5[?] August 1805

Evidence

Ch. II. Vices

''. 6. Fixation in competency

Ch. Vice 6th Incompetancy in respect of fixations of all sorts: liquidation of quantities, of number, weight, measure and degree: establishment of exceptions, conditions, limitations.

In relation of this important function the compleat competancy of Statute law the helpless inaptitude of jurisprudential law will, at the very first mention, be with more or less distinctness perciptible /visible/ to every eye. Take them at the best, and though the supposition be repugnant to the very essence of jurisprudential law suppose the rules of it to be given in tenor as well as purport, still for want of fixation, they hang and float as it were in the air. On each revision a scale of indefinite length has extended under them: they hover over it, but never touch it for want of a definite point to fix upon. Be number of degrees in the scale ever so great, no one degree can ever be found, on which the rule can alight with propriety, to the exclusion of those that are above it and below it. What is the consequence? that, independently of /over and above/ all others, this one defect is enough to banish certainty, which is as much as to say to banish justice from the dispensations of jurisprudential law, from an indefinitely extensive portion of the field of law./judicature/