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• Errata—vol. VI. *
• An Introductory View of the Rationale of Evidence; For the Use of Non-lawyers As Well As Lawyers.
• Chapter I.: Title-page Justified.
• Chapter II.: Relation of Law to Happiness—of Procedure to the Main Body of the Law—of Evidence to Procedure.
• Chapter III.: Ends of Justice On the Occasion of Judicature. *
• Chapter IV.: Duties of the Legislator In Relation to Evidence.
• Chapter V.: Probative Force—whence Measured—how Increased—how Diminished.
• Chapter VI.: Degrees of Persuasion—thence of Probative Force—how Expressible.
• Chapter VII.: Causes of Trustworthiness and Untrustworthiness In Testimony—thence of Belief and Unbelief.
• Chapter VIII.: Of the Securities For Trustworthiness In Evidence.
• Chapter IX: False Securities For Trustworthiness In Evidence—oaths and Exclusions.
• Chapter X.: Of the Reception and Extraction of Evidence, Viz. With the Help of the Above Securities.
• Chapter XI.: Collection of Evidence—english Practice.
• Chapter XII.: Of Circumstantial Evidence.
• Chapter XIII.: Of Make-shift Evidence.
• Chapter XIV.: Of Preappointed Evidence.
• Chapter XV.: Difference Between Preappointed and Unpreappointed Evidence.
• Chapter XVI.: Preappointed Official Evidence.
• Chapter XVII.: Extempore Recordation, How Applicable to Legally Operative Facts At Large.
• Chapter XVIII.: Of Derivative, Including Transcriptious, Recordation, Wherein of Registration.
• Chapter XIX.: Exclusion of Evidence.—general Considerations.
• Chapter XX.: Exclusion Continued—causes For Which It Is Proper Or Not, According to Circumstances.
• Chapter XXI.: Exclusion Continued—causes For Which It Cannot Be Proper.
• Chapter XXII.: Exclusions By English and Other Laws—analytic and Synoptic Sketches.
• Chapter XXIII.: Safeguards Against Suspicious Evidence: Including Instructions Concerning the Weighing of Evidence.
• Chapter XXIV.: Authentication and Deauthentication, As Applied to Preappointed and Other Written Evidence.
• Chapter XXV.: Exclusion and Nullification Applied to Contractual Matter, In So Far As Writing Has Been Omitted to Be Employed In Giving Expression to It.
• Chapter XXVI.: Of the Exclusion and Nullification of Contractual Matter, Informally Though Scriptitiously Expressed, In a Transaction Which Has Been the Subject of Matter Formally Expressed.
• Chapter XXVII.: Imprisonment For Debt:—disguised Exclusion of Evidence Involved In It.
• Chapter XXVIII.: Of the Burthen of Proof: On Whom Shall It Lie?— (a Question Produced By Undue Exclusion of Evidence.)
• Chapter XXIX.: Evidence Considered In Its Relation to This Or That Fact In Particular—why Discarded From This Work.
• Chapter XXX.: Evidence In Relation to Particular Facts and Pleadings Under Technical Procldure.
• Chapter XXXI.: False Theory of Evidence (gilbert’s * )—its Foundation:—precedence Given to Written Before Unwritten.
• Chapter XXXII.: Liberalists and Rigorists—parties Belligerent In the Field of Jurisprudence, and In Particular of Evidence.
• Chapter XXXIII.: Conclusion.
• Appendix A.: Cautionary Instructions Respecting Evidence, For the Use of Judges.
• Chapter I.: Propriety of Cautionary Instructions, In Preference to Unbending Rules.
• Chapter II.: Considerations Proper to Be Borne In Mind In Judging of the Weight of Evidence.
• Chapter III.: Considerations Respecting the Effects of Interest In General Upon Evidence.
• Chapter IV.: Considerations Respecting the Effect of Pecuniary Interest Upon Evidence.
• Chapter V.: Situations.
• Chapter VI.: Makeshift Evidence.
• Chapter VII.: Scale of Trustworthiness.
• Chapter VIII.: Best Evidence, What?
• Chapter IX.: English Law Scale of Trustworthiness.
• Appendix B.: of Imprisonment For Debt.
• Section I.: Its Inaptitude As an Instrument of Compulsion.
• Section II.: Its Inaptitude, Applied As It Is As an Instrument of Punishment.
• Section III.: Its Needlessness Demonstrated By Experience.
• Section IV.: End, Or Final Cause of the Institution—judge and Co.’s Sinister Interest.
• Section V.: Means Employed—mendacity and Usurpation.
• Section VI.: Affidavit Previous to Arrest, Its Unfitness.
• Section VII.: Consequence of the Exclusion Thus Put Upon Evidence.
• Section VIII.: Advocates For the Abolition of Imprisonment For Debt—their Errors.
• Section IX.: Scotch Law—cessio Bonorum, Its Inadequacy.
• Section X.: Agenda—course Proper to Be Taken On the Occasion of Insolvency.
• Appendix C.: False Theory of Evidence—(gilbert’s.)
• Rationale of Judicial Evidence, Specially Applied to English Practice. From the Manuscripts of Jeremy Bentham, Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn.
• Preface.
• Prospective View.
• Book I.: —theoretic Grounds.
