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SECTION XIII.: DEFINITIONS. * - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 3.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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SECTION XIII.

DEFINITIONS.*

Expositive.

Art. 1. By an attendant—meaning in a Justice-Chamber—understand any person who, during the exercise of any judicial function, is therein present.

Art. 2. By attendants official, understand all judicial functionaries who being subject to the mandates of the Judge are so present in the Justice-Chamber as above: professional persons included, that is to say, barristers and attorneys of all classes.

Art. 3. By non-official attendants, understand any other person who, in whatsoever capacity, is so present in the Justice-Chamber; including more particularly, parties on the demandant’s side, parties on the defendant’s side, evidence-holders, narrating witnesses, or say extraneous witnesses.

Expositive.—Ratiocinative.

Art. 4. For the designation of the ensuing new arrangements, correspondent new denominations are indispensably necessary: of these new denominations, for rendering them free from obscurity and ambiguity in divers instances, corresponding definition and explanation. Necessary will be seen to be this expository matter, to prevent misconception, and misdecision, or decision on grounds foreign to the merits.

Expositive.

Art. 5. By an evidence-holder, understand any person considered as having it in his power to furnish evidence of any description, relative to the suit in question.

Art. 6. Evidence-holder extraneous: by this appellation, understand any evidence-holder who is not a party to the suit.

Art. 7. Considered in respect to its source,—personal, real, and scriptitious,—under one or other of these specific denominations may every evidence, or say piece of evidence, be included.

i. By personal evidence, understand the information furnished orally, or say by word of mouth; discourse by a person acting in the character of a testifier, or say testificant, or narrating witness: narrating, in contradistinction to a percipient witness; for these two characters are sometimes included in the same person; at other times, not.

ii. By real evidence, understand information furnished to the senses by anything, moveable or immoveable, otherwise than through the medium of discourse: for example, the signs of deterioration or improvement exhibited by a thing deteriorated or improved; signs of operation, visible or otherwise perceptible, in a substance or person operated upon, or an instrument operated with, as in case of homicide.

iii. By scriptitious evidence, understand personal information furnished through the medium of real. Of scriptitious, written is the originally-exemplified, and still the most extensively-employed modification.

Exemplificative.

Art. 8. Quasi-oral, is an appellative by which may be designated any visible and evanescent representation of audible discourse: for example, the finger language.

Art. 9. Moveable and immoveable: in both these states, quasi-scriptitious evidence has been exemplified; immoveable, as in columns, edifices, and rocks.

Expositive.

Art. 10. Evidence-elicitation: by this appellation, understand reception of evidence, with or without active operations performed for that purpose.

Art. 11. Evidence-elicitator, or examinant: by these appellations, understand any person by whom, for the extraction, or say obtainment of any piece of evidence, active operations are employed.

Art. 12. Examinand, examinee: by these ppellatives, understand any evidence-holder from whom evidence is extracted; by examinee, one from whom the operation of extracting it is going on or has been completed.

Art. 13. Demandant, or say plaintiff: by this appellative, understand any person by whom commencement is given to a suit at law; he at the same time thereby demanding service in some shape at the hands of the Judge. Under this appellative are included the imports respectively attached to the words complainant, prosecutor, informer, or say informant.

Art. 14. Proposed demandant or plaintiff: by this appellation, understand him by whom or for whom application is made for the purpose of his being admitted in the character of demandant, or say plaintiff.

Art. 15. Proposed defendant: by this appellation, understand him concerning whom it is proposed that the service demanded at his charge, of the Judge, be rendered by the Judge, unless by contesting, or say controverting the justice of the demand, he thus defends himself, or takes certain measures and performs active operations for the purpose of defending himself against it.

Art. 16. Minutation: by this appellative, understand the operation by which, in proportion as orally-elicited evidence is delivered, the tenor or supposed purport of it is committed to writing: the tenor, that is to say the very words.

Art. 17. By recordation, understand the operation and course of conduct by which the product of minutation, or evidence, or source of evidence, is taken into keeping, and preserved for use.

Art. 18. By an attendant’s House of Call, understand a house to which by the LETTER post, general or twopenny, as the case may be, a LETTER if directed will, accidents excepted, be sure to reach him; and at which it may and will for all purposes of notice be presumed to have been delivered at the time of the day at which, by the post in question, letters are customarily delivered.

[* ]Some portions of matter originally included under this head have apparently been distributed under others, to which they appropriately belonged: as for instance, Sect. VII. Prehensors, art. 1.; Sect. VIII. Consignees, art. 1; Sect. XIV. art. 3. &c. No such places have been found for the articles now following.—Ed.