LAW-As a Science of methodized and artificial
Equity, abolished in France.
A Government of the nature of that fet up at our very
door (France) has never been hitherto seen or even
imagined in Europe. What our relation to it will be
cannot be judged by other relations. It is a serious
thing to have a connection with a people who live only
under positive, arbitrary, and changeable institutions;
and those not perfected nor supplied, nor explained
by any common acknowledged rule of moral science.
I remember that in one of my last conversations with
the late Lord Camden, we were struck much in the
same manner with the abolition in France of the law,
as a science of methodized and artificial equity. France,
since her revolution, is under the sway of a fect, whose
leaders have deliberately, at one stroke, demolished
the whole body of that jurisprudence which France
had pretty nearly in common with other civilized coun-
tries. In that jurisprudence were contained the ele-
ments and principles of the law of nations, the great
ligament of mankind. With the law they have of
course destroyed all seminaries in which jurifprudence
was taught, as well as all the corporations established
for its conservation. I have not heard of any coun-
try, whether in Europe or Afia, or even in Africa, on
this fide of Mount Atlas, which is wholly without fome
fuch colleges and fuch corporations, except France.
No man, in a public or private concern, can divine
by what rule or principle her judgments are to be
directed; nor is there to be found a Professor in any
University, or a Practitioner in any Court, who will
hazard an opinion of what is or is not law in France,
in any cafe whatever. They have not only annulled
all their old treaties, but they have renounced the law
of nations, from whence treaties have their force.