and good men are often silent for fear of modesty, who in good time may
declare themselves. Those who have any property to lose are sufficiently
alarmed already at the progress of these public violences and violations
to which every man's dwelling, person, and property are hourly exposed.
Numbers of such valuable men and good subjects are ready and willing to
declare themselves for the support of government in due time, if
government does not fling away its own authority. LORD MANSFIELD.

From "The Right of England to Tax America."

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In jurisprudence, which reluctantly admits any new adjunct, and counts
in its train a thousand champions ready to rise in defense of its
formularies and technical rules, the victory has been brilliant and
decisive. The civil and the common law have yielded to the pressure of
the times, and have adopted much which philosophy and experience have
recommended, altho it stood upon no test of the pandects and claimed no
support from the feudal polity. Commercial law, at least so far as
England and America are concerned, is the creation of the eighteenth
century. It started into life with the genius of Lord Mansfield, and,
gathering in its course whatever was valuable in the earlier institutes
of foreign countries, had reflected back upon them its own superior
lights, so as to become the guide and oracle of the commercial world.
JOSEPH STORY.

From "Characteristics of the Age."

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