may often be vefted quite contrary to these his enigmatical intentions, because perhaps he has omitted one or two formal words, which are necessary to ascertain the sense with indif putable legal precifion, or has executed his will in the prefence of fewer witnesses than the law requires.

BUT to proceed from private concerns to those of a more public confideration. All gentlemen of fortune are, in confequence of their property, liable to be called upon to establish the rights, to estimate the injuries, to weigh the accufations, and sometimes to difpofe of the lives of their fellow-fubjects, by ferving upon juries. In this fituation they have frequently a right to decide, and that upon their oaths, questions of nice importance, in the solution of which some legal skill is requifite; especially where the law and the fact, as it often happens, are intimately blended together. And the general incapacity, even of our best juries, to do this with any tolerable propriety, has greatly debased their authority; and has unavoidably thrown more power into the hands of the judges, to direct, control, and even reverse their verdicts, than perhaps the conftitution intended.

BUT it is not as a juror only that the English gentleman is called upon to determine questions of right, and distribute justice to his fellow-fubjects: it is principally with this order of men that the commiffion of the peace is filled. And here a very ample field is opened for a gentleman to exert his talents, by maintaining good order in his neighbourhood; by punishing the diffolute and idle; by protecting the peaceable and industrious; and, above all, by healing petty differences and preventing vexatious profecutions. But, in order to attain these desirable ends, it is neceffary that the magistrate should understand his business; and have not only the will, but the power alfo, (under which must be included the knowlege) of administering legal and effectual justice. Elfe, when he has mistaken his authority, through paffion, through ignorance, or abfurdity, he will be the object of contempt

contempt from his inferiors, and of cenfure from thofe to whom he is accountable for his conduct.

YET farther; moft gentlemen of confiderable property, at fome period or other in their lives, are ambitious of reprefenting their country in parliament: and those, who are ambitious of receiving fo high a truft, would alfo do well to remember it's nature and importance. They are not thus honourably distinguished from the rest of their fellow-fubjects, merely that they may privilege their persons, their estates, or their domeftics; that they may lift under party banners; may grant or with-hold supplies; may vote with or vote against a popular or unpopular administration; but upon confiderations far more interesting and important. They are the guardians of the English conftitution; the makers, repealers, and interpreters of the English laws; delegated to watch, to check, and to avert every dangerous innovation, to propofe, to adopt, and to cherish any folid and well-weighed improvement; bound by every tie of nature, of honour, and of religion, to transmit that constitution and those laws to their posterity, amended if poffible, at least without any derogation. And how unbecoming muft it appear in a member of the legislature to vote for a new law, who is utterly ignorant of the old! what kind of interpretation can he be enabled to give, who is a stranger to the text upon which he comments!

INDEED it is perfectly amazing, that there fhould be no other state of life, no other occupation, art, or science, in which fome method of inftruction is not looked upon as requifite, except only the fcience of legislation, the noblest and most difficult of any. Apprenticeships are held neceffary to almoft every art, commercial or mechanical: a long course of reading and study must form the divine, the physician, and the practical profeffors of the laws: but every man of fuperior fortune thinks himself born a legiflator. Yet Tully was of a different opinion; "it is ne

❝ceffary,

"ceffary, fays he, for a fenator to be thoroughly acquainted "with the conftitution; and this, he declares, is a knowlege "of the most extenfive nature; a matter of fcience, of diligence, of reflexion; without which no fenator can poffibly "be fit for his office."

THE mifchiefs that have arifen to the public from inconfiderate alterations in our laws, are too obvious to be called in question; and how far they have been owing to the defective education of our fenators, is a point well worthy the public attention. The common law of England has fared like other venerable edifices of antiquity, which rash and unexperienced workmen have ventured to new-dress and refine, with all the rage of modern improvement. Hence frequently it's fymmetry has been destroyed, it's proportions distorted, and it's majestic fimplicity exchanged for fpecious embellishments and fantastic novelties. For, to say the truth, almost all the perplexed questions, almost all the niceties, intricacies, and delays, (which have sometimes difgraced the English, as well as other courts of juftice) owe their original not to the common law itself, but to innovations that have been made in it by acts of parliament; "overladen (as fir Ed"ward Coke expreffes it) with provifoes and additions, and

many times ona fudden penned or corrected by men of none "or very little judgment in law." This great and well-experienced judge declares, that in all his time he never knew two queftions made upon rights merely depending upon the common law; and warmly laments the confufion introduced. by ill-judging and unlearned legiflators. "But if," he fubjoins, "acts of parliament were after the old fashion pen"ned, by fuch only as perfectly knew what the common law "was before the making of any act of parliament concerning "that matter, as alfo how far forth former ftatutes had pro"vided remedy for former mifchiefs, and defects discovered £6 by experience; then should very few questions in law arise,

