LAIN FEW subjects are more comprehensive than that of law. It has, indeed, in every department of it, been overloaded and oppressed with a mass of commentary, sometimes con tradictory, often unintelligible, commonly futile, and there fore almost always alike unprofitable to the student, and disregarded by the intelligent practitioner. But, indepen dently of so monstrous an overgrowth, the main stern and branches of this noble science occupy a large space, and to be adequately conceived, would require a eery ample de• lineation. Besides the principles common, or which ought to be common, to all law, (we mean the immutable prin ciples of morality and religion,) how various and important are the modifications of the different systems instituted in different countries ! How various the circumstances on which these modifications necessarily depend I—the pecu liar genius of the people, from whatever causes originating; the habits and customs .which have insensibly grown up among them ; the inland or maritime situation of the ter ritory ; the greater or less degree of progress already made in civilization ; the character of the popular superstitions, whether introduced by accident, policy, or imitation; the nature of the government ; the agricultural or commercial facilities of the country; and a thousand other causes which infinitely diversify the judicial systems of different com munities. It is not to be expected, therefore, that we should in this place attempt any thing like a de tail of so comprehensive a subject. 1Ve must confine ouselves to such branches of it as appear to be of para mount importance, or of which a detail, as far as our li mits will admit, may be the most generally interesting and useful. We mean to submit, therefore, let, Some cbser-oa tions on law in general ; 2d, An outline of the law of nations; 3d. An ins-titut a or abstract of the law of England ; anti 4th, A similar institute or abstract of the law of Scotland. For the judicial establishments of other countries, with whose institutions it is less necessary we should be intimately ac quainted, we refer our readers to what they may find un der the different correspondent articles of this work. We only here observe, that, with the exception of certain local customs, the laws of Ireland, and of the various extensive colonies dependent on Great Britain, are, with a few occa sional modifications, similar to those of England ; and that the enactments of the British Parliament reach to every quarter of the empire, either where it is expressly so pro vided, or where the general tenor of the enactment has in dicated such to be the intention of the legislature.
1. Law, as applicable to human conduct in general, may be defined a rule of moral action proceeding from a supe rior having right to command, and directed to inferiors bound to obey. Of this authority on the one hand, and
obligation to obedience on the other, the foundation, or principle, is the happiness of those to whom the rule is di rected. If the rule does not substantially contemplate this happiness, it has proceeded without the correspondent au thority in the superior, and is not obligatory on the inferior.
2. It is, however, a very different consideration, in what manner the presence of this obligatory principle is to be ascertained. T. assert that every individual is bound to obedience, according only as he may discover the connection of his happiness with the rule, would be to make ignorance the measure of submission, and to subject order to the blind caprice of inclination, prejudice, or passion. Even in the administration of the unchangeable precepts of morality proceeding from the deity himself, it sometimes seems hard, even to the intelligent and reflecting, to reconcile the observance of them, under some particular circumstances, with the happiness of the individual ; how much oftener to the vulgar, who, uninstructed by contemplation, or blinded by the selfishness of vice or passion, so frequently indicate by their conduct their ignorance of the presence of the principle, and their practical disbelief in the obligatory na ture of the rule. But with regard to laws of human insti tution, this propensity to disobedience, so far as the mere principle in question is concerned, must be greater. The source from which they proceed, even in their purest state, is ever liable to be disturbed by interest or error. There is hazard, therefore, in every instance, that the obligatory principle may be absent, whilst, in sonie, that absence is obvious and certain. Hence a perpetual occasion to the ignorant, that is, to the people in general of whom every community is composed, to question the obligation of the laws. The obligations of morality, indeed, can in no in stance be denied, even by the intelligent and reflecting, without involving a contradiction in their conception of the divine nature, since the moral constitution of man, by which he judges of right and wrong, approves and disapproves, proceeds front the same Being who has ordained the pre cepts of morality themselves ; but in laws of human insti tution, such an argument for the invariable presence of the obligatory principle, can have no place, and the intelligent must sometimes unite with the vulgar in regarding the rule as wanting the essential charactefistic of its autho rity.