Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1st ed, 1768, vol III).djvu/61

Ch. 4. idiocy, lunacy, and the like, do iue; and for which it is always open to the ubject:, who may there at any time demand and have, ex debito jutitiae, any writ that his occasions may call for. Thee writs (relating to the buines of the ubject) and the returns to them were, according to the implicity of antient times, originally kept in a hamper, in hanaperio; and the others (relating to uch matters wherein the crown is immediately or mediately concerned) were preerved in a little ack or bag, in parva baga; and thence hath arien the ditinction of the hanaper office, and petty bag office, which both belong to the common law court in chancery.

{[sc|But}} the extraordinary court, or court of equity, is now become the court of the greatet judicial conequence. This ditinction between law and equity, as adminitred in different courts, is not at preent known, nor eems to have ever been known, in any other country at any time : and yet the difference of one from the other, when adminitred by the ame tribunal, was perfectly familiar to the Romans ; the jus praetorium, or dicretion of the praetor, being ditinct: from the leges or tanding laws : but the power of both centered in one and the ame magistrate, who was equally inructed to pronounce the rule of law, and to apply it to particular caes by the principles of equity. With us too, the aula regia, which was the upreme court of judicature, undoubtedly adminitered equal jutice according to the rules of both or either, as the cae might chance to require: and, when that was broken to pieces, the idea of a court of equity, as ditinguihed from a court of law, did not ubit in b Thus Cicero; "jam illis promijps non cjje jiandiim, quis non <videt, quac con fins quis metu et deceptus a'olo fromiferil? quae qtiidcm plerum/jue jure praetorio liberantur, " nonnaila legibus" Oflic. /. I . Vol. III.