10 April 1805

Evidence

Securities

Ch. Procedure Technical

''.3. Objects ulterior

The most effectual security for non-notoriety consists in non-existence. Of Jurisprudential (in English Common) Law, the characteristic /distinguishing/ property is non-existence. Jurisprudential law may be defined that sort of legal discourse, concerning law, of which the supposed purport is every where and the tenor no where. For if /of/ that which is given for law has a tenor, it is no longer jurisprudential but statute law. By an abusive application of the term law a semblance of existence, a sort of verbal existence is given to an ideal object which in fact has none. Between really existing law and this sham law, between statute law and jurisprudential law there is no more real identity, than between a real man and a man of straw, or the spectrum of a man in a phantasmorganic [...?] show.

Third[?] device of the Technical system. Keeping the rule of action in /body of the law in as great a proportion as possible, in/ the state of jurisprudential law.

Of the tenor of any article or mass of law knowledge of the existence is of no use, any further than /to [...?] as/ the purport of it is known - that is, what, in the want of a suit instituted or defended on the ground of it, would be deemed /pronounced/ to be the purport of it by the Judge. By employing for the tenor /in the composition/ of the law a sort of [...?] to which the man of law is accustomed, men /suitors/ at large in the character of suitors unaccustomed, things may be so ordered that while /of that of which/ the man of law can comprehend, or may be supposed to comprehend the purport, the purport may rendered be so obscure, as that the non-lawyer may not only not comprehend it, but despair of ever being able to comprehend it. - and thence be driven by necessity to address himself for the interpretation of it, to him who professes to comprehend it.

Third device of the Technical system: - keeping the rule of action /body of the law/ in as obscure a state s possible.