ret 



PRIVY SEAL. 



PROBABILITY. 



770 



and privileges of the subject." By the same statute it is declared and 

 enacted that, neither his majesty nor his privy -council have or ought 

 to have any jurisdiction in such matters, but that they ought to be 

 tried and determined in the ordinary courts of justice, and by the 

 ordinary courts of law. 



Subsequently however to this statute, in matters arising out of the 

 jurisdiction of the courts of the kingdom, as in colonial and admiralty 

 causes, and also in other matters, where the appeal was to the king 

 himself in council, the privy council continued to have cognisance, 

 even though the questions related merely to the property of individuals. 

 By 2 & 3 Wm. IV. c. 92, the powers of the high courts of delegates, 

 both in ecclesiastical and maritime causes, were transferred to the king, 

 in council. The decision of these matters being purely legal, it was 

 found expedient to make some alterations in the court, for the purpose 

 of better adapting it to the discharge of this branch of its duties. 

 Instances had before occurred where the judges had been called in and 

 had given extra-judicial opinions to the privy council ; but the practice 

 was inconvenient and unsatisfactory, and all necessity for it is now 

 wholly removed. By the 3*4 Wm. IV. c. 41, the jurisdiction of the 

 privy council is further enlarged, and there is constructed from it a 

 body entitled " the judicial committee of the privy council," which 

 now consists of the keeper of the great seal, the chief justices, the 

 master of the rolls, the chief baron, and other great judicial officers. 

 Power is also given to the king by his sign manual to appoint any two 

 other persons who are privy councillors to be members of the com- 

 mittee. The same powers for enforcing their decrees, &c., are given 

 to the judicial committee as are possessed by the Court of Chancery, 

 Queen's Bench, &c. 



The privileges of a privy councillor, beyond those of mere honorary 

 precedence, formerly related to the security of his person. If any one 

 struck another a blow in the house or presence of a privy councillor, 

 he was fineabl*. Conspiracy by the king's menial servants against the 

 life of a privy councillor was felony, though nothing were done upon 

 it. And by y Anne, c. 16, any unlawful assault by any person on a 

 privy councillor in the execution of his office was felony. 



These statutes have however been now repealed, by 9 Geo. IV. c. 31, 

 and any offence against a privy councillor stands on the same footing 

 as offences against any other individual. (1 ' Co. Lit.,' 110, a. n. 5 ; 3 

 'Inst.,' 182; 4 ' Inst.,' 52; 1 'Blackst. Com.' Mr. Kerr's edit., ch. 5; 

 Hallain's ' Constitutional History.') 



PRIVY SEAL. [SIGN MANUAL.] 



PRIZE, property taken from an enemy at sea, the law as to which is 

 regulated by the general law of nations. As between the belligerent 

 powers themselves, the property in a ship or other thing captured 

 passes at once, by the mere taking itself, to the captor. But the thing 

 captured may be purchased from the captor by a person belonging to 

 a neutral state, or it may be recaptured. It becomes therefore neces- 

 sary, as between the original owner and such purchaser, or between 

 the original owner and the recaptor, to lay down some rule for deter- 

 mining at what time and under what circumstances the thing captured 

 becomes prize, so that the property in it passes to the captor for all 

 purposes. The law of nations upon this point was very vague and 

 unsettled. It used to be said that property was not deveated by 

 capture until after possession had been retained twenty-four hours, or 

 until the prize had been taken infra pnesidia; or again, until the spes 

 recuperandi was gone. The present rule is thus expressed by Lord 

 Stowell : " By the general practice of the law of nations a sentence of 

 condemnation is at present deemed generally necessary, and a neutral 

 purchaser in Europe during war looks to the legal sentence of con- 

 demnation as one of the title-deeds of a ship, if he buys a prize vessel" 

 Sentence of condemnation, that is, sentence that the thing captured is 

 prize, and that consequently the property of the original owner in it is 

 entirely devested, must be pronounced by a court of the capturing 

 power duly constituted according to the law of nations. The prize 

 court of the captor may sit in the territory of an ally, but not in that 

 of a neutral. Questions of prize are by the English law disposed of in 

 the courts of Admiralty. [ADMIRALTY.] (45 Geo. III. c. 72.) 



PRIZE-MONEY. All the acts relating to army prize-money have 

 been repealed by the 2 & 3 Will. IV. c. 53, which also enacts that all 

 captures made by the army shall be divided according to such general 

 rule of distribution as the king shall direct. 



PROBABILITY, PROBABILITIES, THEORY OF. A conclusion 

 is said to be known in two distinct ways ; first, when it is derived 

 from those principles (as we call them) which may be considered as 

 common to all mankind, or which at least no one is found to deny ; 

 secondly, when it results, by a sure process of inference, from premises 

 which are believed to be known. Whether these premises be properly 

 known, that is to say, whether another person assuming to decide on 

 the propriety or impropriety will be satisfied or not, is not a part of 

 the present inquiry. That knowledge of the first kind exists is un- 

 questioned, and most of the results of such knowledge are agreed upon. 

 That knowledge of the second kind exists is also unquestioned, though 

 two men may differ as to whether a given conclusion be part of it or 

 not. The distinction, as elsewhere noticed [MATHEMATICS], is positive, 

 easily apprehended, and useful; it exists moreover, and must exist, 

 whatever may be the system of psychology on which one man or 

 another may explain it. 



