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law; but the answer I received convinced me I was mistaken, as such a course would be destructive of all the certainty I had so much admired: The frauds might be of a character which the courts, in other times, had not embraced in their recorded proceedings, and the judges must either have made new laws by their judgments, instead of administering the old ones, or have abandoned the principles of justice; and the cases might not be such as to have admitted, even in future, of practicable corrections by statutes.—In the same manner, the reversal of decisions, by the very tribunals which had pronounced them, must have led to endless dissatisfactions and appeals. In pursuing this enlightened jurisdiction through all its parts, as far as an unlettered stranger could comprehend it, I found it to be justified throughout.—I was filled with admiration of the wisdom which had reared it up, and was convinced that, but for an accident which I hasten to relate, the civil jurisdictions of Armata would have been as perfect as her criminal law.
