6.One may well say rare.It is a matter of fact about which there can be no dispute.The truth of it may be seen in the multitude of Expositors which the Jurisprudence of every nation furnished,ere it afforded a single Censor.When Beccaria came,he was received by the intelligent as an Angel from heaven would be by the faithful.He may be styled the father of Censorial Jurisprudence.Montesquieu's was a work of the mixed kind.Before Montesquieu all was unmixed barbarism.Grotius and Puffendorf were to Censorial Jurisprudence what the Schoolmen were to Natural Philosophy.
7.A French Jurist of the last age,whose works had like celebrity,and in many respects much the same sort of merits as our Author's.He was known to most advantage by a translation of Demosthenes.
He is now forgotten.
8.`Burglary',[Comm.Ch.XVI.p.226.]says our Author,`cannot be committed in a tent or a booth erected in a market fair;though the owner may lodge therein:for the Law regards thus highly nothing but permanent edifices;a house,or church;the wall,or gate of a town;and it is the folly of the owner to lodge in so fragile a tenement.'To save himself from this charge of folly,it is not altogether clear which of two things the trader ought to do:quit his business and not go to the fair at all:or leave his goods without any body to take care of them.
9.Speaking of an Act of Parliament,[I Comm.Ch.
II.p.178.]`There needs',he says,`no formal promulgation to give it the force of a Law,as was necessary by the Civil Law with regard to the Emperor's Edicts:because every man in England is,in judgment of Law,party to the making of an Act of Parliament,being present thereat by his representatives.'This,for aught I know,may be good judgment of Law;because any thing may be called judgment of Law,that comes from a Lawyer,who has got a name:it seems,however,not much like any thing that can be called judgment of common sense.This notable piece of astutia was originally,I believe,judgment of Lord Coke:it from thence became judgment of our Author:and may have been judgment of more Lawyers than I know of before and since.What grieves me is,to find many men of the best affections to a cause which needs no sophistry,bewildered and bewildering others with the like jargon.