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Notices respecting New Books. 147 
that they should be secured from foreign enernies by proper mi- 
litary arrangements ; that they should te guarded by an effectual 
police against seditions and private Injuries 5 that they should be 
loyal to government, and obedient to magistrates ; and finally, 
that they should elipvaiia in wealth, and in oihidr national re-. 
sources.’—* The science of such matters certainly belongs more 
particularly to the province of men who, by habits of public 
business, have been led to take a comprehensive survey of the 
social or dens ; of the interests of the community at large; of the 
rules of sled equity; of the manners of nations; of the dif- 
ferent forms of government ; and who are thus prepared to rea- 
son conceruing the wisdom ok laws, both from considerations of 
justice and of policy. The great desideratum, accordingly, is, 
by investigating the principles of malural justice, and those of 
political expediency, to exhibit a theoretical model of legisla- _ 
tion, which, while it serves as a standard for estimating the 
comparative excellence of municipal codes, may suggest hints 
for their correction and improvement, to such as have at heart 
the welfare of mankind.’ 
* How precise the notion was that Bacon had foied of a 
philosophical system of jurisprudence (with which as a standard 
the municipal laws of different nations might be compared), ap- 
pears from a remarkable expression, in which he mentions it-as 
the proper business of those who might attempt to carry his 
plan into execution, to investigate those ‘ /eges legum, ex qui- 
bus informatio peti possit, quid in singulis legibus bene aut per- 
peram positum aut constitutum sit.” 1 do not know if, in Ba- 
con’s prophetic anticipations of the future progress of physics, 
there be anything more characteristical, both of the grandeur 
and of the justness of his conceptions, than this short definition ; 
more particularly, when we consider how widely Grotius, in a 
work professedly devoted to this very inquiry, was soon after to 
_ wander from the right path, in consequence of his vague and 
wavering idea of the: aim of his researches. 
*¢ The sagacity, however, displayed in these, and various other 
passages of a similar import, can by no means’be duly appre- 
ciated, without attending, at the same time, to the cautious and 
temperate maxims so frequently inculcated by the author on the 
subject of political innovation. ‘ A stubborn retention of cus- 
toms is a turbulent thing, not less than the introduction of new.’ 
—‘ Time is the greatest innovator; shall we then not imitate 
time, which innovates so silently as to mock the sense ?’ Nearly 
_connected with these aphorisms, are the profound reflections in 
the first book De Augmentis Scientiarum, on the necessity of 
accommodating every new institution to the character and cir- 
cuinstances of the people for whom it is intended; and on the 
K 2 peculiar 
