But the English law--oh frightful
reader, don't even think of such a question as its relation in space
and time to the Roman law. That it would stretch to the fixed stars is
plain, but to which of them,--don't now, dear persecuting reader,
unsettle our brains by asking. Enough it is that both in Roman and
English law the rights of neighborhood are past measuring. Has a man a
right to play the German flute, where the partitions are slender, all
day long in the house adjoining to yours? Or, supposing a beneficent
jury (beneficent to _him_) finds this to be no legal nuisance, has
he a right to play it ill? Or, because juries, when tipsy, will wink at
anything, does the privilege extend to the jew's-harp? to the poker and
tongs? to the marrowbones and cleavers? Or, without ranging through the
whole of the _Spectator's_ culinary music, will the bagpipes be
found within benefit of jury law? _War to the knife_ I say, before
we'll submit to _that_. And if the law won't protect us against
it, then we'll turn rebels.
Now this law of neighborhood, this _lex vicinitatis_, amongst the
Romans, righted itself and settled itself, as amongst ourselves it
continues to do, by means of actions or legal suits. If a man poisons
us with smoke, we compel him by an action to eat his own smoke, or (if
he chooses) to make his chimneys eat it.
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