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SECTION XX.: EXECUTION, HOW PERFORMED. - 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 XX.

EXECUTION, HOW PERFORMED.

Instructional.

Art. 1. Of a suit in the Dispatch Court, the sole side to which the operation designated by the term execution applies, is the defendant’s: a case in which the side it might be supposed to apply to is the demandant’s, or say the plaintiff’s, is only where, in an anterior suit connected with that in which execution is called for, he was defendant.

Art. 2. In every suit, at the close thereof, the question is, in respect of the service demanded at the hands of the Judge by the suit, shall it be rendered or not? if not, whether any and what instead thereof? In either case, unless the correspondent service demanded at the charge and at the hands of the defendant in question is rendered by him, execution will have to be performed: if both services be denied, no such execution will have to be performed.

Art. 3. In the course of any suit, as well on the part of a demandant as on the part of a defendant, it may happen that delinquency may in any one of a variety of shapes have had place: and in consideration, and on the account of such delinquency, that remedy in the shape of compensatory satisfaction, or punition, or both, may be to be administered. But by any demand for either of these purposes, initiation, or say commencement, is given to a fresh and distinct suit. In no other shape than that of inactive, in consequence of a simple refusal, can execution be performed to the disadvantage of the demandant’s, or say the plaintiff’s side.

Art. 4. Under the head of the execution-securing purpose, have been seen the several operations which for that purpose the Judge is empowered to perform upon the person of the defendant, and on things belonging to him. To perform execution at the charge of a defendant, is to give fulfilment to the effective purpose of the prehensive powers, or say the power of prehension given to the Judge, as per Section VI. Judge’s Powers, &c.

Art. 5. Difference between fulfilment given to the execution-securing and the execution-effecting purpose, this: for the former, whatsoever suffering is inflicted on the defendant is but defeasible; in other words, may be temporary, short of perpetual;—in the other, it is perpetual.

For example: if it be a house or a horse that is taken from him, if the operation be the execution-securing, he loses the use of it for a time; if the execution-effecting, he loses it for ever. So in the case of money.

By the difference between the two purposes will the difference between the operations respectively performed by the Judge be directed.

Enactive.—Expositive.

Art. 6. Operation or operations, by which to an ultimate decree of the Dispatch Court Judge, execution and effect will be given, these:—

When and in so far as it is by the delivery of the subject-matter in question that appropriate satisfaction is administered to a demandant, this subject-matter being a thing intrinsically valuable, will be either a thing or an aggregate of things corporeal or incorporeal: if corporeal, moveable or immoveable: money, with casual exception to a small extent, the representative, equivalent, and substitute of the above,—in a word, of all other things.

Without the consent and concurrence of the owner are all other things capable of being prehended: so likewise money, in so far as the individual pieces are in the physical possession of this or any other individual, and by the Judge it is ascertained that they are, and where they are.

Not so money, in the sense in which it is indicative of value, and as such is capable of being delivered and removed in the shape of a given number of pieces of the precious metal in question; the individual pieces, supposing the value of them to be to the amount in question, being at the choice of the person on whose account they are delivered.

Enactive.—Instructional.

Art. 7. For the purpose of such execution, the Judge will take such course, by which at the charge of all parties, delay, expense, and vexation, will be minimized; taking accordingly for the subject-matter of prehension things or persons, or both: and if things, the causing to be made over to the person to whom satisfaction is done, either the things themselves, or money in lieu; if money, then to raise it, causing the requisite things to be sold by virtue of his vendition mandate, or say sale-ordering mandate.

Expositive.

Art. 8. By the initiatory examination and during the continuance of the suit, the means of intercourse for this purpose will have been ascertained and established.