er, and hardliest
reduced to axiom."[28]

IV. I shall next endeavour to lay open the general principles of civil
and criminal laws. On this subject I may with some confidence hope that
I shall be enabled to philosophise with better materials by my
acquaintance with the law of my own country, which it is the business of
my life to practise, and of which the study has by habit become my
favourite pursuit.

The first principles of jurisprudence are simple maxims of reason, of
which the observance is immediately discovered by experience to be
essential to the security of men's rights, and which pervade the laws of
all countries. An account of the gradual application of these original
principles, first, to more simple, and afterwards to more complicated
cases, forms both the history and the theory of law. Such an historical
account of the progress of men, in reducing justice to an applicable and
practical system, will enable us to trace that chain, in which so many
breaks and interruptions are perceived by superficial observers, but
which in truth inseparably, though with many dark and hidden windings,
links together the security of life and property with the most minute
and apparently frivolous formalities of legal proceeding. We shall
perceive that no human foresight is sufficient to establish such a
system at once, and that, if it were so established, the occurrence of
unforeseen cases would shortly altogether change it; that there is but
one way of forming a civil code, either consistent with common sense, or
that has ever been practised in any country, namely, that of gradually
building up the law in proportion as the facts arise which it is to
regulate. We shall learn to appreciate the merit of vulgar objections
against the subtlety and complexity of laws. We shall estimate the good
sense and the gratitude of those who reproach lawyers for employing all
the powers of their mind to discover subtle distinctions for the
prevention of injustice;[29] and we shall at once perceive that laws
ought to be neither more _simple_ nor more _complex_ than the state of
society which they are to govern, but that they ought exactly to
correspond to it. Of the two faults, however, the excess of simplicity
would certainly be the greatest; for laws, more complex than are
necessary, would only produce embarrassment; whereas laws more simple
than the affairs which they regulate would occasion a defect of justice.
More understanding[30]