24 Jan y 1808

Jury trial

There is but one aside in which of he process called the separation of the question of law from the question of fact any precise idea can be conveyed: and from that every man whose propriety depends on the uncertainty of the law /rule of action/ will learn from with abhorrence.

Concerns[?] that the whole field of legislation and judicature having been surveyed /a survey having been/ by the legislative eye, the legislator /legislative mind/ applying itself to every point and portion of that field has conceived a will, and to that will given expression by a determinate assemblage of words: the whole of the rule of is exactly[?] thus in the form of statute law, the only real law. In this state of things, a question of law can never be either more or less than a question concerning the import of one or more of these words. The question may be confined to a single word, or it may embrace /extend itself over/ any number of words: but though on a given occasion every page on the code were required to be confronted with every other, the question would still be but a question of words a question concerning the meaning of a determinate set of words.

Unhappily for mankind questions [...?] question of law under the sham sort of law [...?] properly called Common Law or unwritten law, hen under real law as above described: what in this case is a question of law? it is still but a question of words, but the words are in this case the words not having been determined by the legislator, remain to be determined by somebody else: and where are they to be looked for ? not in any part of the body of real law, for by the supposition it extends not to the case.