"I have named treaties as the first class of official instruments to be consulted, because the mention of them occurs unavoidably in every history. Another class of documents, certainly of no less importance, yet much less frequently referred to by popular historians, consists of statutes, ordinances, proclamations, acts, or by whatever various names the laws of each particular period happen to be designated. _That the Statute Book has not been more habitually referred to by writers on English history_, has always seemed to me a matter of surprise. Legislation has not perhaps been so busy in every country as it has been with us; yet every where, and in every period, it has done something. Evils, real or supposed, have always existed, which the supreme power in the nation has endeavoured to remove by the provisions of law. And under the name of laws I would include the acts of councils, which form an important part of the history of European nations during many centuries; provincial councils, as you are aware, having been held very frequently, and their enactments relating to local and particular evils, so that they illustrate history in a very lively manner. Now, in these and all the other laws of any given period, we find in the first place, from their particularity, a great additional help towards becoming familiar with the times in which they were passed; we learn the names of various officers, courts, and processes; and these, when understood, (and I suppose always the habit of reading nothing without taking pains to understand it,) help us, from their very number, to realize the state of things then existing; a lively notion of any object depending on our clearly seeing some of its parts, and the more we people it, so to speak, with distinct images, the more it comes to resemble the crowded world around us. But in addition to this benefit, which I am disposed to rate in itself very highly, every thing of the nature of law has a peculiar interest and value, _because it is the expression of the deliberate mind of the supreme government of society_; and as history, as commonly written, records so much of the passionate and unreflecting part of human nature, we are bound in fairness to acquaint ourselves with its calmer and better part also."