating on the reason of the individual, and inducing him voluntarily to do that one thing, lest some other worse thing befall him. In general it may be said that the word "right" is the correlative and counterpart of the words "duty" and "obligation." Whenever В is under a legal duty or obligation, this implies that some other person having a right, namely A, is legally entitled to punish or redress in some way the violation of that duty or obligation; but whether A, the injured party, or the crown, or any other prosecutor acting in the name of the crown, can vindicate the right, depends on the nature of the duty or obligation which has been violated, and the mode and degree of the injury.

These explanations will suffice for the three words right," "duty," and "obligation."

Definition of word "equity."-Before passing from the word right" it may also here be noticed that the word "equity," until a recent period, was used in an analogous