27 Sept 1803[?]

Evidence

Circumstantial

We shall see /It will be seen/, that in the cluster[?] of principal facts the concurrence of which is necessary in the instance of most if not all offences to bring the offence under the notion of a crime there is one sort of fact in most cases, an ingredient altogether indispensable, which in its very nature is incapable of being proved by direct evidence - at least by any other testimony than that of the agent himself - which is incapable of being proved, and which consequently when proved by any other /uncorroborated by this/ testimony never is proved by any other than circumstantial evidence. This fact is the existence of criminal consciousness in the agents mind. (Any witness that is not blind may see into another man's countenance: no witness, had he the eyes of Argus could ever see directly into another's mind.)

Among the Romanists, judging from presumptions alone means, if it means anything, judging from circumstantial evidence alone. On this or that occasion you /we/ will find them telling you in the form of a general or even universal proposition that you ought not to judge from presumption from presumptive evidence. If so, from what then is it that you /we/ ought to judge?

When the individual fact in question being an evidentiary fact is to a certain degree remote from the principal fact, then indeed you may say without difficulty and without any [...?] line[?] antecedently[?] drawn by the legislator - this is not a principal fact but a mere evidentiary fact; the testimony by which this fact is endeavoured to be proved, is not direct but circumstantial evidence. But when the principal fact and the evidentiary fact touch, then it is that any decision grounding itself on any supposed distinction between them, any decision rejecting the evidence on the ground of its being no other than circumstantial evidence, will be sophistical[?] in its nature and pernicious in its effects: pernicious because the distinction having no settled foundation in the nature of things, the decision grounded on it could not have been foreseen, but whenever pronounced must have fallen like a thunderstroke upon the party hurt by it.