374 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



what means laws may be made apt and easy to be exe- 

 cuted, 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 

 Depmdentia administration, and (as I may term it) anima- 

 l sfve l defonh. tion of laws. Upon which I insist the less, 

 bus juris. 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 mean time 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 

 government : for the civil law was non hos quaesitum munus 

 in usus\ 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. 



Thus have I concluded this portion of learning touching 

 Civil Knowledge; and with civil knowledge have con- 

 cluded Human Philosophy ; and with human philosophy, 

 Philosophy in General. And being now at some pause, 

 looking back into that I have passed through, this writing 

 seemeth to me, (si nunquam fallit imago'] as far as a man 



