ol 
— 
250 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, [XXIIt. 49 
according to the states where they live what is received 
law, and not what ought to be law: for the wisdom of a 
lawmaker is one, and of a lawyer is another. For there 
are in nature certain fountains of justice, whence all civil 
laws are derived but as streams: and like as waters do 
take tinctures and tastes 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 incer- 
tainty 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 /uum have into the 
public state, and how they may be made apt and agree- 
able ; how laws are to be penned and delivered, whether 
in texts or in acts, brief or large, with preambles, or with- 
out ; 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 
ie 
