It is remarkable, that the orator who took the most statesmanlike view of the subject was old Maynard.

In the civil conflicts of fifty eventful years he had learned that questions affecting the highest interests of the commonwealth were not to be decided by verbal cavils and by scraps of Law French and Law Latin; and, being by universal acknowledgment the most subtle and the most learned of English jurists, he could express what he felt without the risk of being accused of ignorance and presumption.

He scornfully thrust aside as frivolous and out of place all that blackletter learning, which some men, far less versed in such matters than himself, had introduced into the discussion.

"We are," he said, "at this moment out of the beaten path.

If therefore we are determined to move only in that path, we cannot move at all.