182 ESSAY ON THE RATIONALE OF 



presumptions which are only observations formed into maxims, like 

 adages and apothegms, and are admitted, when their grounds are 

 established, in the place of proof, where better is wanting, but are 

 always to be overturned by counter proof."* It is impossible, there- 

 fore, to lay down arbitrary rules of presumption, where every case 

 must be connected with peculiarities of personal character and con- 

 comitant circumstances, and therefore irreducible to any fixed i)rin- 

 ciple. It would be as wise to lay down at Lloyd's positive regula- 

 tions obliging a captain when within a certain distance of a rock 

 to abandon his vessel. t Who can recall without horror the bloody 

 law of James 1., which made the concealment by the mother of 

 the death of her illegitimate child conclusive evidence of murder } 

 whereas it affords not the slightest warrant for such a conclusion. 

 Obnoxious enactments of a similar character, to the disgrace of our 

 age, are yet in legal existence ; but by a wise ordination, the feel- 

 ings rebel against all barbarous laws and render them practically a 

 dead letter. 



Other writers have proposed to divide presumjitions into neces- 

 sary, probable, and slight ; but the scheme is fanciful rather than 

 practical, since it is impossible thus to classify more than a very few 

 of the infinite number of circumstances connected with human mo- 

 tives and conduct, and the terms of designation, although not desti- 

 tute of utility, are yet, from the inherent imperfections of language, 

 unavoidably defective in exactness. 



The mental and physical constitution of man, and his external re- 

 lations, are the sources of evidentiary facts. In every inquiry into 

 the truth of an alleged fact, of the existence of which we are re- 

 quired to judge on the foundation of secondary facts, there must 

 exist certain connections and dependencies with the principal fact, 

 which will be manifested by external phenomena. No action of a 

 rational being is indifferent, solitary, or independent, but must ne- 

 cessarily be joined with antecedent and concomitant states of mind, 

 and with external circumstances, and of their actual connection, 

 though it may not be invariably apparent, there can be no doubt. 

 There must be a voluntary agent, the act must have corresponding 

 propii^quity to some precise moment of time and portion of space, 

 there must have existed inducing stales of mind and material ob- 

 jects of desire ; these, the means of flight or disguise, and a thou- 



* Burke, supra. 



f Edinbwfjh Review, vol. xlviii., p. 499. 



