Part 30 (2/2)

But I will endeavour

'He, who is told that, ”to do justice is to conduce with all his power to the well being of the whole,” has a siible rule for his conduct

'He, on the contrary, who is told that, ”to do justice is to obey the law,” has to inquire, not what is justice! but, what is the la to know the laere it practicable!) would be not only to know the statutes at large by rote, but all the precedents, and all the legal discussions and litigations, to which the practitioners of law appeal! Innumerable volumes, filled with innumerable subtleties and incoherencies, and written in a barbarous and unintelligible jargon, must be studied! Memory is utterly inadequate to the task; and reason revolts, spurns at and turns fro

'A short statement of facts will, in in and essence, is absolutely unjust

'To make a law is to make a rule, by which a certain class of future events shall be judged

'Future events can only be partially and imperfectly foreseen

'Consequently, the law must be partial and imperfect

'Let us take the facts in another point of view--The law never varies

'The cases never agree

'The law is general

'The case is individual

'The penalty of the law is uniform

'The justice or injustice of the case is continually different

'To prejudge any case, that is, to give a decided opinion on it while any of the circumstances remain unknown, is unjust even to a proverb

Yet this is precisely what is done, by e doctrine, Mr Turl!'

'Disprove the facts, Mr Trevor They are indisputable; and on theism may indisputably be formed

'To make a law is publicly to countenance and promote injustice

'Publicly to countenance and promote injustice is a most odious and pernicious action

'Consequently, to make a law is a most odious and pernicious action

'How unlimited are the moral mischiefs that result! To make positive laws is to turn the mind from the inquiry into what is just, and compel it to inquire what is law!

'To make positive laws is to habituate and reconcile theinjustice with public approbation!

'To make positive laws is to deaden the mind to that constant and lively sense of what is just and unjust, to which itbut by obliging it to have recourse to rules founded in falsehood!

'Each case is law to itself: that is, each case ought to be decided by the justice, or the injustice arising out of the circumstances of that individual case; and by no other case or lahatever; for the reason I have already given, that there never were nor ever can be two cases that were not different from each other