[lxxxiv. 58]

1821 Dec. 3

Codification Proposal

penulto

?.5. Draughtsman Single

Rome Law

As a body of discourse it is indeed a a most [...?] existing reality: but as a body of law it is a mere fiction. To answer in any tolerable degree its professed purpose, a body of law should /must/ be the expression © of /given in and by a determinate set of words to/ the will of a determinate individual or assemblage of individuals, determined as and so declared to be such declared to be such at some determinate point of time /place/. Nulles lex verbes, a nullo, nullibi, nunquam Law, in no words, by no man, never made Such are the negatives of which it is composed.

Yet how strenuous the attachment to it. Look for the causes, you will find them in its worthlessness. The more obscure /[...?]/, ambiguous, loosely worded, incompleatly expressed [...?] confused and inconsistent it is the greater the labour necessary to the obtaining such imperfect conception as the nature of it admitts of. Be the subject matter what it may The greater the quantity of labour a man has expended upon it, the more unwilling is he to regard it as thrown away: and thus it is that instead of being in the direct ratio a mans attachment to the subject is in the inverse ratio of the intrinsic /real/ value of it

As to the nomination the vocabulary /terminology/ © /No classification © no tolerably well adapted nomination/ the necessity of exposition in the case of the leading terms © what words require to be expounded, what is the apt and only apt mode of expounding them, what are the terms which not standing themselves in need of exposition are fit to be employed in expounding those that require to be expounded © all these things are known © all these points are determined at present © none of them were in any tolerable degree well settled, if they were so much as thought of, at any part of the time during which the chaos of Rome©bred law was in accumulation Comparatively speaking, Only of late years has any application been made of the art of logic,to the subject of language.