" While you talk, he's gone!

And go he should if he was the Devil himself until he broke the law!

     So now you'd give the Devil benefit of the law!

Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

    I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? The country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - Man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? ........."

"Where there is hunger, law is not regarded;
and where the law is not regarded, there will be hunger. "

(Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Poor Richard's Almanac, 1755)

To me the law seems like a sort of maze through which a client must be led to safety, a collection of reefs, rocks and underwater hazards through which he or she must be piloted.

(John Mortimer, Clinging to the Wreckage, 1982,)