7 July 1805

Evidence

6. Dictates of Utility

That in the formula of those decisions which are employed as [...?] of jurisprudential law no regard at all should have been paid to the dictates of utility - that utility should have had no place among the sources from whence the system is derived, is a proposition which never could have been /impossible to have been/ resolved, in any existing system how /however/ barbarous and absured soever. Utility it was and nothing else that contributed the origin of all judicature, except in so far as judicature may have been employed by some single ruler for one other purpose than the mere support of his own power, utility it must have been and nothing else that constituted the origin of all judicature. At no time has judicature been any thing less than necessary to the very being of society: every where the existence and preservation of those regions on which security for person, property, reputation and condition in life depends have been the work of judicature: and it is by the source of utility, of that extreme utility which reserves the name necessity, that men's acquiesence in the application of the [...?] of judicature to the several needs were /was/ every where produced.

But all over the world judicatures must have been carried on, carried on for a countless multitude of ages, before any of their operations were in use by which the memory of past decisions is preserved. Jurisprudential law grounded on considerations of utility must therefore have been formed, long before the foundation of that sort of jurisprudential law which is grounded in precedents.