2 August 1805

Evidence

Introd. Jurisprud.

Ch. II Vices

''. 6. Fixation incompetancy

The jurisprudential learning of larceny is a topic which in more occasions /instances/ than one there will be occasion /has been need/ to bring to view. Attachment imaginary or real, natural or fictitious, if the thing taken to the main body of the worth, tameness or wildness in the case of this or that species of animal, value in way of exchange more or less fixed and marketable, all these may serve as examples of fixation made by jurisprudential law under the auspices of Corruption or folly /caprice/ in the way of exception, condition or limitation taking the thief into the privation of the law, and putting the proprietor - or as lawyers used to say the true men as he is called out of it.

In a word let him who will undertake to say which disposition is in jurisprudential law most conspicuous - the disposition to /.../ or the disposition to make /annex/ rash and groundless exceptions conditions and limitations, or the disposition to establish equally rash general rules within any of those exceptions, conditions and limitations which are /would be/ necessary to reduce them within the limits of utility and reason.