28 July 1805

Evidence

Introd. Jurisprud.

Ch. II Vices

In front of this talk of Estoppel is placed by a continuator and with evident /and with regard/ use and propriety, a modern dictum of a very instructive nature, by it the essence of uncertainty, as flowing from one of the two opposite fountains the fountain of truth and justice otherwise /statable/ called the fountain of reason and utility and reason, is exhibited in a concentrated state. Estoppels (for Lord Kenyon) Estoppels in general are not to be favoured, they are to extend only in by as far as the positive rules have gone because the tendency of them is to prevent the investigation of truth.

By this dictum his Lordship, treading in the steps of his ever illustrious predecessor, put in for the prize of liberality: by another mode of providing he might have learned the merit, encompassed professed objects, of /it/ that judicial virtue. On convenient occasions the road to the legislature is not altogether unknown to one ennobled part at least of the Judges. By a short act extinguishing the principle of Estoppels altogether all uncertainty /uncertainties/ from this source might have been, and might at any time be removed. By the dictum with its liberality, it /may/ was thickened. Of each secondary /successive/ occasion, each Judge, as inclination invites, draws his decision either from the principle /fountain of falsehood from/ of Estoppel, with its "positive rules", or from the fountain of truth and justice, from the principle of liberality, which leaves aside, and turns the decision aside, from the course marked out by those rules.