Advancement of Learning 207 



from the soils through which they run, so do civil laws 

 vary according to the regions and governments where they 

 are planted, though they proceed from the same fountains. 

 Again, the wisdom of a lawmaker consisteth not only in a 

 platform of justice, but in the application thereof; taking 

 into consideration by what means laws may be made 

 certain, and what are the causes and remedies of the 

 doubtfulness and incertainty of law; by what means laws 

 may be made apt and easy to be executed, and what are 

 the impediments and remedies in the execution of laws; 

 what influence laws touching private right of meum and 

 tuum have into the public state, and how they may be made 

 apt and agreeable ; how laws are to be penned and delivered, 

 whether in texts or in acts, brief or large, with preambles, or 

 without; how they are to be pruned and reformed from 

 time to time, and what is the best means to keep them from 

 being too vast in volumes, or too full of multiplicity and 

 crossness; how they are to be expounded, when upon 

 causes emergent and judicially discussed, and when upon 

 responses and conferences touching general points or 

 questions; how they are to be pressed, rigorously or 

 tenderly ; how they are to be mitigated by equity and good 

 conscience, and whether discretion and strict law are to be 

 mingled in the same courts, or kept apart in several courts ; 

 again, how the practice, profession, and erudition of law 

 is to be censured and governed; and many other points 

 touching the administration, and, as I may term it, anima 

 tion of laws. Upon which I insist the less, because I 

 purpose, if God give me leave, (having begun a work of this 

 nature in aphorisms,) to propound it hereafter, noting it 

 in the meantime for deficient. 



And for your Majesty s laws of England, I could say much 

 of their dignity, and somewhat of their defect; but they 

 cannot but excel the civil laws in fitness for the govern 

 ment: for the civil law was non hos quasitum munus in 

 usus ; 1 it was not made for the countries which it governeth : 

 hereof I cease to speak because I will not intermingle 

 matter of action with matter of general learning. 



1 Virg. JEn. iv. 647. 



