Russell v. The Mayor of Devon (1788), 1 T. R. 673.
“And the law says, better is a mischief than an inconvenience. By a mischief is meant, when one man or some few men suffer by the hardship of a law, which law is yet useful for the public. But an inconvenience is to have a public law disobeyed or broken, or an offence to go unpunished.”
11 How. St. Tr. 1208.
Trial of Sir Edward Hales (1686)
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Robert Atkyns (judge) 8
Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House … 1621–1710Related quotes

"Freedom of the Park", Tribune (7 December 1945)

“It is a general rule of Judgment, that a mischief should rather be admitted than an inconvenience.”
Devit v. College of Dublin (1720), Gilbert Eq. Ca. 249; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 176.

“When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.”
Part 6, Chapter 3
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)

Grigby v. Oakes (1801), 1 Bos. & Pull. 528.

Speech in Nottingham (18 October 1887) referring to the Mitchelstown Massacre, quoted in The Times (19 October 1887), p. 6.
1880s

1960s, What Has Happened to America? (1967)

"Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels," Polemic (September/October 1946) - Full text online http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/swift/english/e_swift
Context: In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.

Radio and Television Report to the Nation on the Situation at the University of Mississippi (30 September 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Speeches/Radio-and-Television-Report-to-the-Nation-on-the-Situation-at-the-University-of-Mississippi.aspx
1962