date

24 June 1805 Evidence Introd
24 June 1805

Evidence

Introd

Ch. Non-Notoriety &c.

''.1. Connection

First as to the things themselves. Take any article of law at pleasure, knowledge of its existence may exist, without any sufficient intellection of /with regard to/ its import, much more without any sufficient certainty in regard to two different imports, which of them is the true one. But all three (it has been seen) are necessary: knowledge therefore of itself is not sufficient.

But though knowledge as above particularized /defined/ is not every thing, neither can it be said to amount to nothing. If it amounted to nothing, a legislative arrangement whereby this object were accomplished and no other would be altogether useless: but this it will be seen is by no means /far from being/ the case. Without any sort of intellection knowledge may of itself seem thus far, that in any one of a variety of ways it may lead to intellection, and thence to certainty. A law is laid upon the windows of certain sort of houses, of which that in which I live is one. I have, no matter how, that for the first time a tax has been laid upon windows. I know enough of the law to know that this new sort of obligation is not of the number of those which can have been imposed in the way of jurisprudential law. I know therefore that it is by some statute and that a new one that it must have been imposed. The statute is enough for me. To know what a window is, to know what paying money is - I know there can not, or at least there ought not to be any need for me to address myself to a man of law. I go at once to a shop, and buy the statute. I read it, and find it, in this part at least, intelligible: for it is not every English statute that is unintelligible, at least in every part of it. I find the import of it even certain: for uncertainty as will be seen is the [...?] and constant attraction of jurisprudential law: of statute law only by accident: and this is statute law.
Similar Items
  • Title: [24 June 1805 Evidence Introd]
    Description: 24 June 1805

    Evidence

    Introd

    Ch. Non-Notoriety &c

    ''.1. Connection

    Again. Though the same mischief may ensue from the want of knowledge /notoriety/ in may ensue for the want of certainty - the same mischief viz: suffering and that unexpected, from the hand of the man of law. Yet they are not only distinguishable in idea, but separable in existence, and to such a degree separable, that either of them may exist without the other.

    Of a law to a certain effect the existence may at any given time have been unknown to me. But as was the case but now in regard to the law imposing a duty upon windows, the existence of it once made known to me, and thence the tenor of it, the tenor may have been perfectly intelligible to me, and the impost /prospect/ of it as certain to me as I could wish to see it.

    On the other hand uncertainty may exist, and that as compleat as the most compleat lawyer could wish to see it may attach upon an arrangement of law in a case /question/ in which the knowledge of a disposition of law on the subject in question may not be contrary, and the terms employed on the occasion be not unintelligible. In the case already mentioned of the law relative to testaments, that there exists a mass of statute law on the subject is what /fact/ I am sufficiently informed of. That the words employed in that law are all of them intelligible to me is a matter of fact which though as it happens not strictly true, may be as easily conceived to be true as if it were so: especially as there are so many other parts of the statute book of which it is true. But suppose if two propositions, each of itself perfectly intelligible the Statute allows in one while it disallows in the other. Hence will arise an uncertainty, example of which might be found in the Statute book in sufficient abundance, but which it is the less necessary to look for in that place, inasmuch as in Jurisprudential law, as there will soon be occasion [...?] is same any thing else.
  • Title: [24 June 1805 Evidence Introd]
    Description: 24 June 1805

    Evidence

    Introd

    Ch. Non-Notoriety &c

    '.1. Connection

    Between the ideas respectively attached to the words notoriety, intelligibility, and certainty, with their respective conjugates and quasi-conjugates

    knowledge, intellection, and assurance, on the one hand, and their opposites non-notoriety or ignorance, unintelligibility, and uncertainty on the other, whether as applied to the body of the law or to any other body of discourse, there exists to every eye a connection of the closest kind: so close, that to any sufficient /effectual/ purpose/ to speak of any one of them without operating at the same time of the others seems scarcely possible /practicable/.

    For any given article or portion of the body of the law to produce at any given instant of time, upon the conduct of any given person that effect which, whether as will for his own sake or for the sakes of others, it is to be wished /desirable/ that it should produce, it is necessary that at that same instant of time it should be present to his mind that he should be approved of the existence of an article of law bearing in that department of human conduct, that the language to which it is consigned should either in itself, or at least through the medium of some exterior interpretation, be understood by him, and that in respect of /with regard/ the import which so presents itself to him as being the true import of the law, he should profess a sufficient assurance of its being so: that is, of its being held for such by the Judge, upon whose whose decision should where the conduct of the individual came for this purpose under his review, the fate of that same individual would in that depend.
  • Title: [Evidence 6 June 1805 Introd]
    Description: Evidence

    6 June 1805

    Introd [...?]

    Ch. [...? ...?]

    Jurisprudential Law is that sort of imaginary law in which the supposed purport and effect is every where the tenor no where.

    By tenor, in the language in use with lawyers themselves mean a determinate assemblage of words; by the tenor of an agreement, the words of /to/ /by/ which agreement is composed that /the intuition of the parties have been [...?] /expressed/. No statute but what has in tenor; accordingly what it is that goes to make ones Statute or one Chapter Section or other division of Statute is never a matter of doubt. No portion of Jurisprudential Law that has a tenor; if the infinite mass of writing of /in/ which the materials /import/ for jurisprudential, is to be [...?] for, there exists not a book or page or a line or a portion of any one of either of which it can ever be said in these words that contained on[?] a jurisprudential law - or an article of jurisprudential law.

    Jurisprudential law being a sort of fictitious, spurious law, put off upon mankind for genuine, to convey a full and accurate conception of its nature, the only effective course that can be taken will be, after noting /are[?] by in[?] all characteristic/ its properties, to compare them with the correspondent properties of genuine law.