Issue 2
![handle is hein.journals/amlr4 and id is 213 raw text is: THE
AMERICAN LAW REVIEW.
VOL. IV.] BOSTON, JANUARY, 1870. [No. 2.
PROXIMATE AND REMOTE CAUSE.
In jure non remota causa, sed proxima, spectatur, is the first of
Lord Bacon's Maxims of the Law.
An unsuccessful search for this maxim has been made in the
civil law. It does not appear to have been used in the English
law prior to Lord Bacon's time. As he plainly intimates that
some of the maxims were original with him, this was probably
one of that number.
In the 82d and following Aphorisms of the De Aug-
mentis, he says, a good and careful treatise on the different
rules of law conduces as much as any thing to the certainty
thereof. . . . The collection should consist, not only of the com-
mon and well known rules, but of others, likewise, more subtle and
abstruse, which may be gathered from the harmony of laws and
decided cases, such as are sometimes found in the best tables of
contents; and are in fact the di6tates of reason, which run through
the different matters of law, and act as its balance. . After
a rule has been stated in a concise and solid form of words, let ex-
amples . . . be added. . . . It is a sound precept
not to take the law from the rules, but to make the rule from
the existing law.
And in the Preface to the rules or maxims, for he calls them by
both names, he says, whereas these rules are some of them or-
dinary and vulgar, that now serve but for grounds an4 plain songs
to the more shallow and impertinent sort of arguments; others of
VOL. IV. 14](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/amlr4&div=18&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Issue 2
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Issue 2
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