"I have named treaties as the first class of official
instruments to be consulted, because the mention of them occurs
unavoidably in every history. Another class of documents,
certainly of no less importance, yet much less frequently
referred to by popular historians, consists of statutes,
ordinances, proclamations, acts, or by whatever various names
the laws of each particular period happen to be designated.
_That the Statute Book has not been more habitually referred to
by writers on English history_, has always seemed to me a
matter of surprise. Legislation has not perhaps been so busy in
every country as it has been with us; yet every where, and in
every period, it has done something. Evils, real or supposed,
have always existed, which the supreme power in the nation has
endeavoured to remove by the provisions of law. And under the
name of laws I would include the acts of councils, which form
an important part of the history of European nations during
many centuries; provincial councils, as you are aware, having
been held very frequently, and their enactments relating to
local and particular evils, so that they illustrate history in
a very lively manner. Now, in these and all the other laws of
any given period, we find in the first place, from their
particularity, a great additional help towards becoming
familiar with the times in which they were passed; we learn the
names of various officers, courts, and processes; and these,
when understood, (and I suppose always the habit of reading
nothing without taking pains to understand it,) help us, from
their very number, to realize the state of things then
existing; a lively notion of any object depending on our
clearly seeing some of its parts, and the more we people it, so
to speak, with distinct images, the more it comes to resemble