049-006.xml

Title: [Evidence 29 June 1805 Introd]

Description: Evidence

29 June 1805

Introd

Ch. un-limitness[?]

''. Quid

I am a father of a family. My son Thomas is with me, I wish to see /want to speak with/ my son John, and do not want to speak with my son William. I give orders accordingly to Thomas, saying /I address myself to Thomas, and say/ to him, go and tell John to come to me. What room is there in this for art or science? Observe how a business of this extreme simplicity has been converted by English Judges into art and Science.

Suppose /On the same occasion/ an English judge instead of proceeding in his domestic functional capacity came to proceed as he does every day in his official character. Wishing to see John, he would say to Thomas go and tell William to come to me at two o'clock. When William conveys accordingly what does the Judge in consequence? In the first place he refuses to see William; in the next place he punishes him for not commissioning John to come in his stead. In any private house this would be insanity; in Westminster Hall it constitutes art and science. It is a matter of science[?] for the Counsel to know that in this case William means John; it is matter of art for an Attorney to know how to come in proper form when William has been unfortunate enough to be obliged to commission him for that purpose.

059-102.xml

Title: [24 June 1805 Evidence Introd]

Description: 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.

059-105.xml

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.