Had the doctrine been but false,the task of exposing it would have been comparatively an easy one:but it was what is worse,unmeaning,and thence it came to require all these pains which I have been here bestowing on it:to what profit let the reader judge.
`Well then',(cries an objector)'the task you have set yourself is at an end;and the subject of it after all,according to your own representation,teaches nothing;according to your own shewing it is not worth attending to.Why then bestow on it so much attention?'
In this viewTo do something to instruct,but more to undeceive,the timid and admiring studentto excite him to place more confidence in his own strength,and less in the infallibility of great names:to help him to emancipate his judgment from the shackles of authority:to let him see that the not understanding a discourse may as well be the writer's fault as the reader's:to teach him to distinguish between shewy language and sound sense:to warn him not to pay himself with words:to shew him that what may tickle the ear,or dazzle the imagination,will not always inform the judgment:to shew him what it is our Author can do,and has done:and what it is he has not done,and cannot do:to dispose him rather to fast on ignorance than feed himself with error:to let him see that with regard to an expositor of the law,our Author is not he that should come,but that we may be still looking for another.`Who then',says my objector,`shall be that other?Yourself?No verily.My mission is at an end,when I have prepared the way before him.
FINIS
1.I add here the word `institutions',for the sake of including rules of Common Law,as well as portions of Statute Law.
2.Membra Condividnitul SAUND.Log.L.I.c.
46.
3.In practice,'the question of Law has commonly been spoken of as opposed to that of fact but this distinction is an accidental one.That a Law commanding or prohibiting such a son of action,has been established,is as much a fact,as that an individual action of that sort has been committed.The establishment of a Law may be spoken of as a fact,at least for the purpose of distinguishing from any consideration that may be offered as a reason for such Law.
4.`Arrogance ';our Author calls it the utmost arrogance,[IV Comm.p.50.]`to censure what has,at least,a better chance to be tight,than the singular notions of any particular man':meaning thereby certain ecclesiastical institutions.Vibrating,as it should seem,between passion and discretion,he has thought it necessary,indeed,to insert in the sentence that,which being inserted,turns it into nothing:
After the word `censure',`with contempt'he adds,`and rudeness':as if there needed a professor to inform us,that to treat any thing with contempt and rudeness is arrogance.`Indecency',he had already called it,`to set up private judgment in opposition to public':and this without restriction,qualification,or reserve.This was in the first transport of a holy zeal,before discretion had come in to his assistance.This passage the Doctors Priestly [See Remarks,&c.]and Fumeaux,[See Letters to Mr Justice Blackstone,1771.Second Edition.]who,in quality of Dissenting Ministers,and champions of dissenting opinions,saw themselves particularly attacked in it,have not suffered to pass unnoticed;any more than has the celebrated Author of the `Remarks on the Acts of the 13th Parliament',[In the Preface.]
who found it adverse to his enterprize,for the same reason that it is hostile to every other liberal plan of political discussion.
My edition of the Commentaries happens to be the first:since the above paragraph was written I have been directed to a later.In this later edition the passage about `indecency'is,like the other about `arrogance',explained away into nothing.What we are now told is,that `to set up private judgment in (virulent and factious)opposition to public authority'(he might have addedor to private either)`is indecency'.(See the 5th edit.
8vo.p.50,as in the 1st.)This we owe,I think,to Dr Furneaux.The Doctors Furneaux and Priestly,under whose well-applied correction our Author has smarted so severely,have a good deal to answer for:They have been the means of his adding a good deal of this kind of rhetorical lumber to the plentiful stock there was of it before.One passage,indeed,a passage deep-tinctured with religious gall,they have been the means of clearing away entirely;[See Furneaux,Letter VII.]and in thirst least,they have done good service.They have made him sophisticate:they have made him even expunge:but all the Doctors in the world,I doubt,would not bring him to confession.See his answer to Dr Priestly.
5.There is only one way in which censure,cast upon the Laws,has a greater tendency to do harm than good;and that is when it sets itself to contest their validity:I mean,when abandoning the question of expediency,it sets itself to contest the tight.But this is an attack to which old-established Laws are not so liable.As this is the last though but too common resource of passion and ill-humour;and what men scarce think of betaking themselves to,unless irritated by personal competitions,it is that to which recent Laws are most exposed.I speak of what are called written Laws:for as to unwritten institutions,as there is no such thing as any certain symbol by which their authority is attested,their validity,how deeply rooted soever,is what we see challenged without remorse.Aradical weakness,interwoven into the very constitution of unwritten Law.
