The juridical decisions that were made immediately after the abolition of law would differ little from those during its empire, They would be the decisions of prejudice and habit. But habit, having lost the centre about which it revolved, would diminish in the regularity of its operations.
Those to whom the arbitration of any question was entrusted would frequently recollect that the whole case was committed to their deliberation; and they could not fail occasionally to examine themselves respecting the reason of those principles which had hitherto passed uncontroverted. Their understandings would grow enlarged, in proportion as they felt the importance of their trust, and the unbounded freedom of their investigation. Here then would commence an auspicious order of things, of which no understanding of man at present in existence can foretell the result, the dethronement of implicit faith, and the inauguration of reason and justice.
Some of the conclusions of which this state of things would be the harbinger have been already seen, in the judgement that would be made of offences against the community.(*) Offences arguing a boundless variety in the depravity from which they sprung would no longer be confounded under some general name. Juries would grow as perspicacious in distinguishing, as they are now indiscriminate in confounding, the merit of actions and characters.
The effects of the abolition of law, as it respects the article of property, would not be less auspicious. Nothing can be more worthy of regret than the manner in which property is at present administered, so far as relates to courts of justice. The doubtfulness of titles, the different measures of legislation as they relate to different classes of property, the tediousness of suits, and the removal of causes by appeal from court to court, are a perpetual round of artifice and chicane to one part of the community, and of anguish and misery to another. Who can describe the baffled hopes, the fruitless years of expectation, which thus consume away the strength and the lives of numerous individuals? In vain is the intention of a testator, while the disputes between the legal and the testamentary heir, or a mere quibble upon the phraseology of the bequest, shall supply food for endless controversy. In vain shall be all the assurances I can heap together for the establishment of my right, since the obscurity of records, and the complexity of law , will, almost in all cases, enable an ingenious man, who is at the same time a rich one, to dispute my tenure. The imbecility of law is strikingly illustrated by the vulgar maxim of the importance of possession. Possession could not be thus advantageous were it not for the opportunity that law affords for procrastination and evasion. Property could not be thus disputable were the persons who are called upon to decide concerning it left to the direction of their own understanding. The contention of opposing claims arises more from the jargon in which these claims are recorded than from the complexity of the subject to which they relate.
The intention of a testator is much more easily settled than the quibbles to which the expression of that intention may be subjected. Those who were appointed for the decision of suits would not indeed be such gainers, under the system here delineated, as at present; but every other description of persons that were interested in questions of property would, no doubt, find their advantage.
An observation which cannot have escaped the reader in the perusal of this chapter is that law is merely relative to the exercise of political force, and must perish when the necessity for that force ceases, if the influence of truth do not still sooner extirpate it from the practice of mankind.