date

6 C Prefat. Definitions difficult
6 C Prefat.

Definitions difficult To give exact definitions of crimes & other objects

of Law is much more difficult than to lay down

any of those rules which suppose the boundaries [nature]

& description of each object to be already ascertained

& known. Instance Common False.

No test for merit Standard of merit much less fixed in this sort

of work than in any other. In a Poem

or other work the end of which is to please if

the end be attained it is attained at once — It's

being attained is manifest beyond dispute — to

a History in as far as it pleases & with respect to accuracy

the original materials are manifest &

standing tests. In a Book of Natural Philosophy

the merit of it is triable by immediate

experiment

But in this there are no principles so fixed

as to ensure it approbation. After all that can be done

by reason a great deal must be left to sentiment and caprice

Longitude encouraged, why All the Sovereigns of Europe ought to make

it their business, as they have done the Longitude.

The Longitude belongs to another time. It is not

within the competency of Statesmen. Chesterfield: contempt

of Astronomers.

I have never let a general proposition pass without

examining the propriety of it with respect to every particular

contained under it. Thus &c.

Short Sentences Crit. Review for Aug. 1778. p.160. In so work I have met with a passage on this subject which recurs to be full judgement & good sense.

"In books of this kind" [for children]" the second article [shortness

of the sentences] is a circumstance of great importance.

Children should be taught to pronounce their sentences with smartness and spirit.

And this is practicable in sentences of 3 or 4 words, or

at most 5 or 6. A long sentence, extending through several lines,

is not to be composed by their feeble organs: for instead of supporting

their voice with smartness and energy, they are perplexed

by a multitude of words, & naturally sink into a whining

drawling monotony.

C 13 Prefat

They gave £...30,000 for this work why? because

it was the sort of work none of them liked themselves. No

man apprehended that anyone by executing such a

work will ever so much merit & success would be called

above himself.

The Emperor Claudius conferred on a man

[his freedman Pallas] the Praetorian dignity contres

quinquagies sesterlium for the invention of a single Law.

Tac. Num. XII, 53 & Plur. Nat. Hist. XXXV less penult

& Plur. VIII, 5 in , Antig. Vol. I. p.213

Lit Tut. 16 // 8.

The reward in the present case liberal & simple

for a private man to give. As a reward it never could

have served to engage any one in the design who

could be at all qualified to execute it. The case that it

is of is the ensuring him the attention of a certain set

of intelligent readers judges; & the celebrity of it may require if

recommended by their suffrage.

Prizes have not produced good poems: but a good poem is not the work of study alone. The King gives plates for the surefast Horse:

and by this means the kingdom is stocked with an excellent

breed of horses. No King has ever thought of

giving a Plate to be started for by Lawmakers.

Yet neither is the composition of a good code a work

of much less importance nor of less difficulty than this

trading of a good horse, nor are jurists & political speculators men of letters and education

less sensible to rewards & honours distinctions than horse jockies & -breeders.

When one thinks of an institution a manor that may be done with a word one imagines at the same time would be useful, one is apt to presume that the Empress of Rape a maid have embraced it. - & where upon enquiry in hand, that the law not embraced, one begins to doubt whether it could have been useful / I except these that could require more I

Wonder - that the Congress of Austria whose wisdom prudence

& activity extend to every thing whose Administration is

one scene of well-empoy'd munificence, should

not yet have embraced this measure. Long ago however He has taken a

step towards it: a step much beyond any that has ever

been taken by any other sovereign: a step that in some

countries might of itself have been sufficient to [ a produce

the effect desired] effective to the purpose.
Similar Items
  • Title: [1818 May 11 Parl Reform Bill]
    Description: 1818 May 11

    Parl Reform Bill

    Prefat.

    2

     What follows in this page about the invidiousness of the task[?], may it not better

    be omitted?

