1821. April 6.

First Lines

It is now perhaps rendered sufficiently manifest that between the matter of the penal code and the matter of the civil code a general separation will require to be kept up and that in theorder of enunciation it will be required that the penal code should stand first. And what the relation is between the matter of the penal and the matter of the Civil Code: and why it is that though, in so far as they are distinguishable from each other the place of the matter of the civil code is nearer than that of the matter of the penal code to their common end, and, in that point of view, stands foremost in the order of importance, apt, in the order of enunciation of it is in the matter of the penal code to stand first.

Of the matter of the penal Code, the designation made is not compleat, until a designation has been made of all the sorts of acts which, by it, are dealt with in the character of offences. Of the matter of the civil code, the efficiency would be throughout as nothing were not the several acts, by which the distributions made by it are violated, dealt with on the footing of offences. yet there is no such correspondency between the one sort of matter and the other as to render it convenient that both together should be amalgamated into one and the same Code. For though there are some offences for the full and adequate description of which abundance of the sort of expository matter above spoken of is necessary, as, for instance, the offences by the creation and punishment of which protection is afforded to property, yet property is but one out of several endowments to which protection is afforded: and some there are to the protection of which, by appropriate arrangements of penal law, no such voluminous masses of expository matter are requisite. Every man, for example, has, on certain conditions, and in certain modes, a right to protection at the hands of law against such acts as are injurious to it. But, for the designation of his title to his person, or of his title to such protection for it, no such details are necessary as in the case of property.

And the like may be said with regard to reputation.