• Chapter I.: On Evidence In General.
• Chapter II.: Of Evidence Considered With Reference to a Legal Purpose; and of the Duties of the Legislator In Relation to Evidence.
• Chapter III.: Of Facts—the Subject-matter of Evidence.
• Chapter IV.: Of the Several Species Or Modifications of Evidence.
• Chapter V.: Of the Probative Force of Evidence.
• Chapter VI.: Degrees of Persuasion and Probative Force, How Measured.
• Chapter VII.: Of the Foundation Or Cause of Belief In Testimony.
• Chapter VIII.: Modes of Incorrectness In Testimony.
• Chapter IX.: General View of the Psychological Causes of Correctness and Completeness, With Their Contraries, Incorrectness and Incompleteness, In Testimony.
• Chapter X.: Of the Intellectual Causes of Correctness and Completeness In Testimony, With Their Opposites.
• Chapter XI.: Of the Moral Causes of Correctness and Completeness In Testimony, With Their Opposites.
• Chapter XII.: Ground of Persuasion In the Case of the Judge—can Decision On His Own Knowledge, Without Evidence From External Sources, Be Well Grounded?
• Book II.: —on the Securities For the Trustworthiness of Testimony.
• Chapter I.: Object of the Present Book.
• Chapter II.: Dangers to Be Guarded Against, In Regard to Testimony, By the Arrangements Suggested In This Book.
• Chapter III.: Internal and External Securities For the Trustworthiness of Testimony Enumerated.
• Chapter IV.: On the Internal Securities For Trustworthiness In Testimony.
• Chapter V.: Of Punishment, Considered As a Security For the Trustworthiness of Testimony.
• Chapter VI.: Of the Ceremony of an Oath, Considered As a Security For the Trustworthiness of Testimony.
• Chapter VII.: Of Shame, Considered As a Security For the Trustworthiness of Testimony.
• Chapter VIII.: Of Writing, Considered As a Security For the Trustworthiness of Testimony.
• Chapter IX.: Of Interrogation, Considered As a Security For the Trustworthiness of Testimony.
• Chapter X.: Of Publicity and Privacy, As Applied to Judicature In General, and to the Collection of the Evidence In Particular.
• Additional Notes to Books I. & II. Chiefly With Reference to Alterations Made In the Law Since the Date of the First Edition,— Viz. 1827.
• Book III.: Of the Extraction of Testimonial Evidence.
• Chapter I.: Of the Oral Mode of Interrogation.
• Chapter II.: Notes, Whether Consultable?
• Chapter III.: Of Suggestive Interrogation.
• Chapter IV.: Of Discreditive Interrogation.
• Chapter V.: Of the Demeanour of the Adverse Interrogator to the Witness, Considered In Respect of Vexation.
• Chapter VI.: Of the Notation and Recordation of Testimony.
• Chapter VII.: That the Evidence Should Be Collected By the Same Person By Whom the Decision Is to Be Pronounced.
• Chapter VIII.: Five Modes of Interrogation Compared.
• Chapter IX.: Epistolary Mode of Interrogation, In What Cases Applicable.
• Chapter X.: Epistolary Mode of Interrogation, How to Apply It to the Best Advantage.
• Chapter XI.: Helps to Recollection, How Far Compatible With Obstructions to Invention?
• Chapter XII.: Of Re-examination, Repetition, Or Recolement.
• Chapter XIII.: Of Spontaneous Or Uninterrogated Testimony.
• Chapter XIV.: General View of the Incongruities of English Law In Respect of the Extraction of Evidence.
• Chapter XV.: Mode of Extraction In English Common-law Procedure—its Incongruities.
• Chapter XVI.: Mode of Extraction In English Equity Procedure—its Incongruities.
• Chapter XVII.: Mode of Extraction In English Ecclesiastical and Admiralty Courts—its Incongruities.
• Chapter XVIII.: Incongruities of Roman Law In Respect of the Extraction of Evidence.
• Chapter XIX.: Of Confrontation Under the Roman Law.
• Chapter XX.: Recapitulation.
• Book IV.: Of Preappointed Evidence.
• Chapter I.: Of Preappointed Evidence In General.
• Chapter II.: Of Instruments of Contract In General.
• Chapter III.: Of the Enforcement of Formalities In the Case of Contracts.
• Chapter IV.: Formalities, What Proper, and In What Cases?
• Chapter V.: Of Wills, As Distinguished From Other Contracts.
• Chapter VI.: Of Preappointed Evidence, Considered As Applied to Laws.
• Chapter VII.: Of Public Offices At Large, Considered As Repositories and Sources of Preappointed Evidence. *
• Chapter VIII.: Of Official Evidence, As Furnished By Judicial Offices.
• Chapter IX.: Of Preappointed Evidence, Considered As Applied to Legally-operative Facts At Large.
• Chapter X.: Of the Registration of Genealogical Facts, Viz. Deaths, Births, and Marriages.
• Chapter XI.: Of Offices For Conservation of Transcripts of Contracts. *
• Chapter XII.: Of the Principle of Preappointed Evidence As Exemplified In the Case of Real Evidence (evidence From Things.)

