23 April 1805

Evidence

Ends

Ch Conflict

'. Conflict

So again as between the main end the positive main end, and the negative main end corresponding and opposite to it, the charge of the person placed in the situation of defendant, take the measures requisite for giving effect to the arrangements taken and predictions delivered in that behalf by the substantive branch of the law, you run the risk of imposing the obligations /throwing the burthens/ respectively in question[?] upon the person in whose instant they are under: of inflicting punishment on a person /defendant/ innocent of the imputed offence - of imposing on a person the burthen of rendering satisfaction for an injury on the infliction of which he has had no share, of imposing, on some person in the character of defendant, in consequence of the right conferred on the demandant or plaintiff, an[?] obligation which in his instance /when thus imposed upon him,/ is undue. Determine at all events to preserve men altogether from all risk /[...?]/ possibility of being unduly subjected to these disastrous obligations, there is one means by which you may succeed to a certainty, and there is but that one way in which you can succeed - which /and that [...?]/ is the course already pointed out in the former case the putting an end to all recourse to justice. Its /The/ main[?] species as before is either destroyed or ruined: but at any rate the innocent are preserved from all danger of legal punishment, and mankind though left[?] a prey to injustice from every other source, is preserved from all that injustice which has for its source the execution of the law.