It is not the function of a Court of justice to enforce or give effect — Equity

"I think that common law is better than equity."

"A Court of equity ought to follow the law."

"Nor doth the law of the land speak against him. But that and equity ought to join hand in hand, in moderating and restraining all extremities and hardships. . . . They both aim at one and the same end, which is, to do right."

"I do not think that Courts of equity ought to go otherwise than the Courts of law."

"I have always thought that formerly there was too confined a way of thinking in the Judges of the common law Courts, and that Courts of equity have risen by the Judges not properly applying the principles of the common law, being too narrowly governed by old cases and maxims, which have too much prevented the public from having the benefit of the common law."

"Equity is no part of the law, but a moral virtue, which qualifies, moderates, and reforms the rigor, hardness and edge of the law, and is a universal truth. It does also assist the law, where it is defective and weak in the constitution (which is the life of the law), and defends the law from crafty evasions, delusions and mere subtleties, invented and contrived to evade and elude the common law, whereby such as have undoubted right are made remediless. And thus is the office of equity to protect and support the common law from shifts and contrivances against the justice of the law. Equity, therefore, does not destroy the law, nor create it, but assists it."