2. Our Common Law comes from England, and originated there in custom. It
is often called the unwritten law, because unwritten in origin, though
there are now many books describing it. Its principles originated as
habits of the people, five hundred, eight hundred, years ago, perhaps some
of them back in the time when the half-savage Saxons landed on the shores
of England. When the time came that the government, through its courts,
punished the breach of a custom, from that time the custom was a law. And
so the English people acquired these laws, one after another, just as they
were acquiring at the same time the habits of making roads, using forks at
table, manufacturing, meeting in Parliament, using firearms, and all the
other habits of civilization. When the colonists came to America, they
brought the English Common Law with them, not in a book, but in their
minds, a part of their life, like their religion.

--Clark: _The Government_.


3. Accuracy is always to be striven for but it can never be attained. This
fact is only fully realized by scientific workers. The banker can be
accurate because he only counts or weighs masses of metal which he assumes
to be exactly equal. The Master of the Mint knows that two coins are never
exactly equal in weight, although he strives by improving machinery and
processes to make the differences as small as possible. When the utmost
care is taken, the finest balances which have been constructed can weigh 1
lb. of a metal with an uncertainty less than the hundredth part of a
grain. In other words, the weight is not accurate, but the inaccuracy is
very small. No person is so stupid as not to feel sure that the height of
a man he sees is between 3 ft. and 9 ft.; some are able by the eye to