4 Jan y 1808

Jury trial codification

case[?], but in any part of that lamented portion of the language which in so many determinate passages or groups of words is employed in the body of real law, but without any hesitation, in the whole body of the language.

It is only by words, and those determinate words that for the general and [...?] use of a community, will [...?] be expressed, meaning be conveyed, arbitrary will excluded, [...?] avoided. But of every Judge as of every man, it is the natural wish to be an arbitrary, that is to be as free to have /preserve/ as much liberty, to possess as much power, as possible: if every lawyer whose prosperity depends upon the uncertainty of the law, that is of every fee-fed lawyer, it is as certainty the wish to see the law as uncertain as possible. Consequently /BY necessary consequence/ to every fee-fed lawyer and to every Judge, fee-fed or not fee-fed whatsoever portion of the rule of action is in thye shape /[...?]/ of real law, as such an object of aversion /abhorrence/: whatsoever portion remains in the form of sham law is as such an object of attachment, and a subject of praise.

But sorry as Judge /the man of law/ would be to see the whole field of law /legislation/ [...?] in every part with[?] a covering of real law, he can not /it is impossible for him to/ speak of the rule of action in any part without supposing such covering to exist. What he knows is that to the part in question the will of the only legitimate author of the law has never supplied itself: what is as constantly expressed or by assumption asserted, is that he has: that his will has been framed[?] has been notified, and that such and such are the words by which it has been and is notified.