[048-179b]

25 Sept. 1804

Evidence

Note

Circumstantial

Ch. Failure Causes

§. Delinquency. Clandestinity

Disguise[?] - Search[?]

[...?] (a)

B. Of Circumstantial Evidence

Ch. ( ). General View[?]

§.1.

The [...?] of circumstantial evidence presents itself as the first to be brought to view. - Why so? - Because this can /is may/ be /capable of being/ treated[?] of without the [...?] of any part of the matter contained in /under/ any of the other heads. None of them can be clearly or /and/ satisfactorily treated of without the introduction of more or less of the matter contained in this.

The relations we have here to bring to view are no other than those /the relations/ which subsist[?] between fact and fact: between one fact considered as the principal fact - the fact to be proved or disproved, and another fact considered as evidentiary in relation to it - as applicable in the character of evidence to prove or to help prove the existence or non-existence of it.

We shall not in this whole book, be imbarassed[?] by any of these doubts and difficulties which [.../] hover over human testimony /the expanse/. For the purpose of the inquiry /argument/ The existence of the evidentiary fact will be supposed to have been established, no matter how: and the question /consideration/ will be confined to the connection between that and the principal fact to the proof of which it is considered as applicable.

Note

Clandestinity of the act - Of this and the next[?] modification of voluntary deportment evidentiary /capable of affording circumstantial evidence/ of delinquency, viz: 2.[?] Forgery of real evidence: 3. Opposition to physical investigation. 4. Tampering with witnesses. 5. Latitantcy. 6. Substraction of property and other pledges of justiciability, and 7 Tampering with prosecutor, it is almost needless to observe that in several transactions the scene being out of court the evidence to the Judge will not present itself in the shape of immediate, but only in the shape of reported evidence. Consequently the evidentiary chain can not in one of these cases consist of any smaller number of links than five, nor of any smaller number of joints than four, exposed each of them to the infirmative force of its several infirmative facts, as above exhibited.