"These laws must be construed according to the intention of them: and the circumstances of things at the time of enacting them ought to be taken into consideration."

“The husband is not liable for the criminal conduct of his wife.”

“God forbid that the rights of the innocent should be lost and destroyed by the offence of individuals.”

“I have always thought that formerly there was too confined a way of thinking in the Judges of the common law Courts, and that Courts of equity have risen by the Judges not properly applying the principles of the common law, being too narrowly governed by old cases and maxims, which have too much prevented the public from having the benefit of the common law.”

“Settlements are supposed in law to be indifferent to paupers; though they are often in fact desirous of one in preference to another.”

“We cannot explore any mode of sentencing a man to imprisonment, who is imprisoned already, but by tacking one imprisonment to the other.”

“A course of precedents and judicial proceedings in Courts of justice make the law: it would be endless to cite cases upon it. A course of practice for a few years has been held to controul an Act of Parliament.”