9 March 1807

Letter V

I. Shapes

1. Misdecision

To appear is to appear - the sense of it imprisoned, what more instructive explanation could such a word receive? Whether at such a time or place John Stiles appeared or no, what if there were such a thing as a question of fact, could such a question be, but a question of mere fact? Yet this is among the questions which English jurisprudence has thus contrived to number among questions of law!

Heirs - heirs of the body - Heirs by itself, a word which lawyers must from the first have found in the most common use, but to which for the certainty's sake in any book of real law it might not have been improper to have subjoined an explanation - supposing it always composed of other words in equally more common use less susceptible of misconception, and at any rate not selected for the purpose of deceipt.

Making his will in favour of a friend who has a family, a man gives to him and his heirs, meaning that his heirs shall have it, which they can not if he sells it. What does the English lawyer. He takes in hand and poisons the word heirs, he takes out of it the sense he found belonging to it, he crams into it a sense he found not belonging to it. The meaning of the testator was that the first object of his bounty should not deprive the others of it; the man of the law invests him with that power, perverting the word into two words, adopting it into his mass of spurious law.