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¬competent to embrace them, would have been beside my purpose. -The legal constitution of Armata is of a most singular character; its principal maxims, and even its minutest forms, having come down from a high antiquity, and acquired from thence a claim to reverence and attachment which the wisest institutions very seldom obtain, when men have seen their beginnings and have known their authors however wise. — The more ancient of her laws are unequalled for their clearness and precision, an excellence which may have arisen from their having been in a manner con- quered by her people from their oppressors, which made it necessary to secure indelibly the land-marks of popular independence; and the same state of society produced other cha- racteristics of her jurisprudence, which remain to this hour, and promise to be immortal. ¬The necessity of the utmost clearness in the records of customs and in the language of statutes, inculcated a corresponding strictness ¬in ¬
