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Punishment in alienam personam
Of the Law were known to be in this behalf as it hasbeen said to be,
the nation wouldmust long ago have been one continued a scene of
lust, cruelty and rapine: but it happens here as it
will sometimes happen in other instances, one mischief
operates as a palliative to another: the extreme
absurdity of the Law is veiled by men's utter
ignorance of it's contents.
Let us reverse the tablesLet us turn back & look in the other side.. What then would be Little danger
from the admission
of promiscuous
evidence not
so great as it
seems to be
the mischiefdanger of admitting the testimony of personsa man
thus stigmatized - I see none: none at least that
can for a moment stand in competition with the
mischief on the other side. The A"But the person so stigmatized
does not deserve to be believed?"- Does
he not? why am I to think so? because you
say so? - No: but because men in general
will say so too? And will they then? - Yes surely
will they. — I do believe so tooit, and therefore
it is I say there is no danger. Let him be known
for suchwhat he is, and a Jury will be under the strongest
bias not to believe him. Their prejudice will
bear strong against him: and nothing butnor wil any thing less than
maythe strongest degree of probability and the most perfect
consistency in the whole narration [can prevail withwill be sufficient
then] to induce them to believe it. The I see not what
it is that should justify the extreme distrust which
Judges have shewn of Juries in establishing this rule:
especially as in case of conviction of perone innocent
person [+] it is so entirely in the power of the Judge to [+] which is the greatest
danger the case
is liable open to
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Identifier: | JB/141/147/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 141. |
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not numbered |
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141 |
rationale of punishment |
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147 |
punishment in alienam personam |
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001 |
incompetency |
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text sheet |
2 |
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recto |
f60 / f61 |
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jeremy bentham |
l v g |
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caroline vernon |
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48364 |
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