CHAPTER III.

ENDS OF JUSTICE ON THE OCCASION OF JUDICATURE.*

§ 1.

True or proper ends of Judicature.

The aggregate of the objects thus meant to be designated, being the standard of reference, to which, through the whole course of this work, every other object will be referred—the test by which everything will be tried—everything that is approved of, approved;—everything that is condemned, condemned;—it seemed necessary, thus, at the very outset, to bring together, under one view, a list of those same objects, placed in such sort, that, as well each by itself, as their mutual relations and dependencies being clearly understood, may on each succeeding occasion be present, or capable of being readily presented to the mind.

Of the ends of judicature, were there none of them but what were capable of being presented in a positive or affirmative shape, the list night be very short.

I. In case of wrong supposed to have already been committed:—

1. Application of the matter of satisfaction where due,—and in the shape in which it is due.

2. Where on the score of punishment ulterior suffering† is supposed necessary, application of such suffering where due, and in the shape in which it is due.

II. In the case where no wrong is supposed to have been committed, but, at the hands of the judge, a service, consisting generally in the conferring of some new right‡ on the plaintiff or demandant, is demanded.

3. Collation of right where due, and in the shape in which it is due.

4. Reddition of judicial service at large* where due, and in the shape in which it is due.

Thus short and simple might be the list of the ends of judicature, were there none but such as are of the positive cast, such as are the above, to call upon the legislator for his regard.

But for the accomplishment of those positive ends—for the production of good in those positive shapes—let any course be taken—even the best imaginable—evil in various shapes is still liable to be produced:—and of this evil, so many shapes as there may be any use in distinguishing, so many negative ends or objects may be assigned as possessing, on the occasion of judicature, a demand for attention and pursuit on the part of the judge:—the good, that the production of it may, as far as possible, be accomplished;—the evil, that the production of it may, as far as possible, be prevented.

Of these negative ends of judicature, the description cannot in any other way be given than by giving a list of the several evils, by the prevention or avoidance of which, in so far as possible, these several ends are proportionably accomplished. Of these evils, the list may stand as follows, viz.—

1. Referable to the penal and the non-penal† departments of the fields of law taken together, directly-resulting evils incident to judicature—i. e. evils resulting in a direct way from misapplication of the power of judicature:—

1. Non-application of the matter of satisfaction where due.

2. Application of the matter of satisfaction (though it be where due) in a shape‡ not due.

3. Application of the matter of satisfaction where not due.

4. Non-application of the matter of punishment where due.

5. Application of the matter of punishment (though it be where due) in a shape not due.

6. Application of the matter of punishment where not due.

7. Non-collation of right where due.

8. Collation of right in a shape not due.

9. Collation of right where not due.

10. Non-reddition of judicial service (at large)∥ where due.

11. Reddition of judicial service in a shape not due.

12. Reddition of judicial service where not due.

If the error be only in respect of quality, the quantity being exactly what is due, the evil (it may occur) may be but imaginary. The answer is—if it be the evil of the first order, and nothing farther, that is looked for;—yes; viz. that which has for its seat the feelings of the parties on either side, or on both sides: notwithstanding the error, quantity—of suffering on the one side, of enjoyment on the other—being by the supposition the same as if there had been no such error. But, however it may be in the case of satisfaction, in the case of punishment, if as by the supposition there be an error in respect of quality, the effects of that error will render themselves sensible, by the production of evil of the second order, i. e. the people at large will, in some shape or other, viz. danger or alarm, or both, be sufferers from it. Of the importance of quality in punishment, and of the distinction between first and second orders as applied to evil and to good, views have been given in other places.*

