g principles, relating to
estates and conveyancing, may form some check and guard upon a
gentleman's inferior agents, and preserve him at least from very gross
and notorious imposition.

[Footnote d: Education. Sec. 187.]

AGAIN, the policy of all laws has made some forms necessary in the
wording of last wills and testaments, and more with regard to their
attestation. An ignorance in these must always be of dangerous
consequence, to such as by choice or necessity compile their own
testaments without any technical assistance. Those who have attended
the courts of justice are the best witnesses of the confusion and
distresses that are hereby occasioned in families; and of the
difficulties that arise in discerning the true meaning of the
testator, or sometimes in discovering any meaning at all: so that in
the end his estate may often be vested quite contrary to these his
enigmatical intentions, because perhaps he has omitted one or two
formal words, which are necessary to ascertain the sense with
indisputable legal precision, or has executed his will in the presence
of fewer witnesses than the law requires.

BUT to proceed from private concerns to those of a more public
consideration. All gentlemen of fortune are, in consequence of their
property, liable to be called upon to establish the rights, to
estimate the injuries, to weigh the accusations, and sometimes to
dispose of the lives of their fellow-subjects, by serving upon juries.
In this situation they are frequently to decide, and that upon their
oaths, questions of nice importance, in the solution of which some
legal skill is requisite; especially where the law and the fact, as it
often happens, are intimately blended together. And the general
incapacity, even of our best juries, to do this with any tolerable
propriety has greatly debased their authority; and has unavoidably
thrown more power into the hands of the judges, to direct, control,
and even reverse their verdicts, than perhaps the constitution
intended.

BUT it is not as a juror only that the English gentleman is called
upon to determine questions of right, and distribute justice to his
fellow-subjects: it is principally with this order of men that the
commission of the peace is filled. And here a very ample field is
opened for a gentleman to exert his talents, by maintaining good order
in his neighbourhood; by punishing the dissolute and idle; by
protecting the peaceable and industrious; and, above a