Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: exacte definit, sed arbitrio boni viripermittit. Among other boni viri, to whose arbitrium equity has left matters, was the late Lord Eldon, who was so exceedingly modest as to his judgments that he postponed them as long as he could, and even when he gave them, such was his delicacy, that it was often quite impossible to understand and abide by them. It has, however, been said, that law without equity is better than equity without law; and, therefore, though in law there is very often no equity, nevertheless there is no equity that has not sufficient law to make its name of equity a pleasant fiction. Section III.?Of The Laws Of England. The Civil Law may be divided into the lex non scripta, the unwritten or common law, which was not originally in black and white; and the lex scripta, the written or statute law, which was originally in black and white; though, says Coke, ye blacke in all our lawes did alwayse preponderate. By the unwritten law, we do not mean that any laws have been communicated by word of mouth from one generation to the other, for this would be reducing the common law to mere talk. The western world being totally ignorant of letters?by which it is to be understood that the alphabet was at that time wholly unknown at the west end?our ancestors trusted to tradition, and thus the laws became more familiar to them than ABC; and the earlier lawyers trusted to their recollection, which, no doubt, gave rise to the maxim, that liars? of which lawyers is an evident corruption?should have long memories. The Druids were certainly no disciples of Mr. Carstairs, the celebrated writing master, of whom Lord Byron is reported to have said, I should have been a better writer had I been guided by that man, and they probably despised penmanship chiefly on account...