De Legg. 3. 18. Eft fenatori neceffarium niffe rempublicam ; idque late patet:-genus boc omne fcientiae, diligentiae,

memoriae eft ; fine que paratus effe fenator nullo pacto poteft.

f 2 Rep. pref.

" and

"and the learned should not fo often and so much perplex "their heads to make atonement and peace, by construction "of law, between infenfible and difagreeing words, fenten" ces, and provifoes, as they now do." And if this inconvenience was fo heavily felt in the reign of queen Elizabeth, you may judge how the evil is increased in later times, when the ftatute book is fwelled to ten times a larger bulk: unless it should be found, that the penners of our modern ftatutes have proportionably better informed themselves in the knowlege of the common law.

WHAT is faid of our gentlemen in general, and the propriety of their application to the ftudy of the laws of their country, will hold equally ftrong or still stronger with regard to the nobility of this realm, except only in the article of ferving upon juries. But, inftead of this, they have feveral peculiar provinces of far greater confequence and concern; being not only by birth hereditary counfellors of the crown, and judges upon their honour of the lives of their brotherpeers, but also arbiters of the property of all their fellow-fubjects, and that in the last resort. In this their judicial capacity | they are bound to decide the nicest and most critical points of the law: to examine and correct fuch errors as have escaped the most experienced fages of the profession, the lord keeper and the judges of the courts at Westminster. Their sentence is final, decifive, irrevocable: no appeal, no correction, not even a review, can be had: and to their determination, whatever it be, the inferior courts of juftice must conform; otherwise the rule of property would no longer be uniform and fteady.

SHOULD a judge in the most subordinate jurisdiction be deficient in the knowlege of the law, it would reflect infinite contempt upon himself, and disgrace upon those who employ him. And yet the confequence of his ignorance is comparatively very trifling and small: his judgment may be examined, and his errors rectified, by other courts. But how much more ferious and affecting is the cafe of a fuperior judge,

if without any skill in the laws he will boldly venture to decide a queftion, upon which the welfare and fubfiftence of whole families may depend! where the chance of his judging right, or wrong, is barely equal; and where, if he chances to judge wrong, he does an injury of the most alarming nature, an injury without poffibility of redrefs!

YET, vaft as this trust is, it can no where be fo properly reposed, as in the noble hands where our excellent constitution has placed it: and therefore placed it, because, from the independence of their fortune and the dignity of their station, they are prefumed to employ that leisure which is the confequence of both, in attaining a more extensive knowlege of the laws than perfons of inferior rank: and because the founders of our polity relied upon that delicacy of fentiment, fo peculiar to noble birth; which, as on the one hand it will prevent either interest or affection from interfering in questions of right, fo on the other it will bind a peer in honour, an obligation which the law esteems equal to another's oath, to be master of those points upon which it is his birthright to decide,

THE Roman pandects will furnish us with a piece of history not unapplicable to our prefent purpose. Servius Sulpicius, a gentleman of the patrician order, and a celebrated orator, had occafion to take the opinion of Quintus Mutius Scaevola, the then oracle of the Roman law; but, for want of fome knowlege in that science, could not so much as understand even the technical terms, which his friend was obliged to make ufe of. Upon which Mutius Scaevola could not forbear to upbraid him with this memorable reproof, "that it was a shame for a patrician, a nobleman, and an "orator of causes, to be ignorant of that law in which he 66 was fo peculiarly concerned." This reproach made fo deep an impreffion on Sulpicius, that he immediately applied himself to the study of the law; wherein he arrived to that

Ff. 1. 2. 2. §. 43. Turpe cffe patricio, et nobili, et caufas oranti, jus in quo verfaretur ignorare.