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tice, or at least the doctrine, of polygamy. His lordship's ecclesiastical patronage was, on one occasion, solicited in a manner of which it is just to say that it exhibited only the unequaled assurance of the applicant, and infers no reproach whatever against the honor or integrity of the patron. On the living of St. George's, Hanover Square, falling vacant, lady Apsley received an anonymous letter, offering a sum of 3000 guineas, if by her assistance the writer were presented to it. The letter was traced to the unhappy profligate Dodd, and led to his dismissal with disgrace from the office of king's chaplain.

In the summer of 1778, lord Bathurst, finding his health unequal to the labors of his office, resigned the great seal; and, as it is stated in the Biographia, declined to receive a pension offered to him on his retirement, although he is affirmed to have been a man of parsimonious habits. In the November of the following year, however, he was appointed to the dignified office of president of the council, which he retained until the breaking up of lord North's administration. The last occasion on which he distinguished himself as a speaker, before his resignation of office, was in vehement opposition to the bill for securing an annuity to the family of lord Chatham, who, he contended, had been amply repaid for all his services by the pension he enjoyed during his life, and his appointment to the privy seal. The chancellor found himself, on this occasion, leader of a generous minority of eleven, and consoled himself under his defeat by recording in a protest his dissent from a measure, which, he apprehended, "might in after times be made use of as a precedent for factious purposes, and to the enriching of private families at the public. expense;" a profession of honorable economy to which three signatures besides his own were subscribed. He continued to be a frequent speaker in parliament, and a stren

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uous opponent of all the attempts to persuade to the conciliation of America. On several occasions we find him and lord Thurlow, who seems to have entertained an unequivocal dislike for him, in almost direct collision of opinion, though members of the same cabinet. After his final retirement from office, he still continued for some years a regular attendant in his place in parliament, but at length, and for some years before his death, was compelled by the advance of age and the decline of health to withdraw altogether from political life. He died at his seat of Oakley Grove, on the 6th of August, 1794, in his eighty-sixth year.

The mansion of Apsley House was built by lord Bathurst. As soon as it was completed, he was saluted with the agreeable intelligence that he had encroached upon a plot of ground granted by the crown to a veteran soldier, whose widow threatened him with a suit in chancery. Having bought off her claims at the price of a considerable sum of money, it became a standing joke in Lincoln's Inn hall, (a joke with a double aspect,) that an old woman could beat the chancellor in his own court.

Lord Bathurst was twice married; first, to Anne, (only child of a gentleman named James, and widow of Charles Philips, Esq.) who died without children; secondly, to Tryphena, daughter of Thomas Scawen, Esq., of Carshalton, in Surrey, by whom he had two sons and four daughters; the eldest of whom, the late noble earl, died in the year 1835, having filled, during a large portion of his life, many and distinguished offices in the service of

the crown.

ART. II.—ON CODIFICATION, OR THE SYSTEMATIZING OF THE LAW.

[By J. LOUIS TELLKAMPF, Jur Utr. Dr. of Göettingen Univ., and Professor in Union College, New York. Concluded from the last Number.]

Objections against Codification answered.

IT has been said by objectors, that, 1. No code can be expected to offer such a degree of perfection as would render it absolutely final, and in need of no future improvement; that therefore it must be better to leave things as they are, and not to attempt a thing necessarily so imperfect.

2. That it is impossible to give to a code, in regard to its contents, that completeness which shall afford beforehand a decision for the endless entanglement of circumstances in real life.

3. That in the compilation of a comprehensive code, many principles and passages may be treated imperfectly, both as regards themselves and as regards other parts of the system, by taking them out of their previous connection; that each point in law enters variously into all the relations of society; that it must be a matter of surpassing difficulty, to calculate in advance and with any approach to certainty, all the effects of those points, in a code which is to contain so many new laws together with so many old and that if those effects are not considered, so many deficiencies and inconveniences will shortly appear, as to render the work totally inadequate to the intentions of its framers.

4. That the new code would draw all attention towards itself, and from the fountains of law; so that the connection might be easily lost with the earlier stages of the science, by the study of which it could alone be hoped to clear

up the obscurities of a jurisprudence which has grown with the lapse of time.

Many of the remaining objections have reference only to the actual condition of particular countries; as, for instance, some of those contained in the essay of Mr. von Savigny,' a Prussian professor and statesman, would seem to apply chiefly to Germany, where the Roman law forms the great basis of the jurisprudence, and has been worked up with the German, the canon, and the feudal law into a system, which, from its variety, seems particularly suited to the complicated relations of that country; relations which arose out of the historical development of the common bands which have been entwined round the German states, by the Roman empire, the Christian religion, and the Teutonic institutions. For the close investigation and the better understanding of the Roman law, the times are most favorably circumstanced, in the recent discovery of the Institutes of Gaius, and in the general attention which has been of late directed to jurisprudence, as well of the Roman as German law; so that it would certainly be unadvisable to stay at this moment, by the enactment of a code, the further progress of these not yet completed investigations. To these four objections, touching all codes in general, the following remarks may serve as preliminary replies.

In regard to the first objection I would say: To demand from a code that degree of perfection which shall render it absolutely final, and in need of no further improvement; and, because of the impossibility of ever attaining such a degree of perfection, to abstain from any attempt at a thing necessarily imperfect, would argue misapprehension of the nature of finite things. As everything in this world is

On the fitness of the present age for legislation and jurisprudence. Berlin, 1815, pages 73 and 107. Hugo, in the Civilian Göttingen Magazine, vol. iv. page 89.

imperfect, it would be extremely irrational to reject all attempts to realize the formation of a code, because the result must be imperfect.

Perfection is meant to denote the full and well-ordered system of all things pertaining to a certain sphere; in this sense no art or science can be considered perfect. But should we, for that reason, abstain from embodying into a system all that is known of a certain subject, just because additions may be made to our knowledge of it; or the more important part of it be still unknown? In this way we should never advance. Every code might be better-so at least idle speculation can affirm; for the noblest, the grandest, and the most beautiful of all the works of art, might be imagined more noble, more grand, and more beautiful.

Of the second objection: To expect of a code a minute completeness, offering, mechanically, a specific solution for each of the endless occurrences in life, is evidently unreasonable, and would argue in the person entertaining the expectation, a great misapprehension of the nature of a code, and indeed of jurisprudence itself. A code holding out such hopes would be found as delusive, as a medical guide-book professing to contain a specific remedy for every disease, without presupposing in the person consulting it, a knowledge of the science and practice of medicine.

In the application of codes, just as in that of laws, to the solution of particular cases, difficulties must be expected to arise; but they will be met with less frequently in the increase of order and system in the code. When, however, difficulties of that nature do occur, it will be for the understanding of the lawyers and the judges to clear them up, for the very reason that jurisprudence, even in its application to the affairs of life, has a reasonable and living nature, and not one that is mechanical.

In every important case, therefore, besides a code there

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