8 Dec r 1803

Evidence

Exclusion

2 Notoriety

These explanations being promised, it follows of course, that to look no further than the quality and tendency of the particular masses of law in question, in the present instance the masses /good parts of the mass/ of substantive law thus debilitated by a /the/ rule of adjective law attached to them, the less generally the existence of these debilitative appendages is known, the better.

Nor on the other hand, can it be denied, that viewing the subject in the same limited point of view, where the substantive law is bad, the effect of the adjective excluding law being to impair the efficacy of this bad law, and the action of it depending upon /being inseparably connected/ its notoriety, the more generally it were known the better.

But, in a more general view, against this particular /partial/ good, is to be set the more extensive evil resulting from the example set (as often as it transpires) by the opposition of the adjective law to the substantive; the breach of faith in respect of the engagements taken by the substantive law: to which must be added, where the substantive law is the work of the official /competent/ legislator, and the adjective law the work of his subordinate the Judge, self-created into a legislator, the breach of constitutional obedience /subjection/ on the part of the thus usurping subordinate.

Upon /To speak[?] from/ the most extensive survey, so far as the law, meaning the substantive branch of the law, is good, the non-notoriety of it is a great misfortune; the non-notification of it consequently a great act of negligence. On the other hand so much of it is every where bad, that the non-notoriety of it is in a great variety of instances a benefit; though a partial and ever precarious benefit. But upon the whole, as the bad laws can /could/ not be kept in constant darkness while the good ones were exposed to constant view the non notoriety of the whole together constitutes a crying grievance. How far effectual and universal notification is practicable is a question too wide from the subject to be discussed here. One means of notification, and that of no inconsiderable extent as well as of partial efficacy, will come to be exhibited in the course of the ensuing book.