9 April 1804

Evidence

Forthcomingness

Ch 6 Appearance

§.4 Subsequent Appearance

In this case, setting aside the desire of liberating himself from some personal vexation annexed by accident to the obligation of paying attendence at the particular time and place in question, the cases in which morally /psychologically/ speaking it would be possible for him to entertain any such project /unjust design/ would seem /be/ comparatively speaking within a narrow compass. They might all be composed under the following heads

1. On his own part eventual design /project/ of immigration on his part

2. a like design /project/ of latency /latitantcy/ on his part.

3. An expectation of a deperition of any other evidence, viz: in the interval between the time of his non-attendance upon the first summons, and the time indicated by the supervening /next/ summons: viz: of such evidence to wit the deposition of which would exercise upon the event of the cause, the same /an/ influence /as//similar to what/ was meant to be exercised in it by his own non-attendance and the consequent disposition of his own evidence: - of the evidence which, in the event of his appearance /attendance/ he would have found himself compelled to give, and which by his ultimate and permanent disappearance, whether in the way of immigration, or in the way of [...?] and successful latitantcy, would be destroyed.

As to the general causes of the deperition of personal evidence (a), they have already been noted and commemorated: - immigration, and latency as above (in case of voluntary and purposed latentcy distinguished as above by the appellation of latitantcy.) These together with death and the comparatively rare case of relative insanity /imbecility/. On the part of other proposed witnesses the two last as well as the two first of these results may have alike been the objects of the expectation of the given witness in question. In regard to the two last, that death on his own part - that his own death should have been the object of his own expectation, is a state of things always probably because continually exemplified: that in the occasion such as that in question that it should have been built upon, and trusted to in the character of an instrument of premeditated injustice is always possible, though by no means conformable to the ordinary complexion of human nature.

a Understand natural causes for if to the number of those which may be termed factiticous, being incited by the imbecility or depravity of law itself, there is evidently no certain limit.