general use. From such and similar changes in the modes of business, there arise continually new applications of the principles of law, previously settled; and these become the more important from the fact that each new decision varies but a shade from the previous cases, and is pronounced with that caution which has been termed the sinew of wisdom. "The true idea of the common law seems to be that of an organized system, having its principle of growth within itself, and of which the judges are themselves a part. No new law can ever proceed from them; but the old law is, by their means, in a continual process of further development. Their business, in the most doubtful and unforeseen cases, is still to consider the law as already fixed, to discover and to assert it."1
Though superficial and inconstant students may turn away from the law as a confused and incomprehensible system, the lawyer, who loves his profession, turns, with a feeling akin to exultation, to those superior men who appreciate and speak of it, as the gathered wisdom of a thousand years as the pride of the human intellect a science which, with all its defects, is the collected reason of ages, combining the principles of eternal justice, with the infinite variety of human concerns.
Burton Elem. Comp., p. 3.