Referable still to the same two departments, follow in the list of evils incident to judicature, such as may be termed collaterally resulting—evils resulting in a collateral way from the misapplication of the powers of judicature:—

1. Delay, where, and in so far as, unnecessary or preponderant.†

2. Vexation, where, and in so far as, unnecessary or preponderant.

3. Expense, where, and in so far as, unnecessary or preponderant.‡

In the word misdecision, we have a general term, under which any decision, under and by virtue of which any of the above-mentioned evils, mentioned as correspondent, and opposite to the direct negative ends of judicature, are considered as produced.*

Given the ends of justice on the occasion of judicature, given in the same degree of detail are the duties of the judge.

If, as it has been endeavoured to be made, this analysis be found all-comprehensive, every imaginable breach of duty commissible on the part of a judge, as such, will be found referable to one or more of the heads contained in it.

§ 2.

False, but actual ends of Judicature.

The objects hitherto brought to view, under the name of the ends of judicature, are those which seemed the proper, or, in one sense of the word true, the true ends of judicature.

Opposite to these ends stand those which, it should seem, may without impropriety be termed the improper ends, or, in one sense of the word false, the false:—in England, at least, these, alas! will be found to have always been—not to say to be—the actual ends.

In England, in the early ages of the constitution, reckoning from the Norman conquest, the one all-embracing false end may be stated as having for its correspondent interest, private and personal, the sinister interest of the monarch: his sinister interest, in the several shapes in which the sinister interest of a public man is capable of displaying itself, viz. those of which the objects are, respectively, money, power, reputation (reputation, when operating upon an extensive scale, called fame,) constantly ease, and occasionally vengeance.*

To the sinister interest of the monarch, the indolence and imbecility incident to that situation, joined to the necessary industry and comparative mental vigour of his instruments and substitutes, the judges, substituted by degrees, and in a principal degree, the sinister interests of these his subordinates:—the seat of the sinister interest thus gradually shifting, the shapes in which it operated still the same.

Among the false ends, the above may be termed the direct ends of judicature. Relation had to these, the name of collateral ends may be given to those which correspond with the sinister interests of those other members of the governing body who, in the character of sinecurists, or over-paid placemen, or holders of needless places or otherwise, have, for the benefit of their support, been suffered without repugnance to come in for shares in the profits of high-seated and irresistible depredation:—fruits of scientifically and diligently cultivated delay, vexation, and expense.

Among these, a place of pre-eminence is due to the man of finance, who—from taxes, whether under the name of taxes, or under the name of fees, imposed upon justice (i. e. from the sale of that commodity to all those who have wherewithal to pay for it, coupled with the denial of it to all who have not,) over and above any part of the produce which, on any such false pretence as that of official labour performed, he may have contrived to put into his own pocket, or that of this or that more or less near connexion—derives that comparative ease which, from a hundredth part of the same suffering, inflicted upon an equal number of patients, capable of making their cries heard in concert, might receive intolerable disturbance.†

In the fabrication of priest-made religion, even in its most pernicious forms, the predominance of sinister interest would scarcely he found more incontestable than it may be seen to be in judge-made law—seen even in the picture given of it by Blackstone—seen notwithstanding all his varnishes.

For the sake of emolument and advantage in other shapes extractible out of the expense, to manufacture on every occasion, in the greatest endurable quantity, the inseparably-interwoven tissue of abuses—viz. unnecessary delay, vexation, and expense—may be seen throughout to have been the only real object of solicitude. Fortunately, in pursuit of the only real object, it was not possible to proceed without the appearance, nor even altogether without the reality of justice; and to the necessity thus produced may, without much danger of error, be ascribed what little of justice may be found perceptible in the result.

Bearing in mind thus much, the reader, learned or unlearned, will find himself in a condition to account for the several phenomena of actual law, as they present themselves to view: if, on the contrary, the burthen be felt too heavy for endurance, everything he sees will be an effect without a cause.

