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 ¬used to depart as little as possible from the principles which gave them birth, because they are the sources of obedience and contentment. — I thought I saw throughout Armata strong symptoms that this salutary precaution had been overlooked. ¬Nothing indeed is more painful than to ob- serve the inevitable difficulties and dangers at- tendant on the most perfect institutions, when cases accumulate, which demand new rules, and when the decisions upon the old ones are rapidly increasing — the science of jurisprudence then becomes abstrusely complicated, and the law, in- stead of being any longer a plain and simple rule of action for the people, becomes too difficult even for the judges to comprehend. — Expense, delay, and uncertainty, cannot but follow in proportion, till the courts, which should be looked up to as sanctuaries, are beheld only with a salu- tary year. ¬I cannot perhaps better describe the extent ¬to ¬