12 April 1803[?]

Evidence

Ends.

Ch.

' Precipitation

From the view thus taken of the several classes of lights or grounds of decision, which it may be the effect of an act of precipitation to exclude, as will soon be manifest enough, it is evident how far this head of inconvenience is from being in respect of its effects, what at first glance it might be thought to be, the exact counterpart and opposite of unnecessary delay. By unnecessary delay, the three negative inconveniences of the first order - non-application of punishment where due, non-application of satisfaction where due and non-collation of rights where due are produced to a certainty, and continued while it lasts: but in virtue of the operation of the same cause a chance more or less considerable of the ultimate and perpetual existence of these same inconveniences is moreover produced according to the nature of the case, penal or non-penal. Is produced: and not only of those negative inconveniences of which the plaintiff in the cause is the victim but of their respectively opposite positive ones - application of punishment where not due - application of satisfaction where not due (and thence of the burthen attached to the obligation of administering it) and collation of rights where not due (thence imposition of the mass of burthensome obligations by the imposition of which those rights are conferred.) The burthen of which falls upon the defendant.

To precipitation of the other hand, stands attached, it is true, a chance more or less considerable of the existence of all those several /six/ inconveniences of the first order in the several cases to which they apply, and to the prejudice of the cause of the plaintiff or that of the defendant, as it may happen. A chance, yes: but it has not in any case any one of those inconveniences for its certain consequence.

A Judge gives at the very first moment, at the very first word spoken or exhibited to him, the very same decision which he would have given, had he given the fairest and fullest hearing to both parties: at the end of all such steps as either party thought fit to take.

The case is everywhere a conceivable one, and being the most simple one, is conceivable indeed, well more