aning of the statutes and constitutions
themselves. Judges could make almost anything they should please out
of them. Hence the necessity of a rule of interpretation. _And this
rule is, that the language of statutes and constitutions shall be
construed, as nearly as possible, consistently with natural law._

The rule assumes, what is true, that natural law is a thing certain
in itself; also that it is capable of being learned. It assumes,
furthermore, that it actually is understood by the legislators and
judges who make and interpret the written law. Of necessity,
therefore, it assumes further, that they (the legislators and judges)
are _incompetent_ to make and interpret the _written_ law, unless
they previously understand the natural law applicable to the same
subject. It also assumes that the _people_ must understand the
natural law, before they can understand the written law.

It is a principle perfectly familiar to lawyers, and one that must be
perfectly obvious to every other man that will reflect a moment,
that, as a general rule, _no one can know what the written law is,
until he knows what it ought to be_; that men are liable to be
constantly misled by the various and conflicting senses of the same
words, unless they perceive the true legal sense in which the words
_ought to be taken_. And this true legal sense is the sense that is
most nearly consistent with natural law of any that the words can be
made to bear, consistently with the laws of language, and
appropriately to the subjects to which they are applied.

Though the words _contain_ the law, the _words_ themselves are not
the law. Were the words themselves the law, each single written law
would be liable to embrace many different laws, to wit, as many
different laws as there were different senses, and different
combinations of senses, in which each and all the words were capable
of being taken.

Take, for example, the Constitution of the United States. By adopting
one or another sense of the single word "_free_," the whole
instrument is changed. Yet the word _free_ is capable of some ten or
twenty different senses. So that, by changing the sense of that
single word, some ten or twenty different constitutions could be made
out of the same written instrument. But there are, we will suppose, a
thousand other words in the constitution, each of which