25 May 1804

Evidence

6

Forthcomingness

Ch. Extraction

§.3. Non-Partys

To expose /expunge//get rid//clear away/ of such part of the difficulty as can be cleared away /got rid of/ the occasion by which the examination in question is called for, must be distinguished into three cases -

1. The fact acquired of /subject of inquiry/ is a past offence, say a past crime, the continuation, or repetition of which on any determinate occasion is not apprehended. This case by which the legislator is relieved from the principal part of the difficulty, is happily by far the most common one.

2. The subject of inqury is the means of assuring the forthcomingness /the timely justiciability/ of a particular individual, for the purpose of punishment, he being known, or more or less /on grounds more or less persuasive/ suspected, of having been author or partaker of a past offence, say of a past crime, as above: or what may come to much the same thing, the prevention of a scheme for exempting him from punishment by the destruction of the evidence /for an offence/ necessary to his conviction.

3. The subject of inquiry is a crime - say a crime importing extensive and consistent[?] /serious and extensive/ danger to the publice - a crime of the chronical cast + supposed to be commenced and still going on, or /though projected only//as yet only in project/. On the point of being commenced: the object or end in view is the preventing this perpetration of such part of it as is yet unperpetrated. Say a plot like the English Gunpowder plot contrived and preceded upon but prevented from being consumated: a plot like that of the French infernal machine, consummated to the destruction not of the intended victim of the first Magistrate, but of a number of innnocent individuals in his stead: a plot like that of the French infernal machine, consummated to the destruction not of the intended victim of the first Magistrate, but of a number of innocent individuals in his stead: a plot like that of the Anglo-Americans in a period of hostility, with the British incendiary John the Painter /for the agent/ for the destruction of the combustible part of the naval stores in England, a plot the execution of which was performed in part and meant to be continued: a plot like the vaguely proposed scheme of the British diplomatist for the destruction of the several gunpowder Mills[?] in /the [...?] country of/ France, by the hands of such French agents as might be found: - a plot, supposing any such scheme to be hatched.