July 1805

Evidence

Introd. jurisprudential

Ch. 1. Sources

''. Dictates of Utility

6. Dictum of Utility.

Utility is an object which under the most absurd and corrupt system of jurisprudence can never have passed altogether unheeded or unaimed at. That the goodness of any system of law, statutory or jurisprudential is in the exact proportion in which the object is not only aimed at but attained, the badness, in proportion as in the character of an end it is [...?] is a proportion too obviously true to admitt of controversy, when men are agreed about the import of the terms.

By men operating in the way of statute law, it never is neglected, or at least it never is professed to be neglected in no case does it pass unhindered and neglected, even in this when, from the impulse of some sinister interest, or of some error of the understanding it is /it happens to be/ contravened. Like /It is with this principal, as with the will of/ an acknowledged sovereign, whose authority is not the less recognised, even when his orders are disobeyed. No statute is ever passed, but you are soon to hear more or less of its utility real or supposed, whether it be in the text of the statute itself, or in the discourses of those who in any way or other stand engaged to advocate it.

By men /Judges/ operating in the way of jurisprudential law, no such attention has been constantly or so much habitually /usually/ paid to this commanding principle: by the attention paid to what has been done before, on the same or any neighbouring ground, right or wrong,. Whether labour might be necessary to the making good of the road from the general principal of utility to the decision professed to be pronounced, is habitually saved.