CODIFICATION OF THE LAW.

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before adverted, are a monument of imperishable glory to thewisdom of the age in which they were digested; they gave toRome and to the civilized world a system of civil maxims, whichhas not been surpassed in usefulness and equity; they superseded,at once, the immense collections of former times, and left them toperish in oblivion. Several of the United States, too, havedigested their Statute Law to their satisfaction, and in this wayhave made a successful beginning of an undertaking, so desirableto be brought to a completion. The modern code of France,moreover, embracing, as it does, the entire elements of her juris-prudence in the rights, duties, relations, and obligations of civillife ; the exposition of the rules of contracts of every sort, in-cluding commercial contracts ; the descent, distribution, and reg-ulation of property ; the definition and punishment of crimes ;the ordinary and extraordinary police of the country ; and theenumeration of the whole detail of civil and criminal practice andprocess, is, perhaps, the most finished and methodical treatise oflaw, that the world ever saw. This code forms, also, the law ofHolland, and, with comparatively few alterations, has been adopt-ed by the State of Louisiana, as its fundamental law.

The opinion is manifestly gaining ground, that it would bepracticable to incorporate into a uniform code, along with theStatute Law, those numerous principles of the Common Law,which are definitely settled and well known, and which, withoutbeing reduced to the form of a positive and written text, havebeen and still are left to be applied by the courts, whenever theoccurrence of cases requires it. Of this difficult question, it isfortunately not required of me to hazard an opinion, as I can citethe judgment of another, much more entitled to be heard on thissubject than myself. Of the modern code of France, Mr. Jus-tice Story says, “ The materials of it were to be sought foramong an almost infinite variety of provincial usages and custom-ary laws ; and were far more difficult to reduce into system, thanany which belong to the common law. It is left to the futurejurists of our country and England to accomplish for the commonlaw, what has been so successfully demonstrated to be a practicableproblem in the jurisprudence of other nations ; a task, which themodest but wonderful genius of Sir William Jones did not scru-