In the exact sciences, demonstration is always effected in such a way 



ARTS AND SCI. DIV. VOL. VI. 



as to show that nothing contradictory of the proposition demonstrated 

 either is true or can have been true at any time. Two sides of a 

 triangle are, were, and always will be, greater than the third ; by which 

 we mean that persons with minds constituted as ours are, must have 

 admitted this, must now admit it, and must admit it in all time to 

 come. Those who should deny the proposition must really hold that 

 a whole may be less than its contained part : such is the alternative 

 which geometrical demonstration offers for acceptance, and we should 

 cease to consider a mind as the proper object of instruction which 

 should prefer the alternative to the proposition. Such truths as these 

 are not the subject of the present article. 



The other class of conclusions consists of those which may be false, 

 or which may have been false at one time, or may become so, without 

 the necessity of our supposing an absolute and inconceivable difference 

 of mental constitution between ourselves and the person who may 

 have seen this falsehood, may now see it, or is to see it. Many such 

 conclusions appear to be as certain as if they were absolutely demon- 

 strated, until a close and (to those who have not considered the sub- 

 ject) a captious test is applied, which shows that this certainty is not 

 what is called mathematical certainty. One of the most certain per- 

 haps of all is this : a ball of iron suspended by a thread will fall to 

 the ground when the thread is cut ; every one is as well persuaded of 

 this truth as of the two sides of a triangle being together greater than 

 the third ; those who have not studied geometry know the former 

 much better than the latter. But let any one assert that he has seen, 

 in a part of Africa unexplored except by himself, a ball of iron sus- 

 pended in the air, which, though iron to the sight and touch and iron 

 to every chemical experiment, not only remains in the air without sup- 

 port, but, when forced to the ground, rises again of itself to the same 

 height. We should laugh and disbelieve it, but we could not disprove 

 it ; hi spite of our laughter and unbelief, no man can know such a thing 

 to be false. Let a number of credible persons solemnly declare that they 

 have seen the same phenomenon, and our unbelief would be shaken: 

 finally, let it be a matter, as it is called, of common notoriety, and let 

 a continual succession of good witnesses passing and repassing con- 

 stantly confirm each other in the recital above mentioned, and our 

 positive disbelief would be changed into as positive a belief. But let 

 a new witness declare that the natives use bows and arrows of the 

 common form, in which the straight string of the bow, meaning that 

 part of it which joins the extremities of the bow, is four or five times 

 as long as the curved bow itself ; though our disbelief of this first wit- 

 ness would not be sensibly stronger than our disbelief of the first 

 witness in the preceding case, yet it must be of this kind, that any 

 succession of respectable witnesses, however numerous, could never 

 add any force to the fact in a mind which can properly appreciate the 

 grounds of the assertion that a straight line is the shortest distance 

 between two points. A million of witnesses could do no more than 

 one to establish the fact stated, in the mind of a person who knows 

 what geometrical demonstration is ; though it is just possible that 

 another, who only learns the connection of the sides of a triangle 

 from experiment, may be capable of being convinced of the second 

 assertion by evidence, as well as of the first. 



The probability of an asserted fact or conclusion means, in common 

 language, the degree of belief which we think we ought to accord to 

 it, and it depends in each mind upon the amount of evidence offered, 

 the degree in which that evidence is understood, the fitness of that 

 mind to receive and be acted on by evidence, and in particular by the 

 evidence which is offered. Evidence insufficient, or ill understood, or 

 offered to a mind which is unduly credulous or sceptical, whether to 

 the particular sort of evidence in question or to evidence in general, 

 may give a low degree of probability, or none at all, to what another 

 mind considers as indisputable ; or the contrary. In the common use 

 of the word, a result is said to be probable only when the mind inclines 

 more or less to believe it, and improbable in the contrary case. Tho 

 mathematical use of the term is rather different; but, till further 

 notice, we retain the common signification. 



We are going to treat belief as a QUANTITY, not only to speak of its 

 more and less, but to submit that more and less to measurement. The 

 phrase is unusual, but when a halfpenny is in the air, we half believe 

 that head will fall uppermost, and we half believe in tail; this is what 

 we mean when we say the chances are even. But the reader must 

 remomber that in our present subject belief does not mean that result 

 of self-will which a person puts forward as his opinion. Without any 

 wilful falsehood, men can contrive very frequently to disguise the real 

 state of their minds with respect to a proposition, and to substitute 

 their wishes for their beliefs ; not their prejudices, for real prejudice 

 it belief, but their wishes. The conclusion of the mind is thrust into 

 a corner ; and when, after all, it is necessary to declare it, we hear I 

 had all the time a lurkiny belief, &c. That lurking belief was tho 

 rightful owner, but the sovereign will had put a usurper in his place. 

 The verb to believe has only one future form ; what we shall believe, and 

 what you will believe, are legitimate matters of conjecture. But " I 

 will ^believe" is a declaration which is no more in our own power than 

 " thou shalt believe " is in our own right. It has cost England cen- 

 turies of struggle to tear the second out of the grammar of statesmen 

 and divines ; but how much longer it will take to get as well rid of the 

 first is beyond the theory of probabilities to guess. 



We mean by evidence, in the present inquiry, not merely oral or 



