There is no magic in words. - Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

I take it that the judgment is an essential point in every conviction, let the punishment be fixed or not.

Notwithstanding all the care and anxiety of the persons who frame Acts of Parliament to guard against every event, it frequently turns out that certain cases were not foreseen.

In many cases a party undertakes to prove a custom from the time of legal memory, the reign of Richard the Second; but that proof is generally established by evidence of acts done at a much later period, and frequently no evidence is given beyond the present century.