1903-4. |] SCIENCE AND ENGLISH LAw. 67 
admit that no one of them is perfect, surely that is no reason why the perse- 
vering skill of competent men should not be able to devise a scheme or con- 
struct a code more approximately perfect than any heretofore made. The 
very existence of defects that are acknowledged should lead to the ascertain- 
ment of the proper remedies, and their due application. One might as well 
say that because Savary’s and Newcomen’s steam-engines were imperfect, 
James Watt should not have attempted to improve on them. A similar 
argument would leave us still struggling with the errors of the Julian calen- 
dar, or the crudities of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, and would sus- 
tain the position of our good friends who hold the flat earth theory. The 
material for an English code undoubtedly exists, and it is absurd to say 
that it cannot be drawn forth and hewn into shape that will conform to 
scientific principles. Further, it is not to be supposed that a code is to 
be as unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians; the same power 
that enacts a code can incorporate amendments to correct defects that 
experience may discover. 
And this leads to the other objection that I have alluded to. It 
is said that one of the beauties of English law is its flexibility and 
elasticity, and that this admirable characteristic would be destroyed 
by the rigidity of a code. English law certainly has flexibility and elas- 
ticity, but there is another quality that it has which is not so worthy of ap- 
probation, namely, uncertainty. Every lawyer knows how difficult it is to 
pronounce a decided opinion on points of law that are constantly arising 
in practice; the judges are every day differing in their judgments; one judge 
will rule one way on a certain state of facts and with certain precedents 
which he considers authoritative; another judge on the same bench with 
the same facts and the same authorities will rule another way; the judgment 
of one Court will be reversed by a Court of Appeal composed of judges in no 
way superior in knowledge or skill to those whose decisions they reverse ; 
it is seldom a matter of certainty as to how a Court of final appeal will rule 
in any given case. Judges have been known to express regret that they 
were forced to rule in a certain way, considering themselves bound by the 
authority of precedents, the correctness of which they questioned. Other 
judges would in such a case disregard the precedents and rule according to 
their independent view. The source of this uncertainty lies in the fact, 
supposed to be a fact at least, that the law governing the particular case 
is hidden away somewhere in the reports, and has to be dug out from cases 
more or less nearly parallel to the one in hand, and construed, and if neces- 
sary, re-moulded to suit circumstances. I do not say that all this uncertainty 
would be obviated by the existence of a code, but I am safe in saying that 
it would be very much reduced, and at the same time the flexibility and 
elasticity of the law would be in no wise affected. For what is this flexi- 
bility and elasticity? Is it not simply the application to new conditions 