    It seemed therefore /A promise therefore presented itself/, that even under the law

    as it now stands, the act in question not having as yet under the name of treason,

    sedition or any other analogous name been made as yet to receive the character of an

    offence, an individual might without either commission or consent from any body, take

    in this shape a /his/ claim for rendering to his country and be mentioned[?] more or

    less of useful service and thus in the career of improvement and reform towards the

    substituting new uncorruption to old established corruption, good government to

    misrule, an advaunce /a progress/ /a step/ not that either the least important, the

    least difficult or the least laborious might /may/ be made by a hand /foot/ which so

    many official hands would be ready /willing/ to crush, and as they might at any time

    they might, would, if it were not /were it not/ too much trouble, crush as they would

    a […?] /an intruder/ in a parterre or gravel walk

    Happy is the lot of him /are the occasions in which/ who in his relative[?]

    endeavours to render service to his fellow creature produces no uneasiness to any one

    has no enmity to encounter at the hands of any one. Happy indeed but unfortunately no

    less rare. He whose use it is /whose […?] are employed/ to minister to the pleasure

    of either[?] the artist[?] the feet[?] the plug[?].

    Of this federal number the uncommissioned labourer in the career of legislation

    assuredly is not one.
  • Title: [27 June 1807 + Contents p.7]
    Description: 27 June 1807

    + Contents p.7

    (3) (1)

    Note continued

    Letter V

    II. Litigation

    II. Def t. malâ fide

    The difficulties /obstacles/ of reducing the value of satisfaction in the /in [...?]/

    Such so far as magnitude is concerned are the difficulties which Judge and C o in their exertions to the keeping down the value of satisfaction had to cope with: [in] spite of these difficulties their success has been greater than could readily have been imagined.

    In the case of an immoveable where the wrong consists in the withholding of some article of property belonging to that principal class, say an acre of land or a house, and the satisfaction, viz. the main part of it consists in the restitution of the land or of the house, no great matter was to be done: where a whole house or a whole acre of land, in virtue of the disposition of the main body of the law, is what the plaintiff is entitled to receive, it would have been too difficult by any to have framed any such rule of law (understood in the shape of jurisprudential law) as should declare that half an acre or half the house is all that he shall receive.

    So again in the case of an article of moveable property in any shape, suppose a horse, it would have been too much by any rule of law to have said, whoever is entitled by law to a horse, viz. a whole horse, shall receive from law, (viz. from the main defendant who has unlawfully taken the horse, no more than half the horse, or three quarters of it.
  • Title: [16 Feb y 1813 Church II Topics Ch]
    Description: 16 Feb y 1813

    Church II Topics Ch.6

    A man being thus

    thus urged to this

    freely deceptive

    process, as it is

    by exertion his end

    is to be attained, the

    more exertion, the

    more merit. But

    the more clearly

    false a proposition

    is the more exertion

    is

    necessary to

    produce belief in it.

    By the conjunct mass of punishment and reward considered

    as being so thus about to be applied, an interest a mass of interest has been created

    [by which a man is has been led] or a mass of force, a matter by which

    he is urged to do whatsoever depends upon

    his will towards rendering his judgment to embrace

    the persuasion proposed. Towards this end what is in his in the

    power power of his will to do is to set to work to employ his exertion in the way and to apply in and to his understanding and judgment the above mentioned process

    above described under the appellation of the freely-deceptive

    process. But sure it is by such that the

    object, if it at all be attained will be attained, hence [+]

    in so far as reward

    is the species of inducement

    looked to

    the more strenuous the exertion the greater or more certain

    will the prospect of reward naturally appears to be.

    In so far as depends upon exertion, the probability of

    success being as the magnitude or intensity of the exertion,

    hence the idea of merit will attach itself not only to

    success but to the exertion upon which that success

    depends. But supposing success attained — attained

    by exertion, the more plainly the falsity of the

    proposition is - in other words the greater the degree in which

    to an eye by which it were permitted to be viewed will

    to the purpose of forming an indigenous persuasion in

    relation to it, the falsity of it would be made manifest,

    the greater will naturally have been necessary to be employed, and

    employed accordingly in the production of it.

    The more palpably

    absurd any proposition

    the more exertion necessary

    to believe it. Merit

    & reward being as the

    the exertion are as the

    absurdity

    The more palpably absurd any proposition is the

    greater the exertion necessary to produce by means of the

    freely-deceptive or self-deceptive process a persuasion of the

    verity of it the merit, being as the exertion is as the

    absurdity, and the reward being as the merit is also as the absurdity

    For Thus For thus Thus the absurdity

    of the proposition

    is the increase of the

    exertion employed

    in producing

    a persuasion of its verity.

    of the verity of it.