29 Aug 1804

Evidence

Circumstantial

Ch.1

§.2. Practical use

As to the question why the legislator does wrong by busying himself on this ground it is, in its conception at least, extremely simple. Data[?] important to warrant on his part a determination to any such effect, cannot, in the nature of the case, be present to his mind. The collection of them can never be complete and adequate, without the addition of such others as can not be present to any mind but that of the Judge, and such others, to whom the same opportunities may have happened to present themselves.

(The strength of the connection between the principal fact or facts on the one hand and the evidentary fact or facts on the other hand are susceptible (as will appear more and more clearly as we advance) of an infinite number of degrees:) in other words the probative force of the evidentary fact or facts is susceptible of an infinite variety of degrees: and although it should for argument sake be supposed to have been settled, what degree of probative force is sufficient to warrant decision in favour of the one or the other party in each species of cause, yet in no given individual cause of any species would it be possible so to describe the mass of circumstantial evidence exhibited in that cause, and deemed of the requisite force, as to frame by abstraction, out of that individual mass of circumstantial evidence so deemed sufficient, any general rule capable of indicating the sufficiency or insufficiency of the mass of circumstantial evidence afforded by any other individual cause.