2 May 1805

Evidence

Introd. Ends

Ch.7. Quality

Ch.7. Collateral Ultimate ends having respect to Quality: viz: of punishment, rights, or satisfaction

A question here presents itself - The substantive law /The legislative power/, having prohibited an act having converted an act into an offence attach punishment to it, in a certain shape, and that it shall be punished in a certain way /punishment, of a certain kind shall be annexed to it/: the judicial power - the substantive law attaches punishment to it not in that way /shape/ /punishment not of that kind/ but in another: and so in regard to rights and satisfactions What is the relation of this case (it may be asked) to the preceding ones? By this means are the preceding ends, any of them, disfulfilled? - and if any, which of them. I answer yes: two at once. By every such judicial decision two infractions at once of the arrangements of substantive law are committed, yet /but/ two such infractions, that are in substance and effect the infraction of the law is less trouble[?] to the ends of procedure taken all together, than if either of them had been infringed alone: two infractions in form - in logical verbal form: but less than one in political effect - in pathological /real/ effect - in a word in substance. Two aberrations at once from the straight line of rectitude: two abberations, yet so connected and related to each other, that being in contrary directions the one of them operates as a correction to the other, and the result consists not of their sum but of their difference.

Had not this puzzle /riddle/ been solved, what a source of perplexity? What a handle for evil? What a field for sophistry?