date

May 1805 Evidence Ends.
May 1805

Evidence

Ends.

Ch. Conflict

' Practical

You send your servant out on a journey: five pound would have conveyed him out and home, and he brings you in a charge of fifty. Would the account be sufficient were he to say to you Sir, expense is necessary? Yet such is the account which the public has the goodness to accept from so extensive and expensive a class of its servants.
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  • Title: [May 1805 Evidence Ends]
    Description: May 1805

    Evidence

    Ends

    Ch. Conflict

    ' Practical?

    That schism[?], such as it is, is the stronghold of that system of procedure, which we shall have occasion to mark out for merited public indignation, under the name of the technical.

    We shall then see in a further point of view, the importance of the epithets necessary and preponderant, but particularly of the epithet necessary, employed for applying the limitation of description of the incidental ends of procedure: avoidance of vexation, expense and delay in so far as not necessary and where preponderant.

    In every instance, to the avoidance of misdecision, a certain increase of vexation, expense and delay is necessary. Such on every occasion is the plea of the man of law in favour of the quantum, for the measures of those evils to which on that occasion he has given birth. Yes vexation, expense and delay are necessary: yes in a certain quantity, on every occasion, they are all necessary: but the quantum to which on this or that occasion you have introduced /given birth/ is it on the whole? and without distinction or deduction necessary? if it is sois what you should to prove. That they are all of them, and every particle of them so much evil, is too evident to bear denial: to introduce evil is an operation necessary to all government: but on every occasion in which any particle of it is either introduced or suffered, two propositions require to be made out by him by whom it is introduced, suffered or descended: that the good, for the sake of which the evil is introduced or suffered is with reference to the evil preponderant in value: and that to the purchase of the good, the evil is necessary to the purchase of the good.
  • Title: [23 April 1805 Evidence Ends]
    Description: 23 April 1805

    Evidence

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    Ch Conflict

    '. Conflict

    So again as between the main end the positive main end, and the negative main end corresponding and opposite to it, the charge of the person placed in the situation of defendant, take the measures requisite for giving effect to the arrangements taken and predictions delivered in that behalf by the substantive branch of the law, you run the risk of imposing the obligations /throwing the burthens/ respectively in question[?] upon the person in whose instant they are under: of inflicting punishment on a person /defendant/ innocent of the imputed offence - of imposing on a person the burthen of rendering satisfaction for an injury on the infliction of which he has had no share, of imposing, on some person in the character of defendant, in consequence of the right conferred on the demandant or plaintiff, an[?] obligation which in his instance /when thus imposed upon him,/ is undue. Determine at all events to preserve men altogether from all risk /[...?]/ possibility of being unduly subjected to these disastrous obligations, there is one means by which you may succeed to a certainty, and there is but that one way in which you can succeed - which /and that [...?]/ is the course already pointed out in the former case the putting an end to all recourse to justice. Its /The/ main[?] species as before is either destroyed or ruined: but at any rate the innocent are preserved from all danger of legal punishment, and mankind though left[?] a prey to injustice from every other source, is preserved from all that injustice which has for its source the execution of the law.
  • Title: [[058-126] May 1805 Evidence]
    Description: [058-126]

    May 1805

    Evidence

    Ends

    Ch. Conflict

    This opposition between the two classes of ends is a matter of no light moment: speculation? but that sort of speculation that is not mere speculation : it has had no small influence in practice. Upon no firmer a foundation has that immense fabric of abuse been erected which in the course of this work there will be but too much occasion to delineate.

    Without vexation, expense and delay, misdecision - misdecision to the prejudice of the defendant's side - can not be guarded against: therefore vexation, expense and delay are conducive to the ends of justice: pursue the one class of ends and you must pro tanto abandon the other: the more zealously you pursue the one, the wider? your deviation from the other. Vexation, expense and delay constitute the price you pay for justice: avoidance of misdecision being the end that which on the present occasion stands as the representative and substitute of all the ends of justice. The higher the price, the better the commodity: the better the commodity the higher must be the price: and a converse the higher the price, the better will the commodity be.

    If this be good reasoning as applied to justice , try it upon bread . A penny is the price I paid for the loaf I have before me. The loaf I am about to breakfast upon: instead of a penny, had I paid twopence for it, the quantity of nourishment contained in it would have been double. Are men convinced by such arguments, or do they only pretend to be so? Are they the offspring of imbecility or of improbity? In whatever mint they originated, such is the reasoning that pass current under the names of Montesquieu and Blackstone.