I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did not wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases.
Presumption has many forms; and it is worth considering, whether a great and good Being would most disapprove the presumption which expected too much from His goodness, or the presumption which dared positively to disbelieve His promise.
Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity.
Presume to lay their hand upon the arkOf her magnificent and awful cause.
Principle I : Legal rights are presumptive rights.
Principle II : The presumptions of the law are creative presumptions : they are aimed at conditions to be brought about, and only for that reason ignore conditions which exist.
If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify.
Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties.
It is not so with Him that all things knowsThe help of heaven we count the act of men.
He will steal himself into a man's favour and for a week escape a great deal of discoveries; but when you find him out, you have him ever after.
How dare the plants look up to heaven, from whenceThey have their nourishment?
When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
Presumption means nothing more than, as stated by Lord Mansfield, the weighing of probabilities, and deciding, by the powers of common sense, on which side the truth is.
It is a strong presumption that that which never has been done cannot by law be done at all.
It is a familiar principle that all things are presumed to have been rightly done unless there is reasonable ground shown for doubting it.
When one or more things are proved, from which our experience enables us to ascertain that another, not proved, must have happened, we presume that it did happen, as well in criminal as in civil cases.
It is certainly true, and I most ardently hope that it will ever continue to be the case, that by the law of England, as it was urged and admitted in the case of the Seven Bishops,1 no man is to be convicted of any crime upon mere naked presumption.
No one can doubt that presumptions may be made in criminal as well as in civil cases. It is constantly the practice to act upon them, and I apprehend that more than one half of the persons convicted of crimes are convicted on presumptive evidence.
I readily admit that the law which requires presumption or custom to be carried back for a period of nearly 700 years, is a bad and mischievous law, and one which is discreditable to us as a civilised and enlightened people, but such is the law; and while it so continues, I consider myself, in administering it, as bound to administer it as I find it; nor do I feel myself warranted in undermining or frittering it away by subtle fictions or artificial presumptions inconsistent with truth and fact.
A presumption of any fact is, properly, an inferring of that fact from other facts that are known; it is an act of reasoning; and much of human knowledge on all subjects is derived from this source.
Prima facie, every estate, whether given by will or otherwise, is supposed to be beneficial to the party to whom it is so given.
If a man go into the London Docks sober without means of getting drunk, and comes out of one of the cellars very drunk wherein are a million gallons of wine, I think that would be reasonable evidence that he had stolen some of the wine in that cellar, though you could not prove that any wine was stolen, or any wine was missed.
There is no presumption in this country that every person knows the law: it would be contrary to common sense and reason if it were so.