The precise extent of the common
law, and the statute law, the maritime law, the ecclesiastical law, the
law of corporations, and other local laws and customs, remains still to
be clearly and finally established in Great Britain, where accuracy in
such subjects has been more industriously pursued than in any other part
of the world. The jurisdiction of her several courts, general and local,
of law, of equity, of admiralty, etc., is not less a source of frequent
and intricate discussions, sufficiently denoting the indeterminate
limits by which they are respectively circumscribed. All new laws,
though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the
fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less
obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained
by a series of particular discussions and adjudications. Besides the
obscurity arising from the complexity of objects, and the imperfection
of the human faculties, the medium through which the conceptions of men
are conveyed to each other adds a fresh embarrassment. The use of words
is to express ideas. Perspicuity, therefore, requires not only that the
ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by
words distinctly and exclusively appropriate to them.
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