JB/028/139/002

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6)

evidences of something else that is: Evidences of so many
Customs. Good, but when there is no custom in the
case, what are they then? Either they are themselves
among the ingredients of this same Common Law it should seem, or
they are nothing. But to have said thus would
not have answered the design: a design scarce recognized
perhaps by our author; but not the less tolerably
to have governed him. The Common Law, in
order to make it the fitter for adoration, was to be
turned into an abstruse and invisible quiddity
robed in darkness, and which like certain Tyrants of the earth,
was never to shew itself in public: like them it was to
make itself known its existence perceivable, & only by means of its delegates;
these judicial decisions, which & whenever the Common
Law was asked for take were to be produced
coram populi, as the ostensible images of its person,
not as themselves being that thing, but as evidences of their being such a thing somewhere. Thus, to use
our Author's own apposite similitude, the Oracles
were not the words of the Priest Pythia that spoke them,
but his speech was her words were the evidence of an Apollo
whose oracles they were.

As to these judicial decisions, with their appurtenances, we are next told, what
becomes of them. The judgment itself, continues
our Author, and all the proceedings previous thereto
are carefully registered and preserved, under the
name of records, in public repositories set apart
for that particular purpose; and to them frequent ⊞ ⊞ (he might more truly have said infrequent rare and casual) recourse

Identifier: | JB/028/139/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 28.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	028	Main Headings	comment on the commentaries
Folio number	139	Info in main headings field	common law judicial decisions
Image	002	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	4
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	b5 / e6 / b7 / e8
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	[[watermarks::[monogram] [britannia emblem]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	9404
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