14 June 1804

The remedy for... false imprisonment, is by an action of trespass vi et armis... which is generally & almost unavoidably accompanied with a charge of assault and battery also III 138

Abduction [of a man's wife]... may either be by fraud and persuasions or open violence: though in law in both cases supposes force & constraint, the wife having no power to power to consent

III 139

Adultery... a public crime

III 139

The law of society is ... a kind of secondary law of nature

III 145

Things personal are looked upon by the law as of a nature so transitory and perishable, that it is for the most part impossible either to ascertain their identity, or to restore them in the same condition as when they came to the hands of the wrongful possessor

III 146

By a fiction of law actions of trover were... permitted to be brought against any man, who had in his possession by any means whatsoever the personal goods of another & sold them or used them without the consent of the owner, or refused to deliver them when demanded

III 152

The fact of... trover... is totally immaterial, — for the pltf needs only to suggest... that he lost such goods, and that the deft found them

III 152

Contract... implied by law... are such as reason & justice dictate, & which therefore the law presumes every man has contracted to perform III 158

Every person is bound & hath virtually agreed to pay such particular sum of money, as are charged on him by the sentence, or assessed by the interpretation of the law.

For it is part of the original contract... to submit in all points to the municipal constitutions & local ordinances of that state, of which each individual is a member. Whatever therefore the laws order any one to pay, that instantly becomes a debt which he hath before hand contracted to discharge

III 158

Assumpsits... constantly arise from this general implication & attendment of the of the acts of judicature, that every man hath engaged to perform what his duty or justice requires

III 161

Fictions by which actions of assumpsit made to bear on the several cases to which they are applied

III 160 &c

Taking possession of... land the same instant that the prior occupier by his death relinquishes it, however agreeable to natural justice... is diametrically opposite to the law of society

II 168

Dispersion of incorporeal hereditaments cannot be an actual dispossession; for the subject itself is neither capable of actual bodily possession, nor dispossession

III 170

In corporeal hereditaments, a man may frequently suppose himself to be dispersed when he is not so in fact, for the sake of intitling himself to the more easy and commodious remedy of an assize of novel dispersion... instead of being drawn to the more tedious process of a writ of entry

III 170

III 190

The [ancient] forms an indeed preserved in the practice of common recoveries; but they are forms; & nothing else; for which the very clerks that pass them an capable to assign the man

III 197

Fiction by means of which of title of lands or tenements as tried by ejectment

III 203

Trespass .... offence against the law of nature

III 208

Every man's land is in the eye of the law enclosed & set apart from his neighbours

III 209

The law always couples the idea of force with that of intrusion upon the property of another

III 211

No nuisance to obstruct modern lights II 217

Depriving one of a matter of pleasure... as it abridges nothing really convenient or necessary, is no injury to the sufferer

III 217

Nemo est haeres viventis

III 224

The law... looks upon the cure of souls as too arduous & important a task to be eagerly sought for by any serious clergyman, & therefore will not permit him to contend openly at law for a change or trust which it is presumed he undertakes with diffidence

III 252

The prerogative of the Crown extends not to do any injury

III 255

The law... presumes that to know of an injury & redress it, an inseparable in the royal breast

III 255

To... the King... no laches is ever imputed, & by whom right is never defeated by any limitation or length of king

III 237