States are accordingly
unequally qualified to conduct the business of legislation, and unequally
fortunate in the completeness, and regular observance, of their civil code.
In democratical establishments, citizens, feeling themselves possessed of
the sovereignty, are not equally anxious, with the subjects of other
governments, to have their rights explained, or secured, by actual statute.
They trust to personal vigour, to the support of party, and to the sense of
the public.
If the collective body perform the office of judge, as well as of
legislator, they seldom think of devising rules for their own direction,
and are found still more seldom to follow any determinate rule, after it is
made. They dispense, at one time, with what they enacted at another; and in
their judicative, perhaps even more than in their legislative, capacity,
are guided by passions and partialities that arise from circumstances of
the case before them.
But under the simplest governments of a different sort, whether aristocracy
or monarchy, there is a necessity for law, and there are a variety of
interests to be adjusted in framing every statute.
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