date

3 July 1805 Evidence Introd
3 July 1805

Evidence

Introd. Jurisprudential

Ch. Sources

3. ''. 3. 1. decisions

Not that in the process above described there would, if particular cases were selected for the purpose and taken one by one in every instance be any thing beyond the reach of human powers. So far from it on the contrary, under these limitations, there is nothing more in it that what dogs, not to speak of other animals, are found fully competent to. If you make /making/ a point, as Louise the 14th did, of feeding your dog with your own hand, and for that purpose of keeping it constantly on a particular shelf within your own reach, you do not choose that the dog should come at it, /the meat/ but when you choose to give it to him, what you will do of course /you take for this instruction will be/ vis - as often as he makes any attempt to reach the shelf and help himself, you will give him a good blow. This process being repeated a competent number of times, your dog will at the end of it have become pro tanta a juryist or common lawyer, having acquired a general idea of theft, and of the law by which in virtue of the attendant punishment, the act of taking or attempting to take him in /when accompanied with/ these circumstances been converted into an offence, which this in the form of jurisprudential law has been inacted by you against theft. And from the same way the corpus juri canind may be, as in truth /made, as in fact/ it every day is made by legislators in no small numbers made to receive not inconsiderable extent. Not that, after all this instruction and consequent generalisation the dog would be less at a loss /puzzled/ to give so timorous a definition of theft in words /in general on [...?], general words/ than Lord Hale acknowledged himself to be, which he was hanging men for theft: but to general words are disquisition has not yet got to that length but general ideas are all that in question as yet general words, another object to which [...?] for our [...?].
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    Governed in this way, men are governed precisely upon /on/ the same footing /way/ and by the same means as dogs are governed.

    On a certain shelf in a certain room are kept provisions that be in readiness for family use. As often as the dog is seen taking or attempting to take from off that shelf without permission, any part of its contents, he is beaten for it. In this way, is formed in the mind of the dog the idea of that offence which we call theft and of the law, by which in the way of jurisprudential law (jus) that offence stands prohibited. In the memory and imagination of the dog the place of a definition is supplied by the association formed between the idea of the spot in question, the idea of the act of taking the sort of article in question from that spot, and the idea of the stroke of the stick, of the previous threat conveyed by the previous holding up of the stick, and of the pain sustained in consequence. As often as the master or any other person in the family, after taking up though it be from that same shelf /[...?]/, a piece of meat or other provision, holds it out or loses it to the dog, who eats it accordingly, no beating takes place, no threatening, nor consequently any idea of theft.
  • Title: [3 July 1805 Evidence Introd]
    Description: 3 July 1805

    Evidence

    Introd. Jurisprudential

    Ch. sources

    4 ''. 3. 1. Decisions

    Having a certain degree of affection for your dog (else why should you be at all that /this/ [?] about him?) it is necessity nothing less than necessity, that reconciles you is to so painful a mode of teaching him. Were he as capable of reading a printed definition of the law of theft as he is of framing a martial one, would you have the barbarity of teaching /inhumanity to teach/ the law of theft to your dog in the same barbarous way as that in which so many English lawyers delight to teach it to their fellow creatures? I suppose you a man of common humanity, and therefore as you have neither fees to get by /nor reputation[?] of science to get by drawing or quartering [...?] against the dog, nor praise of many for pardoning him I answer without humiliation for you in the negative.
  • Title: [15 March 1808 Note Jurisprudential]
    Description: 15 March 1808

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    From all mischief flowing from this source the Defendant's side is also exempt. When after demand made, i.e. a suit begun, that suit is afterwards desisted, vexation, correspondent in magnitude to the duration of the suit has indeed been experienced on the Defendant's side. But in this case it is by the demand that the vexation has been produced, and not by the desistment: by the commencement and continuance of the suit, not by the termination of it.

    V. Non-Justiciability: on the part of the Plaintiff: he being the individual in this case as in the opposite.

    Without definition any the least approach to certainty is impossible. In his own station, the Judge is unable [to] give any such thing as a definition: in the station of a legislator he will not. In the English Statute book a definition would be an innovation: reason sufficient with lawyers their accomplices and their dupes, for keeping out of the Statute book this as well as any thing else by which the ends of justice can be promoted.

    a Under jurisprudential law Judges govern the people, as the people govern their dogs. On pretence of disobedience to a law never promulgated, nor so much as made, man or the dog is whipt or hanged, and what it is for, the man, like the dog, is left to find out as he can. Gentibus ut cunibus, pro verbis verbera pangant[?]. Of all offences that have been created into crimes theft is the most common: so much so, as to be more frequently exemplified than all the others put together. Of the thousands and myriads of thousands that, in England, have been hanged for theft, not a man was ever hanged to whom it had been possible to know by what differences in respect of punishment different species of theft had been created and distinguished: not a man, to whom by any thing that had been done by lawyers for his instruction, it was possible for him so much as to have learnt what theft was. From the best definition that ever was given by a lawyer to learn what theft is, it is no more possible to a man than to his dog.

    Consciousness of want of title, the circumstance which unsophisticated common sense presents to men, and even to dogs, as the principal feature in the composition of this crime, has never been recognized in that character or any book of laws. Him[?] who understood so well what witchcraft was, knew not what theft was (so he was honest enough to confess) knew not how to give any such definition of it, as should render it possible for a man to distinguish what is not theft from what is: But this ignorance did not hinder him from hanging men for being thieves, any more than from hanging women for being witches. +3