1
results found in
26 ms
Page 1
of 1
28 May 1805
Evidence
Introd.
Falls Ends
Ch. Imbecillity
After False ends & capricious ends.
Ch. Of Imbecillity, considered as a cause of arrangements at variance with the ends of justice.
On the part of a man who, having before his eyes the list of the arrangements manufactured under /set up by/ the technical system in opposition to the ends of justice, should take upon him to speak of them as having, all of them without exception, had the force of sinister interest for their efficient and immediate cause, the assertion would be nit only rash, but taken in the character of a universal proposition, unquestionably untrue. In some instances, the birth of a sinister arrangement is capable of being ascribed with little or no danger of more[?] to that sinister cause: in the character of circumstantial evidence the manifestations of the connection are too strong not to be conclusive. (a) In other instances, data are wanting. The supposed effect is visible: the supposed correspondent cause is visible: that the sinister power of the latter is adequate to the production /generation/ of the latter is also visible: since in instances without number, the same cause has been seen beyond dispute been seen to be productive of effects of the same nature. That the supposed cause had the capacity of producing the supposed effect, is out of dispute: but whether in the individual case in question that capacity was reduced into act /passed/ /advanced/ on into agency may never the less remain matter of dispute /still be questionable/ /may be matter of doubt and that doubt interminable/, and that doubt interminable.
The cases therefore in which a discerning and cautious mind will take upon itself to say of this or that decision, or diction, or process in a treatise, or official practice, will take upon itself to say /pronounce/ that it had for its immediate cause its psychological cause, the force of sinister interest, the prevalence as well as action of that force being pursued at the same time to the conscience of the individual in question, may perhaps be comparatively few.
At the same time /On the other hand/ if taking the whole mass together a man were to say, in all this there is nothing to the production of which the force of sinister interest would not have been compleatly adequate without the smallest assistance from any such motive as a regard for the happiness /well-being/, a sympathy for the afflictions of mankind, or (what includes both) a regard for the interests and ends of justice, I see nothing in the case that should render the truth of that conception at all /in the least/ improbable.
Similar Items
-
Title: [28 May 1805 Evidence Introd]Description: 28 May 1805 Evidence Introd. Ch. Imbecillity Of the two connected propositions that which asserts the adequacy /sufficiency/ of the cause in question to the production of the effect in question in all instances, and that which asserts the probability of the existence of a number of individual instances in which the effect has been produced without the immediate and sensible /perceptible/ operation of that cause, the truth (both of them taken together) will appear in the clearest light the more attentively we consider on the one hand the imbecillity of the human /public/ mind in general at the several periods in which the respective arrangements took their birth, on the other hand the influence of the volitional faculty over the intellectual in all ages, and in virtue of the inborn though not altogether incorrigible weakness /frailty/ of human nature. To Them /Ask the first [...?] to him,/, if any such there be who viewing those essences[?] of imbecillity or opponent imbecillity, by which in the example of Blackstone for example, arrangements pregnant with the most flagrant /barefaced/ as well as mischievous injustice, appear to have bene justified, should be disposed to [...?] it in the class of impossible facts /impossibilities/ that nonsense so palpable should be able to pass itself for sense upon a mind so far from destitute of intellectual power, and that therefore Blackstone throughout the whole system of his who supposed apologies and defences were firing[?] alike against the laws of reason and the dictates of his own conscience, to any such person, if any such there be I would recommend it to bestow a glance of observation on the state of the human mind, even in the present day of comparative light /illumination/, within the vast precincts of German literature. Let them view the immense crowd of lettered men in that extensive region of civilized Europe, vying with each other in the admiration and imitation of the nonsense of a crack brained but indisputably honest elaborate manufacturer of nonsense by whom experience under the dyslogostic name of impression was rejected as an unsafe guide, and imagination, as the superior and only true one. Let him think of this creator ad libstrum of ideal worlds within the human microcosm - all honest all honorable men, pure, as much as it is in the nature of men's mind to be, of every particle of sinister interest, having nothing to gain from /by/ nonsense, but the homage of those who, in the character of whatsoever instruction can be made to swallow it.
-
Title: [22 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill]Description: 22 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill Between two legislators, each having a favourite quorum of his own, nothing decisive being in the nature of the case capable of being and for either, I stated as a necessary consequence, dispute interminable. Here in the example[?] it may be said the dispute has terminated. But in the case I had in view being a /the/ general one the legislators were supposed to be equal in power: but /whereas/ in this particular case equality was out of the question: the consequence was a necessary one: the man /one/ /superior/ in authority being the one beside himself, all dispute was out of the question /dispute took flight /fled/: Doubt remained master of the field.
-
Title: [21 May 1805 Evidence Introd]Description: 21 May 1805 Evidence Introd. Ch. Sinister Ends. Imbecillity ' Self-deceit So much for generals. Come we now to particulars. Being resolved to admire the system - to be persuaded of its excellence - of the excellence of a system which runs in constant /continual/ repugnancy to every end of justice, be sure you never suffer a glance of your mind ever to point to any of those ends. Keep them all - any of them, as compleatly out of sight as possible - to bring your system in contact with them, would be to give it its death-warrant. Yet the system is to be [...?]: this is the problem: [...?] the one theory needful. What is to be done? To be done? Why that same /divine/ thing is to be done, which every body has done, [...?] to your hands, - which reading[?] to your hands you see done every where. It was written so long ago: written by such grave, such excellent men: men whose names end in us, give back to the ever one of those sweet sounds which it has been in the habit of connecting with ideas of duty or delight from earliest infancy: written by men, who were descended from time, who in their time were such great conquerors: who became conquerors of the world, that is of every part of it that they could conquer, or that is worth thinking about. Correspondent to the excellence of the system, is the presumption of those, by whom its excellence, or any part of its excellence is disputed. Ignorance or improbity?; in these two, or a combination of both, you have your choice of motives. Ignorance? or how is it that any man should be otherwise than ignorant? A long life could scarce be sufficient for reading so much as the titles of the books in which all this learning is locked up. So ignorance in astrology, alchemy or witchcraft - the anatomy, physiology and pathology of the divine essence. What presumption! for an [...?] of the present degenerate times to set up the force of his single wits against that of a host of sages, every one more learned more jurisprudential than another, connected together by a chain of the length of more than eighteen centuries. Such presumption! Such intolerable presumption! Could it have been dictated by any but the worst motives, by any but the most mischievous intentions, the intentions of throwing every thing into confusion, and re-establishing the reign of chaos upon earth? These ends of justice should any such inactive logic have extended itself, which it could not have done but by force, insist upon it, assume it as a self-evident proposition that a nation way of contravening these ends, contravening them all in the [...?] in the nature of confronting [...?] thence any of those arrangements which either are comprised in that body of matchless science or has been derived from it.
1
results found.
Page 1
of 1