[...?] Dec r 1806

2 6

Resolution 5

Pleading

There remains in the order of possibility /on the list of things conceivable/ the natural mode of pleading: but this, it is sufficiently evident /several reasons //considerations/ concurr in demonstrating/, can never have been /has never been/ in the intention, almost as certainly not as the contemplation /conception/ of the learned authors /projectors //reformers/ of the plan.

1. It assumes and therefore requires as I have endeavoured /already had occasion to endeavour/ to explain elsewhere a substantive Code of civil non-criminal (civil) law as the standard to which it refers[?] the basis on which it rests /ground work on which it is erected/. But as[?] such work exists or has so much as been thought of.

A set of forms so far as form could go, might indeed be proposed, of forms which, as such, would present an valid[?] appearance of a mass of belonging to the adjective branch of law: but this mass would of itself contain /mixture[?]/ by [...?] contain /[...?]/ though in a very bad way, the substance of a correspondent operation of the mass of substantive law /the substantive branch of the law/. as in England the worst account that can be given of the contents of our jurisprudential and therefore imaginary civil code is that which is draen by inference from our forms of pleading.

A system of /form of/ pleading without a Civil Code in terminus to rest upon is a sort of castle built in the air with a magic lantern or phastasmagoric spectrum of a foundation under it, instead of a foundation of brick or stone: good architecture thus, to those who have been used/ bred up/ on it, and have never had a thought of any other: but whosoever should leave[?] such a edifice to [...?] by the light of common sense, at least with any sincere and real desire to see it become the limple[?] of justice, will find, the laying of the foundation /the foundation/ in the first instance the most eligible course to pursue /mode of giving commencement to the work/.