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1805
Evidence
§. Under the technical system, justice is without exempt
A man of social feeling can never
To a In a virtuous mind mind To a mind truly virtuous alive to social feelings not a single
instance of known injustice and palpable injustice can ever present itself
in any such colours of detail as exhibit by which a distinct image is
expressed, without exciting in the region of the breast, what that sort of painful physical emotion which the French call serrement de coeur
for which English apathy has no name, and which Priestly accordingly in
speaking of God, calls a sensation more than mental.
Were an Englishman to read in a book of travels, of
some distant region, (widely distant he would of course expect
to find it from the sort of his own matchless government)
of some country in the antipodes or thereabouts, in which the state
of upon a sober calculation made account taken, judicature was had been found to
be in such a state that in the majority of the causes tried there
was a an indisputable failure of justice, with what pity or with what contempt
under the mask of pity would he look down upon the miserable
inhabitants people!
What then would be his feelings, if consistency at least
were among the attributes of man, at being informed or rather
reminded, that⊞ excepting the case of a casual excess in random damages of the causes owing to money in the whole number of causes brought to a conclusion
within any given period, no one will be found whatever
be that period, no one, as not so much as a single one, in
which under either branch of regular procedure, common law or Equity the plaintiff has obtained compleat justice: of which in a
word it may not be said, and without any with the strictest impropriety, injustice
has been done, justice has not been done: and that as often as
the word justice meets his ear is pronounced as the name of one object of
which the reality is within his view, it is all vapour a mere phantasm in truth no better
than a Utopian tale, delusion or hypocrisy, according to the lips from
which it flows? and that whatsoever has exaggeration there may have been
in the exclamation of the dying antient Virtue, there not by but an empty
name, the same melancholy reflection might on English ground to not look no further further at present any further, be
with the general & brutal truth be applied
to justice?
What then would be his feelings, if consistency at least
were among the attributes of man, at being informed or rather
reminded, that⊞ excepting the case of a casual excess in random damages of the causes owing to money in the whole number of causes brought to a conclusion
within any given period, no one will be found whatever
be that period, no one, as not so much as a single one, in
which under either branch of regular procedure, common law or Equity the plaintiff has obtained compleat justice: of which in a
word it may not be said, and without any with the strictest impropriety, injustice
has been done, justice has not been done: and that as often as
the word justice meets his ear is pronounced as the name of one object of
which the reality is within his view, it is all vapour a mere phantasm in truth no better
than a Utopian tale, delusion or hypocrisy, according to the lips from
which it flows? and that whatsoever has exaggeration there may have been
in the exclamation of the dying antient Virtue, there not by but an empty
name, the same melancholy reflection might on English ground to not look no further further at present any further, be
with the general & brutal truth be applied
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Identifier: | JB/058/432/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 58.
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1805-07 |
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058 |
evidence |
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432 |
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001 |
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jeremy bentham |
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19101 |
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