rants, of innumerable and incessantly changing
legislative enactments, and of countless and contradictory judicial
decisions, with no uniform principle of reason or justice running
through them, are among the blindest of all the mazes in which
unsophisticated minds were ever bewildered and lost. The uncertainty of
the law under these systems has become a proverb. So great is this
uncertainty, that nearly all men, learned as well as unlearned, shun the
law as their enemy, instead of resorting to it for protection. They
usually go into courts of justice, so called, only as men go into
battle--when there is no alternative left for them. And even then they
go into them as men go into dark labyrinths and caverns--with no
knowledge of their own, but trusting wholly to their guides. Yet, less
fortunate than other adventurers, they can have little confidence even
in their guides, for the reason that the guides themselves know little
of the mazes they are threading. They know the mode and place of
entrance; but what they will meet with on their way, and what will be
the time, mode, place, or condition of their exit; whether they will
emerge into a prison, or not; whether _wholly_ naked and destitute, or
not; whether with their reputations left to them, or not; and whether in
time or eternity; experienced and honest guides rarely venture to
predict. Was there ever such fatuity as that of a nation of men madly
bent on building up such labyrinths as these, for no other purpose than
that of exposing all their rights of reputation, property, liberty, and
life, to the hazards of being lost in them, instead of being content to
live in the light of the open day of their own understandings?

What honest, unsophisticated man ever found himself involved in a
lawsuit, that he did not desire, of all things, that his cause might be
judged of on principles of natural justice, as those principles were
understood by plain men like himself? He would then feel that he could
foresee the result. These plain men are the men who pay the taxes, and
support the government. Why should they not have such an administration
of justice as they desire, and can understand?

If the jurors were to judge of the law, and the justice of the law,
there would be something like certainty in the administration of
justice, and in the popular knowledge of the law, and men would govern
themselves accordingly. There would be something like certainty, because
every man has