Bacon's Essays, with annotations by Richard Whately and notes and a glossarial index, by Franklin Fiske Heard.

NOTES. 623
cognizance of by the laws, but the prosecution thereof fall upon a
new case, unprovided for by the laws, we ought by all means to
depart fiom the decrees of law rather than leave offences unpunished.
Compare the opinion of Lord Denman C. J.:It is to our mind a far less mischief to leave a point undecided and
an alleged offender unconvicted, than to break in upon the established course of practice without strong reason. - Regina v. Turk,
10 Q. B. 544.
The principle adopted by Lord Tenterden, said Lord Abinger,
C.B., that a penal law ought to be construed strictly, is not only a
sound one, but the only one consistent with our free institutions.
The interpretation of statutes has always in modern times been highly
favorable to the personal liberty of the subject, and I hope will always
remain so. —Proctor v. Manwaring, 3 B. & Ald. I46. Per Lord
Abinger C.B. in Henderson v. Sherborne, 2 M. & W. 239. Parsons C.J. 4 Mass. 473. Shaw C.J. 6 Cush. 883. Parker C.J.
17 Mass. 362.
The rule that penal laws are to be construed strictly, observed
Chief Justice Marshall, is perhaps not much less old than construction itself. It is founded on the tenderness of the law for the rights
of individuals; and on the plain principle that the power of punishment is vested in the legislative, not in the judicial department. It
is the legislature, not the court, which is to define a crime, and
ordain its punishment. - United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheaton, 95.
p. 550, 1. 24. "It is no grace to a judge first to find that which he
might have heard in due time from the bar." Bacon in his
Speech to Justice Hutton, quoted above, admonishes him,
That you affect not the opinion of Pregnancy and Expedition, by
an impatient and Catching Hearing of the Counsellours at the Barre.
- Resuscitatio, p. 93.
p. 552, 1. 25. "Judges ought, above all, to remember the conclusion of
the Roman Twelve Tables, etc." In the case of Egerton v.
Earl Brownlow, 4 House of Lords Cases, 152, which is the
leading ca-e in regard to the distinction between conditions precedent and conditions subsequent. Pollock C. B. remarked as
follows:
In a perfectly new case (a case altogether primae impressionis) I
think the Judges are bound to hold fast to the principles of the com