24 March 1808

Letter V

Ends of Justice

- a non-utility, which notwithstanding such its character, or rather in virtue of such its character, is a /vice/ compound of vices, of vices beyond /such/ any which it would be in the power of any really existing object, how vitious /depraved/ soever be [...?] /[...?]//[...?]/.

1. Uncertainty, its primary and effectual attribute, expressed within the [...?] result of all[?] form[?]

2. Spuriousness, it being the wish of the Judge disowning[?] his own work at the very time his hands are /employed/ seen to be employed in making it.

3. Imposture: produced in it as upon the people, and the Legislator himself, as the work of a legislator, never assigned, because never assignable.

4. Inexpediency, the necessary result of its spuriousness: the hands by which it is forged not being provided with the stock of information necessary to the making of good laws, nor any means of getting it. inexpediency, including an all-pervading repugnancy to natural justice.

5. Scantiness: the progress /space/ thus capable of being made /covered/ in the field of law being in respect of direction and velocity determined and limited by the calls made by individuals in the character of plaintiffs.

6. Incorrigibility, viz. at any rate by its own hands: for since no new speci of expediency can ever be infused /poured//drain[?]/ into it but by force of a greater mischief in the shape of uncertainty

7. Barbarity /8 Inhumanity:/ com,posed s it is of a string of spurious laws none /no one/ of which can ever be established without bringing with it that injustice which when /if ever/ inflicted by the legislator forms the disgrace of /a black spot on/ the statute book, under the name of an ex post facto law: instead of a word a blow

Take a man, as you would a dog, and give him a blow: coupled with the occasion on which it was given, this blow recollected by him to whim it was given, and observed by others (men or dogs) becomes a law, constitutes an article of jurisprudential law.

The offence undefined, though by proper authority it might so easily be defined, the law against theft a crime more frequently exemplified than all others put together stands to no[?] [...?] upon no clearer grounds.