[70]
For he who thinks the civil law is to be despised, he is tearing asunder the bonds, not only
of all courts of justice, but of all usefulness and of our common life; but he who finds fault
with the interpreters of the law, if he says that they are ignorant of the law, is only
disparaging the men, and not the civil law itself. If he thinks we ought not to be guided by
learned men, then he is not injuring the men, but he is undermining the laws and justice. So
that you must feel that nothing is to be maintained in a state with such care as the civil
law. In truth, if this is taken away, there is no possibility of any one feeling certain what
is his own property or what belongs to another; there is nothing which can be equal to all
men, or is the same in every case.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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