To settle property, to suppress false claims, and to regulate the administration of civil and criminal justice are attempts so difficult and so useful, that I shall willingly suspend or contract the history of battles and sieges, to give a larger account of this pacifick enterprise.

That the king of Prussia has considered the nature and the reasons of laws, with more attention than is common to princes, appears from his dissertation on the Reasons for enacting and repealing Laws:  a piece which yet deserves notice, rather as a proof of good inclination than of great ability; for there is nothing to be found in it more than the most obvious books may supply, or the weakest intellect discover.  Some of his observations are just and useful; but upon such a subject who can think without often thinking right?  It is, however, not to be omitted, that he appears always propense towards the side of mercy.  “If a poor man,” says he, “steals in his want a watch, or a few pieces, from one to whom the loss is inconsiderable, is this a reason for condemning him to death?”

He regrets that the laws against duels have been ineffectual; and is of opinion, that they can never attain their end, unless the princes of Europe shall agree not to afford an asylum to duellists, and to punish all who shall insult their equals, either by word, deed, or writing.  He seems to suspect this scheme of being chimerical.  “Yet why,” says he, “should not personal quarrels be submitted to judges, as well as questions of possession? and why should not a congress be appointed for the general good of mankind, as well as for so many purposes of less importance?”

He declares himself with great ardour against the use of torture, and by some misinformation charges the English that they still retain it.

It is, perhaps, impossible to review the laws of any country without discovering many defects and many superfluities.  Laws often continue, when their reasons have ceased.  Laws made for the first state of the society continue unabolished, when the general form of life is changed.  Parts of the judicial procedure, which were, at first, only accidental, become, in time, essential; and formalities are accumulated on each other, till the art of litigation requires more study than the discovery of right.

The king of Prussia, examining the institutions of his own country, thought them such as could only be amended by a general abrogation, and the establishment of a new body of law, to which he gave the name of the Code Frederique, which is comprised in one volume of no great bulk, and must, therefore, unavoidably contain general positions to be accommodated to particular cases by the wisdom and integrity of the courts.  To embarrass justice by multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by confidence in judges, seem to be the opposite rocks on which all civil institutions have been wrecked, and between which legislative wisdom has never yet found an open passage.