THE SECOND :^00K 219 



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 -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 multi- 

 plicity 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 ad- 

 ministration, and (as I may term it) animation of laws. 

 Upon which I insist the less, because 

 I purpose (if God give me leave), having ua^^X'at- 

 begun a work of this nature in aphorisms, oria, sive, de 

 to propound it hereafter, noting it in the /""''^^'^ •^"'■'''• 

 meantime for deficient. 



50. 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 government : for the civil law was ' non hos quae- 

 situm munus in usus ' ; it was not made for the coun- 

 tries which it governeth. Hereof I cease to speak, 

 because I will not intermingle matter of action with 

 matter of general learning. 



XXIV. Thus have I concluded this portion of learn- 

 ing touching civil knowledge ; and with civil knowledge 

 have concluded human philosophy ; and with human 



