University of Virginia Library

TO THOMAS S. GRIMKE

I return my thanks, Sir for a copy of a Report on
the question of reducing the Laws of S. Carolina to
the form of a Code.

The Report, presents certainly very able & interesting
views of the subject, and can leave no doubt of
the practicability & utility of such a digest of the
Statute law as would prune it of its redundancies of
every sort, clear it of its obscurities, and introduce
whatever changes in its provisions might improve its
general character. Within a certain extent, the
remark is applicable to the unwritten law also, which
must be susceptible of many improvements not yet
made by Legislative enactments. How far a reduction
of the entire body of unwritten Law into a
systematic text be practicable & eligible, is the only
question on which doubts can be entertained. And
here there seems to be no insuperable difficulty, in
classifying & defining every portion of that law,
provided the terms employed be at once sufficiently
general & sufficiently technical; the first requisite,
avoiding details too voluminous, the last avoiding
new terms, always liable more or less till made technical
by practice, to discordant interpretations. It
has been observed that in carrying into effect the
several codified digests not excepting the Napoleon,
the most distinguished of them, the former resort in
the Tribunals has been necessarily continued to the
course of precedents and other recognized authorities.
What indeed would the Justinian Code be without
the explanatory comments & decrees which make a
part of the Civil Law?

One of the earliest acts of the Virginia Legislature,
after the State became Independent provided for a
revisal of the Laws in force, with a view to give it a

systematic character accommodated to the Republican
form of Govt. and a meliorated spirit of Legislation.
The task was committed to five Com̃issioners,
and executed by three of them, Mr. Jefferson, Mr.
Wythe & Mr. Pendleton. In a consultative meeting
of the whole number, the question was discussed
whether the Common Law at large, or such parts
only as were to be changed, should be reduced to a
text law. It was decided by a majority that an
attempt to embrace the whole was unadvisable; and
the work, as executed, was accordingly limited to
the Old British Statutes admitted to be in force,
to the Colonial Statutes, to the penal law in such parts
as needed reform, and to such new laws as would be
favorable to the intellectual & moral condition of
the community. In the changes made in the penal
law, the Revisors were unfortunately misled into
some of the specious errors of Beccaria, then in the
zenith of his fame as a Philosophical Legislator.

The work employed the Commissioners several
years, and was reported in upwards of a hundred
Bills, many of which were readily, as others have
been from time to time passed into laws; the residue
being a fund still occasionally drawn on in the course
of Legislation. The work is thought to be particularly
valuable as a model of statutory composition.
It contains not a superfluous word, and invariably
prefers technical terms & phrases having a settled
meaning where they are applicable. The Copies of
the Report printed were but few, and are now very
rare, or I should be happy in forwarding one in return

for your politeness. I may mention however
that many years ago, at the request of Judge H.
Pendleton of S. Carolina, then engaged in revising
the laws of the State, I lent him a Copy, which not
having been returned, may possibly be traced to
the hands into which his death threw it.

Be pleased to accept, Sir, the expression of my
great respect.