ength of their
quotations from older authors, is the same learned judge we have just
mentioned, sir Edward Coke; who hath written four volumes of
institutes, as he is pleased to call them, though they have little of
the institutional method to warrant such a title. The first volume is
a very extensive comment upon a little excellent treatise of tenures,
compiled by judge Littleton in the reign of Edward the fourth. This
comment is a rich mine of valuable common law learning, collected and
heaped together from the antient reports and year books, but greatly
defective in method[s]. The second volume is a comment upon many old
acts of parliament, without any systematical order; the third a more
methodical treatise of the pleas of the crown; and the fourth an
account of the several species of courts[t].

[Footnote s: It is usually cited either by the name of Co. Litt. or as
1 Inst.]

[Footnote t: These are cited as 2, 3, or 4 Inst. without any author's
name. An honorary distinction, which, we observed, was paid to the
works of no other writer; the generality of reports and other tracts
being quoted in the name of the compiler, as 2 Ventris, 4 Leonard, 1
Siderfin, and the like.]

AND thus much for the first ground and chief corner stone of the laws
of England, which is, general immemorial custom, or common law, from
time to time declared in the decisions of the courts of justice; which
decisions are preserved among our public records, explained in our
reports, and digested for general use in the authoritative writings of
the venerable sages of the law.

THE Roman law, as practised in the times of it's liberty, paid also a
great regard to custom; but not so much as our law: it only then
adopting it, when the written law is deficient. Though the reasons
alleged in the digest[u] will fully justify our practice, in making it
of equal authority with, when it is not contradicted by, the written
law. "For since, says Julianus, the written law binds us for no other
reason but because it is approved by the judgment of the people,
therefore those laws which the people hath approved without writing
ought also to bind every body. For where is the difference, whether
the people declare their assent to a law by suffrage, or by a uniform
course of acting accordingly?" Thus did they reason while Rome had
some remains of her freedom; but when the imperial tyranny came to be
fully established, the civil laws speak a very different langua