24 Jan y 1808

Jury trial Codification

Law & Fact

Cutting

Where /So far/ the pint in which the question [...?] as a point of real law, the question of law is plain[?] and distinct, and the form of pleading adapted to the case is equally so. The assemblage of words in question being a determinate, the question of law is what is the impact [...?] to be given to those words: the question of fact or whether the act /matter of fact //event/ expressed by the words employed in the evidence, be one event /a fact/ that comes under the description given by those words.

The question that came[?] in t'other day in the Statute commonly called Lord Ellenborough's Act, may in respect of its simplicity, though the case be a [...?] only serve on this occasion for an example. By the Act it is made capital for one man harbouring /in pursuit of/ certain intentions therein declared to cut another. With an instrument not designed to cut /formed for the purpose of cutting/ the defendant had produced on the body of the prosecutor an effect of that sort which is produced by applying [...?] instrument formed for the purpose of cutting to that its destined use. Turning upon certain words, forming part of the law, a determinate and really existing portion of the true[?] matter of the law this question was out of dispute a question of law, as such it was referred to the Judges. But for any such reference whether there could be any use or reason, is another question and a very different one whether there could be any use or reason for sending it out of the hands of a Jury, is another question and a very different one.

/The act done by the defendant was it or was it not an act an act of cutting of the number of those acts which ought to be condemned as designated by the word cutting by the verb to cut?