9 March 1807

Letter V

I. Shape

1. Misdecision

Thus it is that every question of law is a question concerning the import of some word, almost always of a general nature, consigned to writing, and considered as forming part and parcel of the law.

In the case where the rule of action is in the state of statutory law, the assumption agrees with the truth of things: and every mind of like natural strength and alike used to relection is alike competent to judge of it.

For otherwise is it in the case where the rule of action is in the state of jurisprudential law. Jurisprudential law is throughout the whole shapeless mass of it an imposture. No legislator: not a word in it that is the word of any man who is so much as pretended to have written in the character of a legislator - Yet words alas! there are in it, and but too many. Whose are these words? the words attributed by this or that Reporter to this or that Judge, as having been employed by him on the occasion of his concurring in the pronouncing of a decision in this or that individual case: or the words of some Compiler, as employed by him in the endeavour to give a general idea of the considerations that may have served as grounds of decision for the decisions pronounced in the class of cases which he undertakes to treat of.

For example take again the case of the word force. Look for it in the most determinate source of information, the accustomed forms of pleadings, you find it means nothing at all; as in the case of adultery, a transgression by consent, never committed, if the mendacity-manufacturers are to be believed, without " force" and " arms" into the bargain.