30 April 1804

Evidence

Forthcomingness

Ch 3. Means physical

§.3/2 Search

Search for [...?] /[...?]/ document is [...?] search: where where it is an [...?] or [...?] comprised in a book or mass of papers, inspection: which [...?]

To the principal import of the word Search is attached or not attached an accessory idea - , viz: that of latency or latitantcy on the part of the object searched for.

latitantcy, if that object be /if it be/ a person: concealment, self concealment is in that case implied in it in that case. latency without latitantcy if it be an object of the class of things. In this case on the part of some person there may be a desire of concealing it; but such desire is not implied in the import of the word search: for so long as the thing can not be found, there is the same need of searching for it, whether any desire of concealment exists on the part of any person or not: so long as a thing is not to be found, by the possessor of it, who wishes to find it, nobody wishing that he may not find it, the possessor of the thing contained, and of all receptacles containing it - house, room, [...?], box - is in /under/ the same necessity of searching for it, as if all the world were desirous it should remain concealed /unfindable/.

Written evidence, it is plain, is no less apt to be the object of search than real evidence at large. In a particular case viz: where the source of the evidence, not being removable without preponderant inconvenience, requires not only to be discovered but to be read, another term the word inspection is commonly employed: (a) but in this case the use of the word inspection does not supersede that of the word search: search is an operation necessarily preliminary to that of inspection, if the particular document in question is a constituent element /an elementary part/ of a large /an aggregate/ mass, the elements of which being in any way brought into physical contiguity, as in the case of a Book of Accounts, or collection of books or a bundle of papers compose a whole /a sort of receptacle/: in which the search for the particular document in question is to be made.

(a) a particular, in the language of highest law