22 April 1808

Reasons for the Work

(A) Reasons, designed to shew the practicability as well as the utility of the measure of framing a body of statutory law, so far forth compleat as to serve as a basis and standard of reference to a compleat system of pleading.

1. When, under the name of an action, an indictment, or any other, a demand is made at the hands of any person in the character of a Judge, by any person in the character of a plaintiff, praying at the hands of such Judge a service of such or such a description, to be rendered to him the plaintiff, at the charge of some other person, in the character of defendant, this demand has for its foundation, expressed or implied, some portion or rule of law, real or imaginary, referred to in the way of reference, express or implied, as having afforded to him, the plaintiff, a right or title to such service.

From p. *1

2. If that part of the rule of action to which such reference is thus made be already in the state of statutory law, this foundation so referred to, this portion or rule of law has a real existence: and being expressed by a determinate assemblage of words, to which in a determinate place, on[?] a determinate point of time, the force of law was given by the legitimate legislator, viz. by a person or persons recognized by the body of the community in question as possessing authority and power applicable to that purpose, that assemblage of words forming part and parcel of a written instrument (commonly since the invention of printing rendered public by the operation of the press) may be, and commonly is designated by a designation made of the place it occupies in the entire instrument of which it forms a part.