To purge the science of the poison introduced into it by him and those who write as he does, I know but of one remedy; and that is by Definition, perpetual and regular definition, the grand prescription of those great physicians of the mind, Helvetius and before him Locke. Useful and legitimate definition which (not like his) explains terms less familiar by terms more familiar, terms more abstract by terms less abstract, terms with a larger assemblage of simple ideas belonging to them, by terms with an assemblage less extensive.

The reader is not to expect to see these Definitions supported by authorities. The writers we have seen hitherto, Coke, Hale, Hawkins, Wood, the list ending with our Author, very good Lawyers as Lawyers went, have been very poor philosophers. Locke (the Father of intellectual science) had not yet spoken to them, or had spoken to them in vain. It is not much wonder if he should have spoken to them in vain. Few works show greater marks of the want of these precautions than his own on Government. They were content as most men are content to ring the changes upon the words they have been used to, without knowing what they meant by them. Nothing has been, nothing will be, nothing ever can be done on the subject of Law that deserves the name of Science, till that universal precept of Locke, enforced, exemplified and particularly applied to the moral branch of science by Helvetius, be steadily pursued, ‘Define your words’.