A code, or not a code—that is the question!1
Whether ‘tis better in the law to suffer
The flaws and defects of numerous practiques
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by revising, end them!—To prune—To change—
No more! Any by a code to say we end
Abuses, and the thousand natural pests
The law is heir to: ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.—To prune—To change—
To change, and perhaps destroy! Ay, there’s the rub!
For in that sleep of law what ills may come,
When we have shuffled off the dreadful plague,
must give us a pause. There’s the respect
That makes precedents of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and smarts of law,
The high judge’s frown; the lawyer’s charges;
The pangs of satisfying debts; the law’s delay;
The insolence of sheriffs, and the spurns
That patient merit of the policemen takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare reform? Who would judges pay,
To groan and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after change—
(Those undiscovered evils, from whose ruin
no government returns)—puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus wisdom does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprizes of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn away,
And lose the name of action.
1
An unknown Lawyer, “Codification”, 2 United States Law Intelligencer and Review 1830, p. 268.