Evidence

6 June 1805

Introd [...?]

Ch. [...? ...?]

Jurisprudential Law is that sort of imaginary law in which the supposed purport and effect is every where the tenor no where.

By tenor, in the language in use with lawyers themselves mean a determinate assemblage of words; by the tenor of an agreement, the words of /to/ /by/ which agreement is composed that /the intuition of the parties have been [...?] /expressed/. No statute but what has in tenor; accordingly what it is that goes to make ones Statute or one Chapter Section or other division of Statute is never a matter of doubt. No portion of Jurisprudential Law that has a tenor; if the infinite mass of writing of /in/ which the materials /import/ for jurisprudential, is to be [...?] for, there exists not a book or page or a line or a portion of any one of either of which it can ever be said in these words that contained on[?] a jurisprudential law - or an article of jurisprudential law.

Jurisprudential law being a sort of fictitious, spurious law, put off upon mankind for genuine, to convey a full and accurate conception of its nature, the only effective course that can be taken will be, after noting /are[?] by in[?] all characteristic/ its properties, to compare them with the correspondent properties of genuine law.