NOTE C C. 



4. Dedication tu Elements of the Common Law. In his dedication . to the 

 Queen, and in his preface to the Elements of the Common Law, there are va 

 rious suggestions to the Queen, and observations upon improvement of the law. 

 They will be found in vol. xiii. of this edition, page 133. 



5. Jnstitia Universalis. 



good to note only one deficience : which is, that all those which have written of 

 laws, have written either as philosophers, or as lawyers, and none as statesmen. 

 As for the philosophers, they make imaginary laws for imaginary common 

 wealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light, because 

 they are so high. For the lawyers, they write according to the states where 

 they live, what is received law, and not what ought to be law ; for the wisdom 

 of a law-maker is one, and of a lawyer is another. For there are in nature cer 

 tain 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 law-maker 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 cen 

 sured and governed ; and many other points touching the administration, and, 

 as I may term it, animation of laws. Upon which I insist the less, because I 

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

 risms), to propound it hereafter, noting it in the mean time for deficient. Vol. 

 ii. of this edition, page 295. 



Observations. The outline contemplated by Lord Bacon of a treatise on 

 Universal Justice is, as it seems, contained in Aphorism 7, in his description 

 of a good law published in 1623, in the Treatise de Augmentis. Vol. ix. p. 82. 



Lex bona censeri possit, quae sit 

 Intimatione certa ; 

 Praecepto justa ; 

 Executione commoda ; 

 Cum forma politiae congrua ; et 

 Generans virtutem in subditis. 



It probably was his intention to have completed this work, and if not, to leave 

 it as a hint to future ages. The part which he has completed is in the first of his 

 five divisions. 



The Certainty of Laws. It is written in his favourite style of Aphorisms 

 (see de Augmentis, Lib. vi.), in which the Novum Organum is written, in both 

 of which there is the reality without the show of method ; the frame is beautiful, 

 although the divisions and muscles are not obtruded. 



