The same want of discrimination in early English law Action against witness for not attending Summoning witness in Parliament. Witnesses before inferior courts and statutory judicial officers. Witnesses summoned by justices of the peace Justices enforcing attendance of witnesses in indictable offences Justices enforcing attendance of witnesses at petty sessions INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. DISCUSSION OF THE DEFINITION AND DIVISION OF THE LAW. Law in general. Distinction between laws of nature and municipal law.—All writers upon municipal law, who treat the subject methodically, find it necessary in the outset to discriminate between the two leading significations of the word "law" which pervade the languages of all civilised nations. The laws of nature or of natural phenomena are those abstract rules of cause and effect, which the Great Architect has impressed on the external world and its elemental changes. These laws are fixed and immutable, though generally hidden from superficial inquirers. They can only be arrived at by some power of reflection, and in most cases only after a wide induction from careful observations ranging throughout time and space. The innate curiosity of man, springing from the restless desire to better his condition, prompts him to discover these laws; and by their aid he unlocks the secrets of nature, and gratifies his sense of power. By his capacity to reflect, to distinguish, to analyse, and explain, he differs from the lower animals; and brings his knowledge, gathered from many sources, to bear upon each subject, until his mastery over material things is established. And the laws of the mental and moral world are searched for by methods akin to those used for the material world, though by subtler processes and among more volatile elements. When the laws of nature have been thus discovered, the chief aim of 74 VOL. I. B |