JB/047/085/001

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April 1806
Evidence

☞ This, not the beginning

The first and general comprehensive instruction should be – Forget every thing
you ever read in a law book about evidence

Lawyers In every thing that concerns the knowledge of mankind
lawyers are below the meanest vulgar. To a first glance
the proposition is a : examine so, it will be found here.

The In forming their judgments of mankind that is of the
individuals they happen to have to deal with, the meanest vulgar
are governed by experience: partly by their own experience, partly
in case of their resorting to others for advice, by the advice of others.
Lawyers are not governed by their own experience, nor by any
body's experience: what they are governed by is are their own rules:
rules made in without any regard to the truth of experience: rules which had for the object not the
discovery of truth, or the dispensation of justice.

But the opportunities which lawyers have of acquiring a
knowledge of mankind are not such as at first sight might very
naturally be supposed. I speak of the class of lawyers in question –
the class by whom those rules have been framed: viz. the Judges.
Knowledge of mankind the human mind is acquired partly by experience – by intercourse
with mankind partly be reflection operating upon the materials furnished
by that experience. Judges are made drawn from Advocates. Advocates
are those Equity Practicers, Special Pleaders, those men.

The sort of lawyer and the only sort whose practice gives
him any permanent opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of mankind
is the sort of lawyer who never becomes a Judge – viz: an Attorney.
He has no intercourse with mankind: viz: with his clients on one
side; with his fellow Attorneys on the other: and to his experience in the character
of an Attorney properly to extend, an associate or legislator, he adds that which comes
to have in his other character
of Notary assistant on the
occasion of contracts.

Identifier: | JB/047/085/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 47.
Date_1	1806-04	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	047	Main Headings	evidence
Folio number	085	Info in main headings field	evidence
Image	001	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	d1 / e1
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	14953
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