John Eardley Wilmot

"There is no merit in a settlement: it depends upon positive law."

"It is a strange, wild jurisdiction, where the jurors are judges both of law and fact, and ignorant country fellows2 are to determine the nicest points of law."

"The time makes no difference in the reason of the thing."

"You all very well know what deference I always pay, and ever will, to that part of the office of a jury which properly belongs to them. In regard to the law, I have always been as tenacious of the pro…"

"I am not for stirring a single pebble of the common law."

"It is the principle of the common law, that an officer ought not to take money for doing his duty."

"If once we go upon niceties of construction, we shall not know where to stop. For one nicety is made a foundation for another; and that other for a third; and so on, without end."

"An hiatus in government is so detested and abhorred, that the law says, "the King never dies," that there may never be a "cesser" of regal functions for a moment."