I am not for stirring a single pebble of the common law

There is no merit in a settlement: it depends upon positive law.

The time makes no difference in the reason of the thing.

If once we go upon niceties of construction, we shall not know where to stop. For one nicety is made a foundation for another; and that other for a third; and so on, without end.

Nothing could be of worse consequence, than that an officer of the Court should combine with a criminal to frustrate the sentence of the Court.

It is the principle of the common law, that an officer ought not to take money for doing his duty.

It is a strange, wild jurisdiction, where the jurors are judges both of law and fact, and ignorant country fellows2 are to determine the nicest points of law.