as to require the utmost activity of justice, and vigilance of caution, to withstand its prevalence:  and the method by which a man may entitle himself to legal intromission, is so open and so facile, that to neglect it is a proof of fraudulent intention; for why should a man omit to do (but for reasons which he will not confess) that which he can do so easily, and that which he knows to be required by the law?  If temptation were rare, a penal law might be deemed unnecessary.  If the duty, enjoined by the law, were of difficult performance, omission, though it could not be justified, might be pitied.  But in the present case, neither equity nor compassion operate against it.  An useful, a necessary law is broken, not only without a reasonable motive, but with all the inducements to obedience that can be derived from safety and facility.

I, therefore, return to my original position, that a law, to have its effects, must be permanent and stable.  It may be said, in the language of the schools, “lex non recipit majus et minus;” we may have a law, or we may have no law, but we cannot have half a law.  We must either have a rule of action, or be permitted to act by discretion and by chance.  Deviations from the law must be uniformly punished, or no man can be certain when he shall be safe.

That from the rigour of the original institution this court has sometimes departed, cannot be denied.  But as it is evident that such deviations as they, make law uncertain, make life unsafe, I hope, that of departing from it there will now be an end; that the wisdom of our ancestors will be treated with due reverence; and that consistent and steady decisions will furnish the people with a rule of action, and leave fraud and fraudulent intromissions no future hope of impunity or escape[2].

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Lord Kames, in his Historical Law Tracts.

[2] “This masterly argument on vitious intromission, after being
    prefaced and concluded with some sentences of my own,” says Mr.
    Boswell, “and garnished with the usual formularies, was actually
    printed, and laid before the lords of session, but without
    success.”—­Boswell, ii. 207.

ON LAY PATRONAGE IN THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.

[Dr. Johnson has treated this delicate and difficult subject with unusual acuteness.  As Mr. Boswell has recorded the argument, we will make use, once more, of his words to introduce it; observing, by the way, that it did not convince Mr. Boswell’s own mind, who was himself a lay patron.  “I introduced a question which has been much agitated in the church of Scotland, whether the claim of lay patrons to present ministers to parishes be well founded; and, supposing it to be well founded, whether it ought to be exercised without the concurrence of the people?  That church is composed of a series of judicatures;