3 July 1805

Evidence

Introd. Jurisprudential

Ch. Sources

3. ''. 3. 1. decisions

Not that in the process above described there would, if particular cases were selected for the purpose and taken one by one in every instance be any thing beyond the reach of human powers. So far from it on the contrary, under these limitations, there is nothing more in it that what dogs, not to speak of other animals, are found fully competent to. If you make /making/ a point, as Louise the 14th did, of feeding your dog with your own hand, and for that purpose of keeping it constantly on a particular shelf within your own reach, you do not choose that the dog should come at it, /the meat/ but when you choose to give it to him, what you will do of course /you take for this instruction will be/ vis - as often as he makes any attempt to reach the shelf and help himself, you will give him a good blow. This process being repeated a competent number of times, your dog will at the end of it have become pro tanta a juryist or common lawyer, having acquired a general idea of theft, and of the law by which in virtue of the attendant punishment, the act of taking or attempting to take him in /when accompanied with/ these circumstances been converted into an offence, which this in the form of jurisprudential law has been inacted by you against theft. And from the same way the corpus juri canind may be, as in truth /made, as in fact/ it every day is made by legislators in no small numbers made to receive not inconsiderable extent. Not that, after all this instruction and consequent generalisation the dog would be less at a loss /puzzled/ to give so timorous a definition of theft in words /in general on [...?], general words/ than Lord Hale acknowledged himself to be, which he was hanging men for theft: but to general words are disquisition has not yet got to that length but general ideas are all that in question as yet general words, another object to which [...?] for our [...?].