He should have considered,that it is not easier to him to turn the Law into a Castle,than it is to the imaginations of impoverished suitors to people it with Harpies.He should have thought of the den of Cacus,to whose enfeebled optics,to whose habits of dark and secret rapine,nothing was so hateful,nothing so dangerous,as the light of day.
15.III Comm.322.It is from the decisions of Courts of Justice that those rules of Law are framed,on the knowledge of which depend the life,the fortune,the liberty of every man in the nation.Of these decisions the Records are,according to our Author (I Comm.71)the most authentic histories.These Records were,till within these five-and-forty years,in Law-Latin:a language which,upon a high computation,about one man in a thousand used to fancy himself to understand.In this Law-Latin it is that our Author is satisfied they should have been continued,because the pyramids of Egypt have stood longer than the temples of Palmyra.He observes to us,that the Latin language could not express itself on the subject without borrowing a multitude of words from our own:which is to help to convince us that of the two the former is the fittest to be employed.
He gives us to understand that,taking it altogether,there could be no room to complain of it,seeing it was not more unintelligible than the jargon of the schoolmen,some passages of which he instances;and then he goes on,`This technical Latin continued in use from the time of its first introduction till the subversion of our ancient constitution under Cromwell;when,among many other innovations on the body of the Law,some for the better and some for the worse,the language of our Records was altered and turned into English.But at the Restoration of King Charles,this novelty was no longer countenanced;the practisers finding it very difficult to express themselves so concisely or significantly in any other language but the Latin.And thus it continued without any sensible inconvenience till about the year 1730,when it was again thought proper that the Proceedings at Law should be done into English,and it was accordingly so ordered by statute 4Geo.II.c.26.