66 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vot. VIII. 
it is not impossible. The Judicature Act revolutionized pleading and prac- 
tice, abolished the irrational distinction between Common Law and Equity, 
did away with many technicalities that in the name of law were a travesty 
of justice, and introduced new methods founded on common sense, which 
have immensely simplified the work of the lawyer. We in the Province 
of Ontario have set the example of periodical revision and consolidation 
of the public statutes, and this is a very considerable step on the way to 
complete consolidation of the law. The Criminal Code is a splendid exam- 
ple of codification of one branch of the law; the laws relating to bills and 
notes have been systematized, and no reason appears why the whole mercan- 
tile law should not be similarly dealt with. 
If this process of piecemeal operation were carried on, gradually all 
branches of the statute law would be brought within reasonable bounds. 
This being done, an attack would then have to be made on that multitudinous 
accumulation, which Austin called ‘‘judiciary law,’ contained in the tens 
of thousands of decisions given in the Reports. This might seem a hopeless 
task, but after all, the cases which introduce any new principle or rule, or 
euphemistically declare that to be law which was not known to be law 
before, are comparatively few, and have been collected and are known 
as ‘‘Leading Cases.”” Then we have the Digests, giving in brief the substance 
of the decisions on special subjects in alphabetical order. There is nothing 
to prevent these from being subjected to logical classification, and the 
resulting principles or rules succinctly stated and put in their proper 
place in the system. Thus having consolidated the statutes, and reduced 
to logical order the judicial pronouncements of the reports, the standard 
text-books could be consulted for verification; and the common or custom- 
ary law, the statute law, and the judiciary law, woven into a complete, 
compact, rational system. An Act of Parliament would bring it into force, 
and from that day the student would not be appalled by the Serbonian bog 
which he now has to wade through in order to attain any knowledge of law; 
the practitioner would find his work made comparatively simple; counsel 
would give opinions with far more certainty than now; and the general 
public would no longer wax sarcastic over ‘‘the glorious uncertainty of the 
law.”’ 
I may seem to some to be too optimistic in these prognostications. 
I am aware that many objections that appear formidable have been made 
to any attempt to codify English law. Lawyers know them very well, and 
those who are not lawyers and may be curious in the matter will find them 
fairly stated and fully dealt with in Austin’s thirty-ninth lecture. It will 
be sufficient for my present purpose to notice only two of these objections. 
It is objected that previous codes have been illogical, incomplete, imperfect, 
and unsatisfactory. Granted that some of them have been so, and even if we 
