226 Court of Chancery. [Szrr. 
fined to furnish all the accommodation which its architects designed. 
Though difficult, we admit it possible, that at any given epoch of a 
nation’s existence, the collected experience of the past might be combined 
into a system sufficiently comprehensive to meet the exigencies of the 
present. Still a time would arise when new aspects of society would call 
for more extended legislation, and it must never be forgotten that the 
maturity of one age is infancy to that which is to succeed it. In the 
hope of conferring eternity on his institutions, the Grecian legislator, 
with a folly quite consistent with their absurdity, imposed an oath upon 
his fellow citizens never to violate them until his return; and then 
_ banished himself from his country for ever. With somewhat more of 
philosophy in his legislation, the ‘great Locke, in founding a constitution 
for Carolina, provided that his laws should be in force but for one cen- 
tury, and then they were to undergo a revision for the purpose of becoming 
adapted to such alterations in its features as the state had intermediately 
sustained. ‘“ Sous le regne d’ Elizabeth,” says the author of the Lettres 
sur la Chancellerie et Jurisprudence Angloise, “Angleterre pouyoit 
déja étre compté parmi les grandes nations. Mais personne ne sera 
d’avis qu'un code formé pour ce temps-la eut convenu aux sujets de 
George IV.” It is only in the development of the human mind under 
fresh modifications, and greater variety of circumstance, that the wants 
of a changeful and civilizing state of society become discovered ; and 
thus, notwithstanding all the nonsense which has been babbled about the 
wisdom of our ancestors, it is plain that, with reference to posterity, the 
institutions of each preceding race of man, must, from the scantiness. of 
the materials on which they are founded, be for ever defective. We 
may legislate up to experience, but we can never go beyond it. 
. That general collection of provisions, however, now moulded into the 
system, which, as contra-distinguished from equity, we term law, has for 
centuries displayed any thing but a legislation up to the experience of 
the passing time. Partly constructed on the maxims of a noxious political 
institution,* the annihilation of which has completely altered the posture 
of society—and altogether founded in a barbarous age, its modern admi- 
nistration presents a constant struggle, either at perverting or evading the 
very principles on which it stands, while those principles are sometimes 
admitted even tothe production of the most egregious absurdities. Thus 
feudal institutions having little other policy than to watch over the 
interests of the tyrants for whose gain they existed, a judicial system 
founded upon them naturally enough treated all that was opposed to the 
interests of the feudal lord as opposite to the spirit of the laws. It 
accordingly became a maxim of law that every thing which interfered 
with these interests was contrary to “‘ common right,” and in conformity 
with this unique doctrine, a party creating in favour of another a rent 
out of his own estate, was. modestly said to be doing an act contrary to 
“ common right,” “ because he was thereby less able to perform the military 
services by which he was bound by his tenure.” It will hardly be sup- 
posed that this absurdity could be carried to a point still more egregious. 
But so it was. It was said that in every attempted discharge of an 
interest thus granted in opposition to “common right,” the act of the owner 
should be interpreted most strongly against himself, and in favour of the 
* The feudal system. 
