There is no danger of this being carried too far; as Chancellor Kent appears to have apprehended that it might be. There is not much danger of erring upon the side of too little law. The world is notoriously too much governed. Legislators almost invariably aim at accomplishing too much. Representative democracies, so far from being exempt from this vice, are from their nature peculiarly liable to it. Annual legislatures--with generally two-thirds new members every year--increase the evil. The members fall into the common mistake, that their commission is to act, not to decide in the first place whether action is necessary. They would be blamed and ridiculed, if they adjourned without doing something important. Hence the annual volumes of our Acts of Assembly are fearfully growing in bulk. It is not merely of the extent of local legislation, the vast multiplication of charters for every imaginable purpose, or of the constantly recurring tampering with the most general subjects of interest, finance, revenue, banking, education, pauperism, &c., that there is reason to complain; but scarce a session of one of our legislatures passes without rash and ill-considered alterations in the civil code, vitally affecting private rights and relations. Such laws are frequently urged by men, having causes pending, who dare not boldly ask that a law should be made for their particular case, but who do not hesitate to impose upon the legislature by plausible arguments the adoption of some general rule, which by a retrospective construction, will have the same operation. It is a most monstrous practice, which lawyers are bound by the true spirit of their oath of office, and by a comprehensive view of their duty to the Constitution and laws, which they bear so large a part as well in making as administering, to discountenance and prevent. It is to be feared, that sometimes it is the counsel of the party who recommends and carefully frames the bill, which, when enacted into a law, is legislatively to decide the cause. It is time that a resort to such a measure should be regarded in public estimation as a flagrant case of professional infidelity and misconduct.