24 June 1805

Evidence

Introd

Ch. Non-Notoriety &c

''.1. Connection

Again. Though the same mischief may ensue from the want of knowledge /notoriety/ in may ensue for the want of certainty - the same mischief viz: suffering and that unexpected, from the hand of the man of law. Yet they are not only distinguishable in idea, but separable in existence, and to such a degree separable, that either of them may exist without the other.

Of a law to a certain effect the existence may at any given time have been unknown to me. But as was the case but now in regard to the law imposing a duty upon windows, the existence of it once made known to me, and thence the tenor of it, the tenor may have been perfectly intelligible to me, and the impost /prospect/ of it as certain to me as I could wish to see it.

On the other hand uncertainty may exist, and that as compleat as the most compleat lawyer could wish to see it may attach upon an arrangement of law in a case /question/ in which the knowledge of a disposition of law on the subject in question may not be contrary, and the terms employed on the occasion be not unintelligible. In the case already mentioned of the law relative to testaments, that there exists a mass of statute law on the subject is what /fact/ I am sufficiently informed of. That the words employed in that law are all of them intelligible to me is a matter of fact which though as it happens not strictly true, may be as easily conceived to be true as if it were so: especially as there are so many other parts of the statute book of which it is true. But suppose if two propositions, each of itself perfectly intelligible the Statute allows in one while it disallows in the other. Hence will arise an uncertainty, example of which might be found in the Statute book in sufficient abundance, but which it is the less necessary to look for in that place, inasmuch as in Jurisprudential law, as there will soon be occasion [...?] is same any thing else.