law must of necessity always be enough for a separate profession, engrossing the labours of a life. One must be made a lawyer, and is never born a lawyer. As Selden said, unless the science be professionally studied, it will breed nothing but overweening conceits. Yet no man can fulfil the duties of any of the higher stations in society fitly, without a large and tolerably accurate acquaintance with the general principles and even many of the leading details of the law. It must always be rather in the correct application of those principles, than in the knowledge of the principles themselves, that the lawyer will differ from the layman, as the familiar manipulation of the tools is something distinct from an accurate knowledge of the results obtained by their use.

What is meant by a codification is nothing else than the methodical arrangement of the whole body of the law, whether statutory or non-statutory, which now lies scattered over many volumes, and has to be excavated piecemeal, with great labour and much risk of error, from the accumulated mass of undigested decisions and practices. Whether a code when completed should have the authority of a statute or not, is a subsidiary question; but that a code would render possible a more familiar acquaintance among the public with its details, needs no argument. All that would in a code or a digest be valuable to the public would be the summary it included. A code necessarily implies a methodical arrangement of matters, and considerable brevity in the enunciation of leading rules or principles. It is true that brevity 2 is a virtue not to be sacrificed

1 Barr. on Stat.

2 "It is commonly required that the language of the law should be particularly distinguished by brevity. Certainly brevity may be extremely effective, as is clear from the examples of the Roman decrees and edicts. But there is also a dry, inexpressive brevity adopted by him who does not understand the use of language as an instrument, and which remains wholly ineffective. Numerous examples of it are to be found in the laws and records of the middle ages. On the other hand, diffuseness in law authorities may be very exceptionable, nay, wholly intolerable, as in many of the constitutions of Justinian, and in most of the novels of the Theodosian code but there is also an intelligent and very effective diffuseness, and this is discernible in many parts of the Pandects."—Savigny, Voc. of Age (tr. by Hayward, 41).

BACON said that "certainty is so essential to law, that law cannot even be just without it. If the law give an uncertain sound,

to precision; but so far as it is compatible with precision, then brevity should characterise a code thus far, that where the same distinct meaning can be put in one sentence, it is a waste of time and trial of patience to expand it into two or three. The best method of arrangement is peculiarly for the consideration of experienced, methodical, and clear-sighted intellects, gifted with the faculty of clear expression. If the objection to a code be the difficulty of finding several to agree in any one statement or proposition, the mode of overcoming that difficulty was discovered by Theodosius when he commissioned his code. He directed that where several minds were engaged in the same work, and were in danger of a conflict of opinion, the opinion of Papinian should be that which should prevail.1 This objection, therefore, may be obviated without difficulty by finding a Papinian.

Usual objections to codification.-It has been urged that codification would effect no alteration of the law, and would in truth amount to nothing more than collecting it into more convenient parcels, and providing the lawyer with better and sharper tools to work with. But if the code would, over and above the latter advantage, provide the general public with a simpler and easier access to its contents, this is so inestimable a boon, and one which every government should favour, that the particular advantage to the profession of the law may be altogether disregarded, or, at least, it need not intercept the benefits enuring to the rest of the community. If the sole object of codification were to benefit the legal profession, and not the general public, then it might with justice be argued, that the medical and the clerical professions might equally claim at the hands of the state a simpler and easier way of mastering their respective subjects, which are also of the greatest utility. But if the crowning advantage of a code who shall prepare to obey? It ought therefore to warn before it strikes. It is well said also by Aristotle, that that is the best law which leaves least to the discretion of the judge, and this comes from the certainty of it.”—Bac. De Aug. b. viii.; Arist. Rhet. i. 1.

OLIVER CROMWELL being bent on a reform of the law, and having set his parliament to make the laws more plain and short, complained that they had taken many months to settle the meaning of one word, namely, "incumbrance."-3 Carlyle, Crom. 274, 357. 1 Theod. Code, b. i. tit. 4.

be, as it is intended by its most judicious advocates to be, for the better diffusing of a knowledge of law among the intelligent part of the community, and thereby educating the public mind in such a manner as to avoid illegal acts, and so lessen the public expense and the costly apparatus required to detect and punish them, then this is so clearly a matter of imperial concern, that no government can successfully excuse its neglect or delay. Any immediate expense to the nation caused by labours so arduous, would be, sooner or later, more than compensated by the greater respect and interest displayed towards the laws, and less outlay to the national exchequer in enforcing their observance.

