relation thereto; and no new rules were devised. With respect to the Canon Law we are enabled to speak positively; for the whole of the Canon Law is found in the _Corpus Juris Canonici_; and the _Corpus Juris Canonici_ nowhere attempts to define connivance, and nowhere lays down any rule by which to determine whether any particular act, or series of acts, amounts to connivance. When a Canonist had to grapple with any question of connivance of new impression, he sought, and never sought but found, ample guidance in the Old and New Testaments and in the Roman Civil Law. Perhaps the learned judges who promulgated this disparagement of the Canon Law have given as little attention to it as John Adams gave to it before he disparaged it in his treatise on the Feudal Law. There is a remark in one of Fielding's novels which perhaps applies here, that, "generally speaking, a man will write better for having some knowledge of what he is writing about;" or words to that effect. The notes penned by Mr. Adams, in his private copy of his treatise, warrant the inference that, after that treatise was printed, he acquired a better understanding of the Canon Law than he had when he wrote it. _Verbum sapienti._ In the _Corpus Juris Canonici_ we find at the end of the decretals a collection of ancient maxims, of general application, culled chiefly from the Roman Law, and promulgated by Pope Boniface VIII. One of these maxims touches this case, and is the one first quoted in this article; and, singular to say, it has been twice quoted with approval by the very court which has put forth this disparagement of the Canon Law.--2 Pickering, 72; 119 Mass., 515. In the same opinion, the court says, "Marriage and divorce here have always been regulated wholly by statute." So far as it relates to divorce, this statement betrays a lack of information touching the divorce legislation of Massachusetts, as a Colony, as a Province and as a Commonwealth, which is simply amazing. It would be much nearer the truth to say that divorce here has always been regulated wholly by the common or unwritten law. Prior to 1658 not a word of Statute Law was enacted touching divorce in the Old Bay Colony, and not a word of Statute Law touching divorce was ever at any time enacted in Plymouth Colony. It is understood, however, that the Court of Assistants, which was established in Massachusetts in 1639, exercised the divorce power before the same was conferred upon it by any express grant; though the records of that court during the period from 1640 to 1673 have been lost, having been burned, as is supposed, with the Town House, in 1747. In 1658 the Court of Assistants was expressly authorized to hear and determine "all causes of divorce;" and nothing can be more certain than that that court granted divorces in many cases.[9]