18 March 1807

2

By the supposition, whether the man be or be not conscious of the blame worthiness of his conduct, blameworthy it is: his conduct being thus blameworthy, if so it be[?] /the case be/ that he is not conscious of its being so, then instead of dolus[?] or malâ fide and /or/ dolus[?], the words culpa[/] or timeritas[?] be employed: which words in the way of what the Logerians[?] call conjugation, nor thrown into a variety of forms, such as the structure of the sentence of what they constitute the characteristic terms happening to require.

In point of reason and utility the demand for the use of the words culpa and temeritas, on the one hand is to [...?] a hair's breadth (Your Lordship sees) coextensive with that of the words dolus and malâ fide. Yet even from [...?] lawyers though inventors of this most cardinal distinction it has not received all this /in practice all that/ distinction to which it is so justly intitled; and from English lawyers much less. Among a variety of bad consequences, are, a [...?] it[?] which may serve for illustration is - that in a multitude of instances, homicide[?] and false testimony for example instead of the proper medium punishment in excess or impunity[?] is adminstered. In the case of homicide, where the act the result of which has taken this fatal course appears to have been accompanied /tinctured/ with honesty, the general tendency is to confound[?] him with murderers, and so destroy him: in the case of fake testimony, when, had he set that watch upon his word which he ought to set, and by the horror of [...?] punishment might be made to set, the uncorrectness would have been avoided, yet because a compleat consciousness of its deviation is not looked upon as certain, nor accordingly his [...?] as coming under the denomination of useful and corrupt perjury, he goes free.