reform.

* In the time of Henry IV. a law was passed making it felony
"to multiply gold or silver, or to make use of the craft of
multiplication," and this law remained two hundred and
eighty-six years upon the statute books. It was then
repealed as being ridiculous and injurious.--_Author_.

Secondly; that at the expiration of every twenty-one years (or any other
stated period) a like review shall again be taken, and the laws, found
proper to be retained, be again carried forward, commencing with that
date, and the useless laws dropped and discontinued.

By this means there can be no obsolete laws, and scarcely such a thing
as laws standing in direct or equivocal contradiction to each other, and
every person will know the period of time to which he is to look back
for all the laws in being.

It is worth remarking, that while every other branch of science is
brought within some commodious system, and the study of it simplified by
easy methods, the laws take the contrary course, and become every year
more complicated, entangled, confused, and obscure.

Among the paragraphs which the Attorney General has taken from the
_Rights of Man_, and put into his information, one is, that where I
have said, "that with respect to regular law, there is _scarcely such a
thing_."

As I do not know whether the Attorney-General means to show this
expression to be libellous, because it is TRUE, or because it is FALSE,
I shall make no other reply to him in this place, than by remarking,
that if almanack-makers had not been more judicious than law-makers,
the study of almanacks would by this time have become as abstruse as the
study of the law, and we should hear of a library of almanacks as we
now do of statutes; but by the simple operation of letting the obsolete
matter drop, and carrying forward that only which is proper to be
retained, all that is necessary to be known is found within the space of
a year, and laws also admit of being kept within some given period.

I shall here close this letter, so far as it respects the Addresses, the
Proclamation, and the Prosecution; and shall offer a few observations to
the Society, styling itself "The Friends of the People."

That the science of government is beginning to be better understood than
in former times, and that the age of fiction and political superstition,
and of craft and mystery, is passing away, are matters which the
experience of every day-proves