JB/549/176/001

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1823. June 13
Constitut. Code

☞ June 15 Written these 8 pages on Common Law on the occasion of Legislature's
Omnicompetence: but hardly employable. It may serve for any attack specially
directed against Common Law, in its encroaching state.

That which the publicists in question seem to be little to be
aware of is – that throughout the whole of the field occupied
by what is called Common Law every thing that is done, is done by legislation
individens et individum.

Whatever is done by what is called Common Law
is done in the very of those a multitude of acknowledged principles.

It is 1. Law is made by an authority the
of which to this purpose is not only manifest, but over and over again
self-acknowledged.

2. It is law made upon individual subject matters
things as a persons as well as things.

3. It is law and that penal law made ex post facto: when a man
is punished by it, he is punished without warning, without
the p punished for disobedience to ordinances non
issued – punished for non-compliance with a code, which
not only had never been notified to him, but had not
been so much as formed: punished for the not having done
that which the doing of which was for want of a motive
for the doing it, physically impossible: as well might a man
who has no neither money nor moneys worth at command, be punished
for non-payment of a tax. If this is not the case so in the instance
pretence they think is to be punished , of every decision pronounced on the authority, it is so however
in every new case: and every case has been in the first
instance a new case.

4. The power thus exercised has in the instance of every
such new case been assumed and obtained upon false pretences: in every
such instance not in the suitor be who he thus punished, but
in the Judge by whom he has been punished he the should
punishment have been inflicted. The Judge looks into the books
or tears perhaps from the books – but into what books? not books containing
the create discourses of the only acknowledged or self-declared legislators,
but books consisting of discourses held to and by the Judges of anterior time. Into
those books he looks
and pretends to be find
have found in them
law – law affording for
whatsoever it pleases he
thereupon to do, a sufficient
warrant: whereas all that he can f have found in them – all that there is in them is a quantity of discourse concerning who, on the different sides in question, it is said ought
to be laws regarded as law,⊞ ⊞ as if it were law.

Identifier: | JB/549/176/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 549.
Date_1	1823-06-18	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	549	Main Headings
Folio number	176	Info in main headings field	Constitut. Code
Image	001	Titles
Category	Text sheet	Number of Pages
Recto/Verso		Page Numbering
Penner	Jeremy Bentham	Watermarks
Marginals	Jeremy Bentham	Paper Producer
Corrections	Jeremy Bentham	Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number
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