date

Procedure 6 Aug 1804 Ch. Non
Procedure

6 Aug 1804

Ch. Non-homologation

Import uncertain

What in a distillery the wash is to the spirit, the words that are formed in such unhappy abundance in the books written on /[...?] to/ the subject of jurisprudential law are to the words which if they had but the seal /stamp/ of a legislator offered to /stamped upon/ them, would like a portion /mass/ of statutory law to the same effect, constitute a portion of law. /In the manufactory of jurisprudential law,/ Any /every/ man that pleases as to the wash, but the spirit that is extracted, each man is left to extract for himself - for his own use, and at his own peril, as above.

The words employed and consigned to writing by the compiler or deputator are of course determinate and assignable: but of these there i not one that has, or so much as pretends to have, the force of law.

In speaking of jurisprudential law the term law can never be used without impropriety and confusion, though (such is the tyranny of established language) it can never be discarded. This impropriety is in a certain /considerable/ degree peculiar to the English language. In Latin, lex is the term employed in speaking of statutory law: jus and not lex in speaking of jurisprudential law. So again in French: loi, answering to lex: droit to jus: in Italian, lege and diritto: in Spanish leige and derecho: in Germany gesetz and recht. In English for want of an appropriate term corresponding to lex, loi, diritto, derecho, recht, we are forced to apply the same term law to the descriptions /[...?]/ of unauthorised deputators, and to the work expressive of the will of the legislator: to the wash out of which spirit ought to be made, and to the spirit when made: to the contents of the [...?] field or of the quarry, and to the palace.

Note

Not but that the terms jus, droit, diritto, derecho, recht, are applicable to portions of statutory as well as to portions of jurisprudential law: the distinction is that they are applicable to both, whereas it is only to statutory law that the opposite /contrasted/ and corresponding works, lex, loi, lege, leige and [ ] are applicable.
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    Note

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