As human nature is constituted, the preservation of the individual and of the species depending upon the ascendency universally maintained (here and there an extraordinary case excepted) by self-regarding over social interests; so in judicature, as in every other department of government, the preference has of course been all along given to the false ends, in their competition with the true: the false ends, as above described, having all along been pursued, as far as the craft or indifference of the monarch, and the blindness or patience of the people, would permit: the true pursued so far, and so far only, as reality appeared necessary to the keeping up of appearance.

Read the history of the Council of Trent, as written by Paul Sarpi. Observe by what springs of action each result was produced: believe the actors themselves, by piety—everything by pure piety: believe the historian, by everything but piety.

Such as was the share which piety had in the production of that portion of ecclesiastical law which received its establishment from the council of Trent, such, or thereabouts, may be seen to have been the share which the love of justice had in the production of that part of the rule of action which, instead of the legislator, has had judges for its authors; particularly that part which is composed of the law of procedure, and in the law of procedure, that which is composed of the law of evidence.

Of the present sketch, few, perhaps, are the pages that may not be seen to add, more or less, to the proof of that instructive truth. But in the chapter on Exclusion, the section which speaks of that operation, as performed on the ground of a supposed danger of deception, will perhaps be found to comprehend within the smallest compass, the greatest quantity of such matter as concurs in giving probability to that inference.

[* ]For shortness, say at pleasure, either the ends of judicature, or the ends of justice. Taken by itself, and without the limitation thus applied, the expression ends of justice, besides that the import of it is multifarious and indeterminate in the extreme, is one for which there will scarcely be any particular demand to the purpose of the present work.

Let utility be the leading word, that word translated immediately into good and evil, and those again into pain and pleasure, the question will be all along concerning human feelings, and their causes. Let justice be the leading word, the question will be no other than concerning the meaning of that word, and for the solution of it, no less a task than that of hunting out the different occasions on which it has been employed, or would be necessary.

[† ]Ulterior suffering.—From the rendering to one person satisfaction at the expense of another, suffering, on the part of this other, will, in every case, be found inseparable.

[‡ ]New right.] When upon the sale of a mass of property, to a share in which he is entitled by will, for example, or as a creditor to a person insolvent—a person receives, in virtue of the decision of a judge, the sum of money representative of the net amount of that share, the rights included in the property of the money constitute a mass of new rights conferred upon him by the judge. Till the decision of the judge pronouncing what is thus made due is made known, and (the time allotted for the payment being elapsed) the money has remained unpaid, there is no wrong done by anybody—no right violated: the right which the party in question had till then, was not an already formed right to any specific sum of money, but a right to such sum, as on the ground in question should come to be adjudicated by the judge; including an antecedent right to the correspondent service at the hands of the judge, viz. the service rendered by the collation of the mass of rights, included in the right of recovering the money as above.

[* ]Judicial service at large.] Cases are not altogether wanting, in which, otherwise than by collation of any new right, service is rendered by the decision and consequent order of a judge.—Example:—1. Removal of a mere physical impediment to the enjoyment of a man’s personal liberty, or any part of his property;—a wrong-placed gate—a noisome manufactory, &c.—anything coming under the denomination of a nuisance.

2. In every case in which satisfaction is administered, in so far as it is of the vindictive kind, it is applied by the simple application of punishment, and without the creation of any new right.

So multifarious, so ill defined, so fugitive, so intertwined one with another, and as yet so imperfectly distinguished and explained, are the fictitious entities called rights, that, on such a subject, in such a place as the present, to afford anything like complete satisfaction, is plainly impossible. The anatomy of rights has never yet found a professor to explain it.

[† ]Commonly called civil. But when employed as an adjunct to the word law, the word civil is moreover employed to signify non-constitutional, or non-political, or non-military, or non-ecclesiastical law: as also to designate Rome-bred law, and in Rome-bred law itself, it is used as synonymous to non-canon law. A word which is used promiscuously in so many different senses, all of them on occasions on which they require to be distinguished from each other, is incapable of answering the purposes of him who wishes to understand, or of him who wishes to be understood.

[‡ ]In a shape not due.] Where, being applied where due, the matter of satisfaction is applied in a shape not due, the evil includes in it, by implication, another evil, an evil of an opposite description, viz. non-application of the object in question in its due shape. But as in the case of a pecuniary account, with errors in it on both sides,—the effect of this reduplication is—not to increase, but to compensate for and diminish the effect of the error which stands-expressed:—thus it is in regard to satisfaction;—and so it is where punishment is to be applied, where rights are to be conferred, or where other judicial services are to be rendered, as below.

