1821. Aug. 18.

Codification Offer

'.10/11/. Rationale - test of Draughtsman's aptitude

'.10./'.11./ On the part of any proposed Draughtsman, willingness or

unwillingness to interweave, as above, a Rationale, is the most conclusive test,

and that an indispensable one, of appropriate aptitude.

Of appropriate aptitude, with reference to the sort of work in question, this

sort of accompaniment (a rationale as above described) is not only a perfect

test, but the only one which the nature of the case admitts of. Without this

test, to frame and give force to a body of law to any extent - even to a body of

law intended to be taken for all-comprehensive - requires not appropriate

aptitude in any shape: it requires not appropriate intellectual aptitude,

appropriate active talent, or appropriate moral aptitude. Form excepted, all

that it requires, is - will, and the faculty of giving expression to that will,

any how.

When the nature of an accompaniment of this sort has once been brought to view,

the usefulness and need of it demonstrated, and the nature, the practicability,

and only proper situation, of it been shown by samples, - when all this has been

done, the production of a proposed Code, come whence it will, if it be

unprovided with this sole security for appropriate aptitude, will involve in it,

on the part of the proposer and his Code, a confession of inaptitude. This

inaptitude will, according to circumstances, be in that shape which is opposite

to intellectual, or in that which is opposite to moral aptitude: in the former,

if the omission being, as it can scarce fail to be, accompanied with the

consciousness of the usefulness of such a security for good workmanship, has,

for its cause, consciousness of inability to produce such an one as shall be

capable of bearing the scrutiny of the public eye: it will be that inaptitude

which is the opposite to moral aptitude, in so far as, instead of consciousness

of such inability, self-persuasion of the possession of the correspondent

ability has place in the defaulter's mind.

"If, while there is any one who is willing, ready, and, for aught you can shew,

able, to furnish this security, you shrink from furnishing it, it is either

because you can not, or because you will not: if you will not, it is,

according