21 May 1805

Evidence

Introd

Ch. [...?]

Things being thus circumstanced, if the degree of efficiency, and thence of coerciveness and burthensomeness be made in any instance to depend merely on the class under which as above the suit is ranged, without regard either to the specific nature of the offence or right, or the individual circumstances of the party or parties, practical errors of great moment[?] can not, it is evidence, fail of being every now and then the result. One man will be vexed more than is necessary, because the suit is called a penal or in the superlative[?] a criminal one: another man, for want of being vexed so much as is /was/ necessary will escape from justiciability, and the plaintiff lose his right, because the suit is ranked under some name synonymous /equivalent/ to non-penal. And so it may happen in regard to the quantum of probative force required on the part of the evidence.