8 July 1804

Procedure and Evidence

Evil causes 4th order

5. Anti-merits substantive law

There is no end to the sorts of things, which for one reason or other, though ----- but too stealable, were not, or even are not to this hour larcenable. Sometimes, if an animal it is the wildness of the animal: as if wildness supposing it to have any thing to do with the business /be any thing to the purpose/, were a quality /thing/ to be measured: and as if there existed a species of animal (man not excluded) that was not wild. Sometimes the supposed worthlessness: as if a man could run the risk of stealing what was not worth having.

Proposed law for removing out of the infinite list of non-larcenable this or that article have sometimes been passed /are sometimes passed/ and sometimes thrown out.

By such jurisprudence, amended by such legislation, the single title of larceny might be swelled to such a bulk, that a number of volumes /mass of learning/ equal to the volumes Buffon's System of Nature should consolidate but a part of it.

As often as an amending law of this complexion is brought upon the carpet, humanity or cunning, men of true humanity /some man or other, more abounding/ or perhaps in cunning, perhaps than in wisdom, stands up and laments the ever-increasing multitude of penal laws: as if the effect of laws depended not upon their extent but upon their multitude: as if the severest of legislators was not he who had but one penal law for everything. Whoever does any thing forbidden shall be hanged.