date

3 July 1805 Evidence Introd
3 July 1805

Evidence

Introd. Jurisprudential

Ch. Sources

''. Decisions

''. 3. 1. decisions.

Decisions, judgements pronounced by Courts of law in the several individual causes that came before them, from the stock of materials out of which every general proposition of law, in the form of jurisprudential law, is composed: the waste[?] or low[?] [...?] out of which it is distilled, or if to know to which a mechanical figure be clearer than a chemical one the foundation on which it is built.

Towards the composition of a general rule of action, acessible to every one, the aggregate of the decisions of this sort pronounced within a certain tract of country, within a certain space of time, would not, it is evident, unless in so far as the particulars of those were committed to writing, serves to any considerable extent. If every individual in the country were during his whole life long present in person in every one of the judicial Courts included in it, yes. There would then only remain the difficulty of rememberence, together with a few other such difficulties. But howsoever it might be in regard to this universal omnipresence in other countries, in England it would be contrary to law, and therefore inpracticable: this attribute being an object of monopoly in the hands of the King /having been rendered /made/ a monopoly of to the use of their Royal Seal/ by English lawyers.

These difficulties being, likewise by the help of that instrument of English law which knows no difficulties, surmounted, before which all difficulties vanish /there would remain for each man the task /individual man, woman & child the operation/ of building the earth upon its foundations or distilling of the spirit from the waste: and these operations might serve for amusement while depositions were reading or doing any other dull and formal part of the represive causes.
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