though of great credit and excellent use in their kind, _yet far
underneath the authority of the Parliament Rolls, reporting the acts,
judgments, and resolutions of that highest court_."[29]

Reports, though of a kind less authentic than the Year Books, to which
Coke alludes, have continued without interruption to the time in which
we live. It is well known that the elementary treatises of law, and the
dogmatical treatises of English jurisprudence, whether they appear under
the names of institutes, digests, or commentaries, do not rest on the
authority of the supreme power, like the books called the Institute,
Digest, Code, and authentic collations in the Roman law. With us
doctrinal books of that description have little or no authority, other
than as they are supported by the adjudged cases and reasons given at
one time or other from the bench; and to these they constantly refer.
This appears in Coke's Institutes, in Comyns's Digest, and in all books
of that nature. To give judgment privately is to put an end to reports;
and to put an end to reports is to put an end to the law of England. It
was fortunate for the Constitution of this kingdom, that, in the
judicial proceedings in the case of ship-money, the Judges did not then
venture to depart from the ancient course. They gave and they argued
their judgment in open court.[30] Their reasons were publicly given, and
the reasons assigned for their judgment took away all its authority. The
great historian, Lord Clarendon, at that period a young lawyer, has told
us that the Judges gave as law from the bench what every man in the hall
knew not to be law.

This publicity, and this mode of attending the decision with its
grounds, is observed not only in the tribunals where the Judges preside
in a judicial capacity, individually or collectively, but where they are
consulted by the Peers on the law in all _writs of error_ brought from