★ Keep up to date with the latest news - subscribe to the Transcribe Bentham newsletter; Find a new page to transcribe in our list of Untranscribed Manuscripts
NOTORIETY.1 Sequel to N.Y. Books. New Compilation.
Citation of OLD Rep.t's to be prohibited.
That It will not answer the purpose in respect to Notoriety to make a New Code if any of the Old Authorities are permitted to be quoted. For either they will influence the decision or they will not. If not it is useless to quote them, & to restrain from quoting them will be productive of no inconvenience. If they will it will be still necessary as before for people to consult them [to fashion their conduct by] — & they consequently remain a part of the Law, & the Law will not be notorious without their being less known as well as the new — the new will therefore be but a burthen superadded They should be banished from the Courts for ever, & nothing allowed to be said of them on any pretence whatsoever. I do not mean that penalty should be annexed to the citing of them. A simple prohibition will be effectual as any [thing] more complicated apparatus that can be devised. The Judges will be interested in enforcing it, by its saving them the tedium of attending to unnecessary argument: & the Counsel on the opposite side in every cause will be interested by stopping the reducing the body of argument with which they have to contend. which might be opposed to them.
A man will still not be safe in determining what he shall do or what he shall not do till he has consulted him: because
in the determinations of others the Judges what he shall suffer for so doing or not doing they will still be consulted.
This however, we must observe is a reason why such part of the Old Law & practise
as is retained, should be sought out with the utmost care diligence & minuteness to be reenacted: nor should
any thing be omitted from it's notoriety, which should make it necessary to adopt
that crude formulary System of reference, to past usage, which throws every thing back into the pristine confusion.
No "as heretofore", no "as hath been accustomed" no remnant of the Common Law (I mean in
the form of Common Law) should be left as a ferment to ferment & to taint with obscurity & uncertainty
the whole Mass. [+] [+] Every one must have observed in all subjects material & immaterial, what a vast bulk a small one will occupy in the imagination merely by having it's boundaries kept removed out of view sight: how a small puddle shall appear larger than a large lake; how a paddock shall be converted into a Park, how in a word how by the amotion of Concealment of limits, being transformed into indefinite shall pass for infinite. While any part of the subject is suffer'd to shoot out into a process the boundaries
of which are out of sight: kept out of view that subject may strictly speaking still be called [side-] infinite, & still too large for how much soever contracted in other parts will
the grasp of the people's apprehension: whereas where the limits are marked out on every side and included then
compass of a single work, that work (well fitted up with digested & well fitted up with an apparatus of references for consultation
adapted by their copiousness to the meanest capacities, may be considerably voluminous without any sensible inconvenience
It should be done executed with such a comprehension that any thing not contained in it might be lost without
inconvenience; & destroyed or abandoned for ever to the care industry of those impure animals whose delight is to hover
over the carcases of antiquity when after every thing that is valuable not offensive has been picked out.
If any one expects to set a method whereby the Law It can not be expected that the Law should by any artifice be render'd so clear as to exclude all possibility
of misinterpretation in a party consulting it: such method does not exist ╫ ╫ The variations inconsistencies will cease to be a cause of distraction & perplexity, when confined to particular causes, the histories of which are not recorded nor made to serve for precedents — the written Text Law being continued as the sole & sufficient guide. upon our Earth: it is to be found in the same planet with the Philosophers strange quarrels that can be improve it as we will It will not serve [a] man men in stran for [an artificial reason that
or] an artificial brain: all that can be expected of it is that men of literal educations of sound
Judgments & unruffled passions, should concur in the sense which they put upon it: it can not
be so worded distrusting as is the way with ignorance the most obvious dictates of his conception, & resolute in finding for it some hidden sense as that an illiterate infant rustic should have find it impossible to mistake it's sense
But that he may surer or as sure be able of comprehending it as of any other, & that in case of doubt he may have
recourse to his parent his patron the Squire or the Clergyman of his Parish. We may be the
more encouraged in our hopes of reducing it to this State by one general well consider'd & comprehensive reform,
in fact who we may observe it it is actually advancing towards making gradual but considerable under the able management of those the able persons interested with it the state under all the disadvantages of it's present
form.
But should it by this the its natural course of arrive at perfect stability, that is, at the being perfectly
known by the Judges so that they may might apply it without vacillation, yet it can never arrive after
Notoriety, that is at the being perfectly known to the practitioners (to speak of the most voluminous
part & which is the part that is merely practical merely regards form & practise) so as they may apply it act under it without mistakes, which
the materials its component parts of which it is composed lie blended buried under up and down in so many bulky Volumes + + A good deal of it not committed to writing but fluctuating in the apprehensions & memories of men. with such a confused variety of abolished & or obsolete material
PROMULG. Old Books to be cried down after DIGESTION [BR][ ][ ] Degree of intelligibility attainable.
|
Identifier: | JB/070/126/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 70.
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
070 |
of laws in general |
||
|
126 |
promulg. old books to be cried down after digestion degree of intelligibility attainable |
||
|
002 |
notoriety sequel to n. y. books - new compilation / citation of old rept to be prohibited |
||
|
text sheet |
1 |
||
|
recto |
|||
|
jeremy bentham |
[[watermarks::j honig & zoonen [lion with vryheyt motif]]] |
||
|
cc1 |
|||
|
23241 |
|||