Quote#Politics & Power
I have always thought that formerly there was too confined a way of…
Quote byJohn Eardley Wilmot · 1709–1792
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Collins v. Blantern (1767), 2 Wils. 341..
English (original)
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.
— John Eardley Wilmot
More from John Eardley Wilmot
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.