other, were instructed to compile such a system of rules, and
publish them for the benefit of a certain community as an infallible
rule of life."

"And have they completed it?"

"Completed it! They have been sitting now for two hundred years, and
have not yet exhausted the infinitude of cases to be digested under
their very first capitulary." He said that being all of them ingenious
men, all anxious to show their ingenuity, and knowing that their credit
was staked upon the completeness of their system, it was incredible
what strange and ridiculous contingencies and combinations of
circumstance they had suggested as modifying the application of
their general rules. The books of law, voluminous as they are in
most civilized countries, were conciseness itself compared with this
new code of morals. It was thought by many, that the labors of the
commissioners would not come to an end till long after the race for
whose benefit it was designed had ceased to exist. Afraid, apparently,
of such a direful contingency, they had published, about three years
before, the first part, in seventy-five folio volumes, containing
limitations, illustrative cases, exceptions, and modifications, in
relation to that very obscure general maxim, 'Do unto others as ye
would that others should do unto you.' All questions appertaining to
this point were from that time to be decided by the precise statements
contained in these statutes at large. But their mere publication
sufficed to make an incredible number of infidels in the authority
of the commission. Such a voluminous rule, they truly said, could be
no rule at all, and could be fruitful of nothing but everlasting
litigation. If (they admitted) general maxims had been as briefly as
possible laid down, and men's common sense had been left to interpret
and apply them with the requisite restrictions, there would be much
more to be said for their divine origin. But on such a system, no man,
if he lived for a thousand years, could tell what his duty was. Many
complained that, before they found the rule for which they were in
search, the time for its application had passed away. Many excused
themselves from complying with the dictates of justice and charity,
because they could not discover the cases that related to their special
circumstances; some even denied that the rules could have been devised
by heavenly wisdom, because, having carefully studied the whole of the
seventy-five volumes, they did