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 APICES JURIS system of inflexible rules. In Peaceable v. sane control, and there is danger sometimes Read (i East. 573) he said: "No person is that the retrocession current should become less disposed than I am to accomodate the itself extreme." law to the particular convenience of the And thus we conclude that the law is case; but I am always glad when I find the greater than its medium of expression; strict law and the justice of the case going greater than the rules of the grammarian, or hand in hand together." Of the same the subtleties of the logomachist. "It is," mind was Lord Cottenham, who declared it says Vattel (Law of Nations, ii, xvii, 273) "a to be right and proper for his court to adapt gross quibble to affix a particular sense to a its practice and course of proceedings to the word, in order to elude the true sense of the existing state of society, and not, by too entire expression." And he illustrates the strict an adherence to forms and rules estab mischief he deprecates by reference to the lished under different circumstances, to conduct of Mahomet who justified his decline to administer justice and to enforce promise to a captive to spare his head by rights for which there is no other remedy." ordering him to be cut in two through the (Wahvorth v. Holt, 4 My. & Cr. 635.) And middle of the body; and that of Tamerlane, Lord Eldon before him had said: "A general who after having induced the garrison of rule, established for the convenient adminis Sebastia to capitulate under the promise of tration of justice, must not be adhered to shedding no blood, fulfilled his pledge by in cases in which, consistently with practical causing all the soldiers to be buried alive. convenience, it is incapable of applica Possibly this manifestation of quibbler's tion. . . . The difficulty must be overcome logic by these men of the sword will be upon this principle, that it is better to go quoted some day as a countenance for the as far as possible towards justice than to German proverb that couples the lawyer deny it altogether. (Cockburn v. Thompson, and the soldier as des Teufels Spielkamradcn. Dante called Aristotle II maestro di color 16 Vesey at pp. 326, 329.) Many other such expressions of judicial che sano and undoubtedly he was raised to opinion concerning the matter in hand might that proud eminence by the poet because of be presented here, but I shall content my his "sweet reasonableness; " and, in sooth, no self without more than the following obser lesser man, of any sphere or calling in life, vations by Coleridge, C. J. (a man not given may hope to attain to his potential measure to extremes if Dizzy's tart epigram upon of wisdom unless he persistently threads the him — "silver tongued mediocrity" — is in reasonable way that divides the extremes any wise to be accepted) in Reg. v. Labou- in all things mundane. chere, 15 Cox C. C. 425: "However much It is only these apices juris whereof we men may honestly endeavor to limit the have spoken here that stand between the exercise of their discretion by definite rule, average lawyer and a full vision of that there must always be room for idiosyncrasy; heavenly thing which Coke, in an unwonted and idiosyncrasy, as the word expresses, — nay, his solitary — outburst of poetic varies with the man. . . . The current of fervor, calls "the gladsome light of Juris legal decision runs often to a point which prudence." is felt to be beyond the bounds of sound and OTTAWA, CANADA, July, 1905.