Page:A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature (1775) (IA declarationofpeo00shar).djvu/42

his own language -, and these same Elements and their supreme incontrovertible authority being once known and acknowledged, it is very easy, in general, for any Man of Common Sense to discern, by comparison, what is contrary and repugnant thereto; for the Law is compared to a Rule or Right Line, — “Lex est Linea Recti,” — by which every thing that is oblique, crooked, transverse, or different from that Right Line is easily known to the meanest capacity; and therefore, in the Law, the RIGHT LINE is always to he PREFERRED,” “Linea recta semper praesertur transversali,” Co. Lib. 10. b. ‘And from hence it arises, that the adjectives, oblique, crooked, TRANSVERSE, &c, which have no immoral signification when applied to material shapes and figures, are nevertheless ODIOUS IN LAW, which is well observed by the great Sir Edward Coke.' " Rectum' (says he) is a proper and significant word for the Right that any hath; and Wrong, or Injury, is in French aptly called Tort, because Injury and Wrong is wrested or crooked,