Complaints of intelligent citizens as to want of a code.—On this subject it is best to listen to the comments of the cloud of witnesses who represent the cultivated intelligence of the country, and of its most active and useful citizens, rather than to listen to the views and opinions of lawyers, who cannot be expected to see themselves and the work they are employed upon as others see them. It is well to hearken to the voice of amazement and scorn that is heard, whenever the confused and undigested mass of English law lies open to popular scrutiny. Filangieri, in 1780, thus apostrophised England on the subject of its laws and their crudity:-" After having instructed, enlightened, and astonished Europe with your inventions, your arts, your productions, and your wonderful discoveries, is it possible your legislation should be so obscure? Formed out of many barbarous absurdities of your ancestors, of the extravagance of the Gothic feudal system, in direct opposition to the principles of your adorable liberty of usages and customs whose origin is not even known of new laws, often contradicting old ones: of the decisions of your courts with the effect of laws of useful establishments united with destructive ones of evils and their remedies: of numerous sacrifices for your independence, and as many instruments of despotism: it appears to the eyes of the philosopher an immense mass of confusion, out of which it may be difficult to extract a remedy that would remove the defects of your constitution and preserve your liberty." 1 Filang, La Sci. d. Legisl. c. 10.

"1

HALLAM-"The vast extent and multiplicity of our laws have

Yet the question of a code has been so mixed up with its supposed effect on the legal profession1 that the benefit to the public, for whose sole use it should be intended, is often altogether lost sight of. In such a project the

become a practical evil, which, between the timidity of the legislature on the one hand, and the selfish views of practitioners on the other hand, is likely to reach in no long period an intolerable excess. We accumulate statute upon statute and precedent upon precedent, till no industry can acquire, nor any intellect digest, the mass of learning that grows upon the panting student, and our jurisprudence seems not unlikely to be simplified in the worst and least honourable manner, a tacit agreement of ignorance among its professors. It would be a disgrace to the nineteenth century if England could not find her Tribonian."-2 Hallam, Mid. Ag. 342.

In 1793 ROBERT HALL wrote: "The laws in their present state are so piled into volumes encumbered with precedents and perplexed with intricacies, that they are often rather a snare than a guide, and are a fruitful source of the injustice they are intended to prevent. The expense is as formidable as the penalty; nor is it to any purpose to say, they are the same to the poor as to the rich, while by their delay, expense, and perplexity, they are placed on an eminence which opulence only can ascend."-Apol. Freed. of Press, 102.

MACAULAY- "That we have been far too slow to improve our laws must be admitted. But though in other countries there may have occasionally been more rapid progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in which there had been so little retrogression."-3 Mac. Hist. 84.

FILANGIERI said the multiplicity of laws which oppress the courts of Europe and render the study of its jurisprudence as laborious as that of the Chinese language, which it takes twenty years to learn, is due to the practice of ignoring all general principles, and applying to each case of individual hardship as it arises a new law to avert such hardship.-Filang. Sci. of Legisl. c. 8.

Hence

J. S. MILL "The law of England has come to be like the costume of a full-grown man, who had never put off the clothes made for him when he first went to school. Band after band had burst, and as the rent widened, then, without removing anything except what might drop off of itself, the hole was darned, or patches of fresh law were brought from the nearest shop and stuck on. all ages of English history have given one another rendezvous in English law; their several products may be seen altogether, not interfused, but heaped one upon another, as many different ages of the earth may be read in some perpendicular section of its surface the deposits of each successive period, not substituted, but superimposed on those of the preceding."

1 The Chancellor D'Aguesseau is said to have on reflection stopped short in his career of law reform, in consideration of the numbers of the legal profession who would thereby be ruined.-1 Butl. Rem. 58.

profession of the law ought never for a moment to be regarded; for the law was made for the public, and not the public for the law. It cannot be expected that any code will, to a very great or material extent, dispense with the profession of the law, or render litigation unnecessary. No code can be so copious and minute as to satisfy and inform any mind, though gifted with the rarest intuition; nothing less than years of professional practice can ever render a lawyer master of his profession, with or without a code. Nor will a code dispense with the judiciary law, because this is merely the mode of reasoning on the principles supplied by the code, and adapting these to the cases that arise. Nor can a code be expected sensibly to diminish litigation, at least in civil cases, for this most commonly originates in temper, pride, revenge, malevolence, and the baser passions; and, while human nature remains as it is, suits and penalties can never cease from the land. The public seems to care nothing, whether the name of what it requires is to be a code or a digest, and yet this question has been seriously discussed as a preliminary difficulty. Such a difficulty can only be founded on the concealed hypothesis, that whatever is to be done is to be done for the benefit of lawyers alone. It has been forgot that the public would be satisfied with any summary well arranged, set forth in language of moderate perspicuity, issued under the authority of the state, which can always be relied upon to command at pleasure any amount of clear thought and perspicuous language on any subject capable of being addressed by one intelligent being to another. So long as this summary can be relied upon to help the public with its moderate details, it need not be considered what credit, if any, the legal profession need give to it. If it is right, it will soon establish its authority even with lawyers: if wrong, the same hand that made it wrong will soon make it right.

Why it is the duty of governments to codify laws.—The government of every nation accepts the duty and the burden of providing courts to accommodate litigants, and of judges to decide between them. The more obscure and inaccessible the law is made to those whose interest, duty, or desire it is to know as much of it as is compatible with other employments, the more judges and courts and