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legislator, that have some affinity with the subject, or that expressly relate to the same point. Thus, when the law of England declares murder to be felony without benefit of clergy, we must resort to the same law of England to learn what the benefit of clergy is: and when the common law censures simoniacal contracts, it affords great light to the subject to consider what the canon law has adjudged to be simony.

3. As to the subject-matter, words are always to be understood as having a regard thereto; for that is always supposed to be in the eye of the legislator, and all his expressions directed to that end. Thus, when a law of our Edward III. forbids all ecclesiastical persons to purchase provisions at Rome, it might seem to prohibit the buying of grain and other victual; but when we consider that the statute was made to [61] repress the usurpations of the papal see, and that the nominations to benefices by the pope were called provisions, we shall see that the restraint is intended to be laid upon such provisions only.

4. As to the effects and consequences, the rule is, that where words bear either none, or a very absurd signification, if literally understood, we must a little deviate from the received sense of them. Therefore the Bolognian law, mentioned by Puffendorf, which enacted," that whoever drew blood in "the streets should be punished with the utmost severity," was held after a long debate not to extend to the surgeon who opened the vein of a person that fell down in the street with a fit.

5. BUT, lastly, the most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of a law, when the words are dubious, is by considering the reason and spirit of it; or the cause which moved the legislator to enact it. For when this reason ceases, the law itself ought likewise to cease with it. An instance of this is given in a case put by Cicero, or whoever was the author of the treatise inscribed to Herenniusa.

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There was a law, that those who in a storm forsook the ship, should forfeit all property therein; and that the ship and lading should belong entirely to those who staid in it. In a dangerous tempest all the mariners forsook the ship, except only one sick passenger, who by reason of his disease was unable to get out and escape. By chance the ship came safe to port. The sick man kept possession, and claimed the benefit of the law. Now here all the learned agree, that the sick man is not within the reason of the law; for the reason of making it was, to give encouragement to such as should venture their lives to save the vessel: but this is a merit which he could never pretend to, who neither staid in the ship upon that account, nor contributed any thing to its preservation.

FROM this method of interpreting laws, by the reason of them, arises what we call equity; which is thus defined by Grotius", "the correction of that, wherein the law (by rea"son of it's universality) is deficient." For, since in laws all cases cannot be foreseen or expressed, it is necessary that [ 62 ] when the general decrees of the law come to be applied to particular cases, there should be somewhere a power vested of defining those circumstances which (had they been foreseen) the legislator himself would have expressed. And these are the cases which, according to Grotius, "lex non exacte "definit, sed arbitrio boni viri permittit."

EQUITY thus depending, essentially, upon the particular circumstances of each individual case, there can be no established rules and fixed precepts of equity laid down, without destroying its very essence, and reducing it to a positive law. And, on the other hand, the liberty of considering all cases in an equitable light must not be indulged too far, lest thereby we destroy all law, and leave the decision of every question entirely in the breast of the judge. And law, without equity, though hard and disagreeable, is much more desirable for the public good, than equity without law: which would make

1 de aequitate, § 3.

every judge a legislator, and introduce most infinite confusion; as there would then be almost as many different rules of action laid down in our courts, as there are differences of capacity and sentiment in the human mind. (8)

(8) See Vol. iii. ch. 27.

63

SECTION THE THIRD.

OF THE LAWS OF ENGLAND.

THE municipal law of England, or the rule of civil conduct prescribed to the inhabitants of this kingdom, may with sufficient propriety be divided into two kinds: the lex non scripta, the unwritten or common law; and the lex scripta, the written or statute law.

THE lex non scripta, or unwritten law, includes not only general customs, or the common law properly so called; but also the particular customs of certain parts of the kingdom; and likewise those particular laws, that are by custom observed only in certain courts and jurisdictions. (1)

WHEN I call those parts of our law leges non scriptae, I would not be understood as if all those laws were at present merely oral, or communicated from the former ages to the present solely by word of mouth. It is true, indeed, that, in the profound ignorance of letters which formerly overspread the whole western world, all laws were entirely traditional, for this plain reason, because the nations among which they prevailed had but little idea of writing. Thus the British as well as the Gallic Druids committed all their laws as well as learning to memory; and it is said of the primitive Saxons here, as well as their brethren on the continent, that leges sola memoria et usu retinebant b. But with us, at present, the

a Caes, de B. G. lib. 6. c. 13.

h

Spelm. Gl. 362.

(1) In the Greek and Roman law, there was this distinction of written and unwritten law, constat autem jus nostrum, quo utimur, aut scripto, aut sine scripto, ut apud Gracos, των νομων οἱ μεν ἐγγραφοι οἱ δὲ ἀγραφοι. Sine scripto jus venit quod usus approbavit; nam diuturni mores, consensu utentium comprobati, legem imitantur, Inst. 1. 2. 3. & 9.

monuments and evidences of our legal customs are contained in the records of the several courts of justice, in books of [64] reports and judicial decisions, and in the treatises of learned sages of the profession, preserved and handed down to us from the times of highest antiquity. However, I therefore style these parts of our law leges non scriptae, because their original institution and authority are not set down in writing, as acts of parliament are, but they receive their binding power, and the force of laws, by long and immemorial usage, and by their universal reception throughout the kingdom. In like manner as Aulus Gellius defines the jus non scriptum to be that which is "tacito et illiterato hominum consensu et moribus expressum."

OUR antient lawyers, and particularly Fortescue <, insist with abundance of warmth that these customs are as old as the primitive Britons, and continued down, through the several mutations of government and inhabitants, to the present time, unchanged and unadulterated. This may be the case as to some; but in general, as Mr. Selden in his notes observes, this assertion must be understood with many grains of allowance; and ought only to signify, as the truth seems to be, that there never was any formal exchange of one system of laws for another; though doubtless, by the intermixture of adventitious nations, the Romans, the Picts, the Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans, they must have insensibly introduced and incorporated many of their own customs with those that were before established: thereby in all probability improving the texture and wisdom of the whole by the accumulated wisdom of divers particular countries. Our laws, saith Lord Bacon o, are mixed as our language: and as our language is so much the richer, the laws are the more complete.

AND, indeed, our antiquaries and early historians do all positively assure us, that our body of laws is of this compounded nature. For they tell us, that in the time of Alfred the local customs of the several provinces of the kingdom were grown so various, that he found it expedient to compile his dome-book, or liber judicialis, for the general use of the whole

с

c. 17.

See his proposals for a digest.

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