9 March 1807

Letter V

I. Shapes

1. Misdecision

3. Other examples are all denominations of contracts or[?] all denominations of offences: other terms of still more extensive import such as thing, to cause, to contribute as applied in another place +, for example, to delinquency, and co-delinquency, in the case of a result produced by punishable transgression.

4. So again a very short but most significant groupe of words which though terms of jurisprudence are at the same time among the words in most common use: obligation, right, power, liberty, privilege, exemption. These, as shewn in another place §, though, as not being any of them a species of any thing, they are not any of them susceptible of definition, in the sense commonly annexed to that term, are not the less susceptible of exposition, nor do they the less stand in need of it.

10. That though the operation indicated by the word legislation may not improperly be spoken of as being the subject of a particular art and science: yet the product of that operation, viz: law - a book of real law when once composed neither ought to be nor need be of such a nature as to require art or science for the comprehension of it: for that when framed as it might be and ought to be, on the part of each individual the means of his understanding in so far as, his mental faculties, natural and acquired, afford him the capacity of understanding it, will not be to be sought for any where out of itself.

 Go on with jurisprudential law.

/ + [...?] I.917/

/ § Fragment on Government pp.│ │/

 Go in with jurisprudential law.