JB_047_154.xml

Title: [Evidence 23 July 1805 Persuasion]

Description: Evidence

23 July 1805

Persuasion[?]

This sort of practice is not forgery: for in a legal sense nothing that is not punishable by law as forgery is forgery. In a pathological sense however it has in a considerable degree, if not altogether the effect of forgery. If by the act of another I find /see/ myself deprived of that provision which I see was destined for me by any relation or any friend, in what degree is my suffering lessened by seeing that the author of it instead /my [...?]/ of being hanged for it as a malefactor, is honoured for it as a Judge.

Thus much as to the mischief of the second order. In a certain number of instances men have had false wills made for them by malefactors in the way of forgery. In a number of instances men have had false wills made for them as above in the way of judicature. At this moment, of these truths sources of privation and disappointment, which is it that presents the greatest probability, the most formidable /alarming/ danger? This will depend in some measure on the ratio of the two numbers above mentioned. Which then is the greatest /has been greater/? Let him give the /an/ answer who looks /regards/ upon himself as qualified to give one /it/. One /But/ the difference between delinquency with its attendant punishment, and conformity is a circumstance there is that seems to lead in no inconsiderable degree to render the injustice by forgery the least common of the two. The forgerer never acts in secret but and at the peril of his life: some such secrets must doubtless have remained undiscovered, and thereby crowned with success: but a considerable, and probably the greater number have by detection been frustrated and punished. False wills made upon the bench are made not only without danger, but with full assurance of success. The true man is cheated out of his property: and the praise of learning is among the rewards reaped by the author of the improper deceit. How vast the mass of learning, how venerable /awful/ the reputation of learning that has been built upon this ground!

059-119.xml

Title: [9 May 1805 Evidence Introd]

Description: 9 May 1805

Evidence

Introd

Ch Sinister End

homologation

Non. promulgation

In days of yore /In the early ages of society, Fraud practiced /worked at/ her arts stark naked /without a cover/, naked as our first parents, and like them /our first parents/ too not ashamed. In the pretended virtuous age of Roman history, the man of law beholding in the invisibility of the rule of action the source of unbounded power and profit to himself, locked it up /kept it locked/ without [...?]. In the legal form /validity/ binding form/ of contracts he saw one of those necessary bonds without which political surety could not be kept together:the validity of all contracts he contrived to render dependent, (such was the cullibility of the barbarians he had to deal with) on their conformity to /the connection of those engagements with/ different scraps[?] of nonsense, the tenor of which being a [...?] in his custody was preserved or varied at his pleasure.

In England once upon a time suppose the Speaker, suppose instead of sending a Statute to the press for publication, keeps it under lock and key in his own house, selling a sight of it for the best price that can be got, and putting words into it, or striking[?] words out of it, as he and his customers can agree. In depth of policy as well as honesty the practice thus fabled for the purpose of illustration would be the exact counterpart of the practice of the man of law in the best /brightest/ days of Roman jurisprudence.

In Rome a sad mishap beset the profession: In an evil[?] a thief got in, and stole the book of forms: all hands, the few hands that could write, were set to work at copying them: it was as if, pursuing the fable a pirate had broken into the Speakers house, carried off the Parliament Rule /sacred parchment/ and committed the contents of it to the press.

The distress suffered /damage sustained/ by the profession is easier imagined than described /calculated/: but the mischief was not of long continuance. The stolen forms were /nonsense was/ cried[?] down: fresh nonsense was manufactured in the room of it. the distress was like that of an Admiral whose signal book has been captured: the remedy was the same.

JB_116_196_001.xml

Title: [6 July 1802 2 N. S. Wales laws. As]

Description: 6 July 1802 2 N. S. Wales

laws. As

violently as ever dead Nature was thought to abhor the idea

of a vacuum, living Nature abhors the absence of all law. Reason

revolts from the thing itself: imagination

recoils from the very idea

of it. To conceive space absolutely without matter, the abstractive

powers even of a Newton were insufficient. Imagination created an aether

for him to supply the plan of it. Imagination, the chief and only constant

guide of the man of law

in this fabrication weaving spinning out of that

species of law which has been so aptly defined "a the

competition of opposite analogies" (I say the only constant guide —

for the principle of ability is but the occasional — is to

have

the constant guide of the legitimate legislator is to

his bastard relative but the occasional one) imagination

repells the idea if any the inconvenient fashion

of governable space, unfilled by law.

Thus it is that wherever a void opens in law belongs displays

itself, lawyers are [so] ready supply fill the vacuum by denying

its existence. Thus it is that wherever there is a an ab a want

a negation an absence of genuine law, (the expression of

the will of a real legislator or set of legislators to whose will in

the behalf in question the bulk of the community are by the requisite

habits and opinions prepared to pay obedience) lawyers of all classes are

so ready to agree in forging one. Hence the Law of Nature Law of

Nations, Common Law and so forth.

In