24 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. being logical consequences of their imperfect principles, necessarily partake of the same defects." ^ At the present day, such maxims are not safe guides. If the foregoing criticisms are well founded, how shall we account for the fact that various objectionable maxims keep their place in the books, and are daily quoted by eminent jurists. One answer to this inquiry is suggested by the remark of Sir Henry Maine, that " legal phraseology is the part of the law which is the last to alter." ^ The most ardent law reformers, in spite of the Scriptural warning against putting new wine into old bottles, some- times prefer to give a new interpretation to an old phrase rather than attempt the almost " impossible task of blotting it out of our jurisprudence."^ Even Austin, who did not hesitate to apply to some existing terms such an epithet as "jargon," is not incHned to unnecessarily *' engage in a toilsome struggle with the current of ordinary speech." * " Mr. Austin," says John Stuart Mill, " always recognizes, as entitled to great consideration, the custom of lan- guage, — the associations which mankind already have with terms ; insomuch that when a name already stands for a particular notion (provided that, when brought out into distinct consciousness, the notion is not found to be self-contradictory), the definition should rather aim at fixing that notion, and rendering it determinate, than attempt to substitute another notion for it." ^ " What," it may be asked, ** does all this criticism amount to but a mere restatement of the trite saying, Omnis definitio in jure peri- culosa est ? What objections are there to maxims, what dangers connected with their use, which do not apply with equal force to all legal definitions, and indeed to all attempts to state the law in any form? " We reply that if the difference is only one of degree, it does not follow that such difference is unimportant, or that it does not call for serious warning. Undoubtedly all jurists who undertake to formulate statements of law, no matter in what shape, must labor under great difficulties, arising {ifiter alia) from the combined effect of " the poverty of language " and the subtlety of human nature." But there are especial reasons why the dangers in the use of maxims are practically much greater than the dangers when the law is stated in other modes. And of these reasons, two, at least, deserve particular mention. 1 Austin on Jurisprudence, 3d ed. 1116. * i Austin on Jurisprudence, 3d ed. 93. 2 Maine's Ancient Law, ist Am. ed. 327. » 118 Edinburgh Review, 453. 8 See 13 Criminal Law Magazine, 832.