Under shape may be included quantity, quality, place, time: under undue shape, undue in point of quantity, undue in point of quality, and so forth.

Suppose the error to be in point of quantity—in this case, so far as quantity alone is concerned, (the application of the object in a quantity not due, including in it the non-application of it in the quantity that is due,) the undue suffering to one party, the undue advantage to the other party, cannot either of them amount to anything more than the difference.

[∥ ]Service at large,] i. e. otherwise than by collation of a right, which, as above, is the most frequently exemplified, though not the only shape in which judicial service, not consisting in the application either of satisfaction for wrong, or of punishment, is rendered.

[* ]See Introduction to Morals, &c. Ch. XII. p. 69; and Principles of Penal Law, Part. II. Book I. Ch. II. p. 395.

[† ]Unnecessary or preponderant.] See, in Scotch Reform, (Delay and Complication Tables) a detailed explanation and exemplification of this triad of judicial evils, a view of their relations and bearings to each other; and of the effect of the terms unnecessary and preponderant as respectively applied to them. See likewise below, the chapter on Exclusion, § 2.

[‡ ]Follows a list of certain evils referable to the constitutional department. To these, there not being any need of reference for the purpose, or on the occasion of the present work, the text might (it was thought) be exonerated from them without loss:—

1. On the part of judges, insubordination: including on the part of any judicatory, non-observance of the ordinances of the legislator, and on the part of a subordinate judicatory, non-observance of the orders of its super-ordinate.

2.Usurpation of jurisdiction: viz. on the part of any judicatory: whether to the prejudice of the authority of the legislator alone, or to the prejudice of the authority of any judicatory, super-ordinate, co-ordinate, or subordinate.

3.Ununiformity in judicature: viz. whether as between system and system of procedure, or under the same or different systems, by difference as between decision and decision in the same case, viz. in the same individual case, or in two individual cases of exactly the same sort.

Important as they are, these ends are but of the second order: for, for argument sake (though the fact is so much otherwise,) suppose that none of these other evils which belong to the non-penal and penal departments ever have place, these are but nominal not real evils.

[* ]The evils just termed collaterally resulting, viz. unnecessary or preponderant delay, vexation and expense,—is it not by decision (it may be asked) that these evils also are produced?—and such decision, is it not misdecision likewise?

Answer—In so far as they are produced under and by virtue of the established and undisputed course of the judicial procedure, and accordingly without contestation, they are produced without express decision, and thence in so far without mis-decision.

If, in relation to any one of these topics, matter of dispute happen to take place,—in this case, a demand for decision, and along with it room for misdecision, does indeed take place. But in this case, any such dispute is in effect a separate suit, or cause, and if, on the subject of it, misdecision takes place, it will be found, it is supposed, clothed in one or more of the twelve forms, and referable to one or more of the twelve heads above mentioned.

[* ]Possible, and, if possible, not inconvenient, names of the respective interests taken from their respective symbols:—interest of the purse, the sceptre, the trumpet, the pillow, and,—if critic gall can keep itself in—the gall bladder. For the corresponding pleasures, pains, and motives, see Table of Springs of Action, Vol. I. p. 195.

[† ]For the matchless mischief of this species of tax, see Protest against Law Taxes. As to the monarch (I mean of present time,) setting aside his share in the benefit of the vast common fund, which, even without hands to apply it, operates through the medium of hope and fear, in so commodious a manner, and so extensively efficient a degree, in the character of matter of corruption, the pittance which has been left to his personal share is scarcely worth mentioning. Strained through a number of intermediate sponges, it drops into the privy purse, to the amount of no more than £5000 or £6000 a-year, under the name of green wax.a

[† ]For the matchless mischief of this species of tax, see Protest against Law Taxes. As to the monarch (I mean of present time,) setting aside his share in the benefit of the vast common fund, which, even without hands to apply it, operates through the medium of hope and fear, in so commodious a manner, and so extensively efficient a degree, in the character of matter of corruption, the pittance which has been left to his personal share is scarcely worth mentioning. Strained through a number of intermediate sponges, it drops into the privy purse, to the amount of no more than £5000 or £6000 a-year, under the name of green wax.a

[a]Finance Reports, 1797-8, or 1806-7.