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William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield Quotes
1705–1793 Scotland
William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, SL, PC (2 March 1705 – 20 March 1793), better known as Lord Mansfield, was a British barrister, politician and judge noted for his reform of English law. He served as a Member of Parliament for Boroughbridge, where he was noted for his "great powers of eloquence" and described as "beyond comparison the best speaker" in the House of Commons.
Scotland Judges Politicians Also known as: Lord Mansfield
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If I was wrong, I should think it more honourable to acknowledge and rectify any error that I should have committed, than to justify and defend it.
It is proved that in passing . . . accounts, the accountant took his fees, while others did the business, which I fear is too often the case of public officers.
It is safest to keep to the Statute.
We must go upon general principles.
I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery that falsehood and malice can invent, or the credulity a deluded population can swallow.
Let a will be ever so fair, a slip in form is fatal: which is a certain mischief. But if a will be fraudulent, though it is allowed to be formal, it may be set aside upon evidence and circumstances.
There is a great difference between the Purview of an Act of Parliament, and a Proviso in an Act of Parliament.
Acts of Parliament are the works of the legislature, and the publication of them has always belonged to the King, as the Executive Part, and as the Head and Sovereign.
The law does not consist in particular instances, though it is explained by particular instances and rules, but the law consists of principles, which govern specific and individual cases, as they happen to arise.
Flight, in criminal cases, is itself a crime. If an innocent man flies for treason or felony, he forfeits all his goods and chattels. Outlawry, in a capital case, is as a conviction for the crime: And many men who never were tried have been executed upon the outlawry.
To be sure the Court regularly adheres to regular judgments, if in the support of the merits and justice; but if against the merits and justice they always get rid of the mere formality of them; but they do it upon terms.
As mathematical and absolute certainty is seldom to be attained in human affairs, reason and public utility require that judges and all mankind in forming their opinions of the truth of facts should be regulated by the superior number of the probabilities on the one side or the other whether the amount of these probabilities be expressed in words and arguments or by figures and numbers.
Without an express authority, so strong as not to be gotten over, we ought not to determine a case so much against reason, as that the Parliament should be obliged to interfere to set it right.
The limitation of suits is founded in public convenience; and attended with so much utility, that Courts of Equity adopt this Statute as a positive rule, and apply it, by parity of reason, to cases not within it.
Damages are designed not only as a satisfaction to the injured person, but likewise as a punishment to the guilty, to deter from any such proceeding for the future, and as a proof of the detestation of the jury to the action itself.
Though a definition, or maxim in law, without an exception, it is said, is hardly to be found, yet this I take to be a maxim, without an exception: ad quœstionem juris non respondent juratores; ad quœstionem facti non respondent judices.
It has been quaintly said "that the reason why money cannot be followed is, because it has no ear-mark ": But this is not true. The true reason is, upon account of the currency of it: it cannot be recovered after it has passed in currency.
The substantial rules of pleading are founded in strong sense, and in the soundest and closest logic; and so appear, when well understood and explained : Though, by being misunderstood and misapplied, they are often made use of as instruments of chicane.
Precedent indeed may serve to fix principles, which for certainty's sake are not suffered to be shaken, whatever might be the weight of the principle, independent of precedent. But precedent, though it be evidence of law, is not law in itself; much less the whole of the law.
The law would be a strange science if it rested solely upon Cases; and if after so large an increase of Commerce, Arts and Circumstances accruing, we must go to the time of Rich. I. to find a Case and see what is law.
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