Memorandum in re Corpus juris drudgery; but it was absolutely requisite to the correct execution of the design. How can I make a digest of the laws without having all the laws upon each head in my view? This view can in the first instance be obtained only by ranging them in an exact common place."
He also declared :— “To rank in a correct edition, the several laws according to their seniority or in the order of the alphabet would, by no means, be correspondent to the enlarged plan sig nified by the resolutions of the house. It is obvious, and it was certainly expected, that, under each head, the different regulations, however dispersed at present among numerous laws, should in the digest, be collected, in a
natural series, and reduced to a just form. This I deem an indispensable part of my business. “But the performance of this indispensable part gives rise to a new question. In what order should the methodized collections be ar ranged? "A chronological order would, from the nature of those collections, be impracticable; an alphabetical order would be unnatural and unsatisfactory. The order of legitimate sys tem is the only one, which remains. This order, therefore, is necessarily brought into my contemplation. My own contemplation of it has been attended with the just degree of diflidence and solicitude. To form the mass of our laws into a body compacted and well proportioned is a task of no common magnitude. . . . "Of this system, I have begun to sketch the rough outlines. In finishing them, and in filling them up, I mean to avail myself of all the assistance which can possibly be derived from every example set before me. But, at the same time, I mean to pay implicit defer ence to none."
He also summed up the situation as follows, and in words which are even more applicable to the chaotic condi
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few, in which the common law is defective, or to which it is inapplicable: to that law, those regulations are properly to be considered as a supplement. A knowledge of that law should, for this reason, precede, or at least
accompany the study of those regulations. "‘To know what the common lawwas before the making of any statute,’ says my Lord Coke, in his familiar but expressive manner, ‘is the very lock and key to set open the win dows of the statute.’ To lay the statute laws before one who knows nothing of the common law, amounts, frequently, to much the same thing as laying every third or fourth line of a deed before one who has never seen the residue of it. It would, therefore, be highly eligible, that, under each head of the statute
law, the common law relating to it should be introduced and explained. This would be a useful commentary on the text of the statute law, and would at the same time, form a body of the common law reduced into a just and regular system." Thus, in 1791, but two years after the
Constitution went into operation, we have the first call in America for an orderly statement of the Corpus juris. Continuing this subject, he said : "With such a commentary the digest which I shall have the honor of reporting to the house will be accompanied. The Constitution of the United States and that of Pennsylvania [the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790 mainly drafted by Wilson] compose the su preme law of the land; they contain and they suggest many of the fundamental principles of jurisprudence, and must have a governing and an extensive influence over almost every other part of our legal system. They should, therefore, be explained and understood in the clearest and most distinct manner, and they should be pursued through their numerous and important, though remote and widely ramified effects. Hence it is proper that they also should be attended with a commen tary."
tions of our time than to those of his own:— "The common law is a part, and, by far, the
most important part of her (our) system of jurisprudence. Statute regulations are in tended only for those cases, comparatively
It is well to remember that Wilson received his general education in the Universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh, was the founder of the first law school in America and its first
