Quote#Politics & Power
And the law says, better is a mischief than an inconvenience. By a…
Quote byRobert Atkyns · 1621–1710
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Trial of Sir Edward Hales (1686), 11 How. St. Tr. 1208..
English (original)
And the law says, better is a mischief than an inconvenience. By a mischief is meant, when one man or some few men suffer by the hardship of a law, which law is yet useful for the public. But an inconvenience is to have a public law disobeyed or broken, or an offence to go unpunished.
— Robert Atkyns
More from Robert Atkyns
There is no providence or wisdom of man, nor of any council of men that can foresee and provide for all events and variety of cases, that will or may arise upon the making of a new law.
It is the more fit for the Supreme Court to give some certain rule in it that may regulate and guide the judgment of inferior Courts.
The best men are but men, and are sometimes transported with passion.
The laws alone are they that always speak with all persons, high or low, in one and the same impartial voice. The law knows no favourites.
We ourselves of the present age, chose our common law, and consented to the most ancient Acts of Parliament, for we lived in our ancestors 1,000 years ago, and those ancestors are still living in us.
Pleading is an exact setting forth of the truth.