28 Feb y 1808

on L d Eldons Bill

Letter V

I. Reasons necessary

1. Principles

7. Use 7 th. /Creating the law by later/ Qualifying the law for taking the stronger hold on the memory.

Unaccompanied by reason the really arbitrary dispositions of which jurisprudential law is throughout composed, and the apparently if not really arbitrary arrangements of which statute law is to yet to be comprised, are as so many grains of sand: particles which having nothing to lend them to each other, nor to keep them in the place in which for the moment they have been lodged, slip out of it like those of sand from the upper part of an hourglass.

In reason there is that binding quality, that by a single particle of it cohesion will sometimes be given to dispositions of detail in multitude, forming the whole into a compact body which fixes /fixing//attaching/ itself in the memory and takes a lasting hold.

Religion and reason - both are assistant to retention Religion was in former days /times/ applied for /to/ this purpose to the small parcels of law which the circumstances of the times admitted of. Religion is a cement too costly to be applied to the legal productions of modern times: but, like mush or olio of roses, reason when of the right sort, and properly prepared, goes a good way: and if the proposed Board of Commissioners of legislation could be prevailed upon or prevail upon themselves to infuse into their good productions a slight admixture of it, it would be found conducive to the purpose here in question, as well as to so many other good purposes.