JB/063/125/002

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GEN: EXEMPT:s2 ACCIDENT. 1

not, let the punishment for it be what you will, be any more able to help it: your
punishment, whatever it be is [in all such cases,] useless: take it then away.
in all such cases it produces misery, it prevents none. † † this is the ...th case of
inexpediency in a Law.

Proceeding in this method, upon this principle we shall escape stear clear of the contradictions into which those have the writer has
fallen into who being established as an axiom that "to constitute a legal
Crime, there must be both a vitious will as well as a vitious act: proceeds immediately
to observe "that in Drunkenness (amongst other instances) a vitious Will is
wanting, which doth not however, (says he) excuse." || || chat. Blackst. Anal. p. 106 & again, in the case of want;
"which is no legitimate expense."

First then with regard to Accident .... :[to begin with the cases that where
the application of the principal is most simple, to proceed on in succession gradation to those which where
are most complicated it is most intricate] It is [very] evident seems obvious at first sight that punishment in every
Where one man either 1st exerting no intentional energy
at all, or 2dly exerting an energy [directed towards an act different from foreign to that obnoxious calamitous
one which chances to take place] directs it not towards to the obnoxious act which chances
to take place, but to another foreign to it — an act that act which being in his contemplation at the time./ not necessarily connected with it It [seems is] obvious at first sight,
that in all such cases punishment must be useless: for as it is not the nature
of punishment to interpose any physical obstacle between the energy & the obnoxious
act, & its [agency] is confined to operates on the body only through the medium of the mind, to have any effect it is evident it must be present
to the mind, or, as we say, by in contemplation [as a consequence along with/annexed to] the obnoxious act which the
must be it contemplated
likewise which by the supposition is not
the case. — in more familiar language — to be deferred from doing it, he must
[be] think]ing about doing it: which the case supposes him not to do.

Thus far we proceed with [evidence &] facility: but

Let us for the sake of illustration take an example of each of these cases
in their order. [In the first place] A Man falling unawares from a scaffold, lights impinges upon a
man underneath & kills him: here no intentional energy at all is exerted by this faller: it is plain now no Law that can be made can
stop him in the Air: nor can it any Law prevent him from beginning to fall, unless thinking
of falling he thinks at the same time of the Law prohibiting him to do it, which
is what by the supposition he does can not do. Again Secondly to take a case ordinarily

Identifier: | JB/063/125/002"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 63.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	063	Main Headings	law in general
Folio number	125	Info in main headings field	gen: exempts accident
Image	002	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	c1
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	[[watermarks::[gr with crown motif] [britannia with shield motif]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	20314
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