28 April 1808

§.8.

I. Reasons for the Work

§.8. No good pleading sans homologation

§.8. No system of pleading either compleat, or, to the extent of it, well adapted to the ends of justice, can be constructed, unless its necessary basis, viz. the correspondent portion of substantive law, be in the state of statutory, in contradistinction to unwritten (say rather jurisprudential) law.

1. By §.6. art. 1. the system of pleadings can not be subservient to its sole professed and sole proper purpose, any further than in its conformity to the correspondent portion of substantive law, the rule of action to which it professes to give execution and effect, is entire. But it is only by the hand of the legislator, that any such conformity can be produced. To produce it in any manner requires that the operator should at least have at his disposal the tenor of the instruments of which the system is composed. To produce it in the most convenient and perfect way requires that the operator be master not only of these instruments but of the portions of substantive law into which they are respectively to be made to fit: it requires that they should be worked up together: and not only that the instruments should be made to fit into the correspondent portion of substantive law, but that each portion of substantive law should be constructed in such a manner, put into such a form, as may fit it in the best manner to the purpose of housing those instruments moulded in it.