6 July 1802 2 N. S. Wales

laws. As

violently as ever dead Nature was thought to abhor the idea

of a vacuum, living Nature abhors the absence of all law. Reason

revolts from the thing itself: imagination

recoils from the very idea

of it. To conceive space absolutely without matter, the abstractive

powers even of a Newton were insufficient. Imagination created an aether

for him to supply the plan of it. Imagination, the chief and only constant

guide of the man of law

in this fabrication weaving spinning out of that

species of law which has been so aptly defined "a the

competition of opposite analogies" (I say the only constant guide —

for the principle of ability is but the occasional — is to

have

the constant guide of the legitimate legislator is to

his bastard relative but the occasional one) imagination

repells the idea if any the inconvenient fashion

of governable space, unfilled by law.

Thus it is that wherever a void opens in law belongs displays

itself, lawyers are [so] ready supply fill the vacuum by denying

its existence. Thus it is that wherever there is a an ab a want

a negation an absence of genuine law, (the expression of

the will of a real legislator or set of legislators to whose will in

the behalf in question the bulk of the community are by the requisite

habits and opinions prepared to pay obedience) lawyers of all classes are

so ready to agree in forging one. Hence the Law of Nature Law of

Nations, Common Law and so forth.

In