28 May 1805

Evidence

Introd.

Falls Ends

Ch. Imbecillity

 After False ends & capricious ends.

Ch. Of Imbecillity, considered as a cause of arrangements at variance with the ends of justice.

On the part of a man who, having before his eyes the list of the arrangements manufactured under /set up by/ the technical system in opposition to the ends of justice, should take upon him to speak of them as having, all of them without exception, had the force of sinister interest for their efficient and immediate cause, the assertion would be nit only rash, but taken in the character of a universal proposition, unquestionably untrue. In some instances, the birth of a sinister arrangement is capable of being ascribed with little or no danger of more[?] to that sinister cause: in the character of circumstantial evidence the manifestations of the connection are too strong not to be conclusive. (a) In other instances, data are wanting. The supposed effect is visible: the supposed correspondent cause is visible: that the sinister power of the latter is adequate to the production /generation/ of the latter is also visible: since in instances without number, the same cause has been seen beyond dispute been seen to be productive of effects of the same nature. That the supposed cause had the capacity of producing the supposed effect, is out of dispute: but whether in the individual case in question that capacity was reduced into act /passed/ /advanced/ on into agency may never the less remain matter of dispute /still be questionable/ /may be matter of doubt and that doubt interminable/, and that doubt interminable.

The cases therefore in which a discerning and cautious mind will take upon itself to say of this or that decision, or diction, or process in a treatise, or official practice, will take upon itself to say /pronounce/ that it had for its immediate cause its psychological cause, the force of sinister interest, the prevalence as well as action of that force being pursued at the same time to the conscience of the individual in question, may perhaps be comparatively few.

At the same time /On the other hand/ if taking the whole mass together a man were to say, in all this there is nothing to the production of which the force of sinister interest would not have been compleatly adequate without the smallest assistance from any such motive as a regard for the happiness /well-being/, a sympathy for the afflictions of mankind, or (what includes both) a regard for the interests and ends of justice, I see nothing in the case that should render the truth of that conception at all /in the least/ improbable.