Documents

“ A document is a thing which speaks by its written characters. It cannot take to itself a tongue, and speak by word of mouth also; and, in support of this, I may call your Lordship’s attention to the general principles of law governing the interpretation of written documents. ”

“ The disease of ‘documents,’ as they are called in the jargon of the time, is only another name for the insatiable appetite to pry into the private life of those greater than their fellows, in the hope to find something therein wherewith to belittle them. ”

“ Behind the Literature of History, which can be called so in the finer sense, lies a great body of the Documents of History, which are unattractive to the casual reader, but which even he must sometimes have an urgent wish to consult. Full and carefully chosen texts of a large number of the most famous and important of such documents—charters, edicts, proclamations, petitions, covenants, legislative acts and ordinances, and the constitutions of many countries—have been accordingly introduced and are easily to be found. ”

“ Classification of Documents.—If we classify these documents under the two main heads of public and private deeds, we shall have to place in the former category the legislative, administrative, judicial, diplomatic documents emanating from public authority in public form: laws, constitutions, ordinances, privileges, grants and concessions, proclamations, decrees, judicial records, pleas, treaties; in a word, every kind of deed necessary for the orderly government of a civilized state. ”

“ Taking for granted that all the documentary evidence contributes, more or less appreciably, to the formation of a right judgement as to the merits of all rival readings, and further that in many variations documents not classed as primary contribute materially to a right decision, either directly or as aiding the interpretation of the whole evidence, we have still to ask how far primary documents can be implicitly trusted where they have little or no support from other documents. ”

“ No nation can have advanced far on the path of civilization before discovering the necessity for documentary evidence both in public and in private life. The laws, the constitutions, the decrees of government, on the one hand, and private contracts between man and man, on the other, must be embodied in formal documents, in order to ensure permanent record. ”

“ In every-day life do we not accept indiscriminately, without any kind of verification, hearsay reports, anonymous and unguaranteed statements, "documents" of indifferent or inferior authority? It takes a special reason to induce us to take the trouble to examine into the origin and value of a document on the history of yesterday ”

“ I have to say, further, that the more carefully the enormous mass of contemporary evidence of another kind is studied, documents, private and public letters, proclamations, council records, State trials, and other authorities, the more they will be found to yield to these preambles a steady support. ↑ 31 Henry VIII. cap. ”

“ It is for this reason that in the recensions of philologists we always hear the same song in praise of the learned man who has made a 'sober' use of documents, of blame for him who has followed a different method and included what is vain and superfluous in his volumes of annals, of selections from archives, or of collections of documents. All learned men and philologists, in fact, select, and all are advised to select. And what is the logical criterion of this selection? ”

“ I know that there are a great many wise people who copy in the courts, and can even read civil documents, but who, if you were to put into their hand a simple prayer-book, could not make out the first letter in it, and would show all their teeth in derision. These people laugh at everything you tell them. ”

“ In volumes alluded to, of the record commission, the dispatches, and letters, and other documents of a former age, and in the handwriting, or from the immediate dictation, of eminent personages, will present very attractive material for those who find deep interest in such venerable inquiries ”

“ We are shown, in other words, that it is utterly out of the question to rely on any single set or group of authorities, much less on any single document, for the determination of the Text of Scripture. Happily, our Manuscripts are numerous: most of them are in the main trustworthy: all of them represent far older documents than themselves. ”

“ Then, pause for a moment and ask yourselves of what other man whose written words have ever come into the fierce white glare of publication such statements as these could truthfully be made? Autobiographies, memoirs, journals, confessions, letters we have, of course, without number, and the value of these as human documents may in most cases be great, in some cases inestimable. ”

“ Certainty comes with the means of control, and there is no controlling or testing memoirs without the contemporary document. Down to the middle of the century, private letters and official documents were rare. ”

“ Ask any historian whether it is easy to handle the original documents in a field in which he has firm and announced opinions, and to let those documents speak exactly what they mean to say, whether they support him or not. The greater historians will always do it, but they will sometimes do it with a bit of a wrench. ”

“ The meaning of the various kinds of documents which are likely to be found among the title-deeds of an estate, or among the archives of a parish or a corporation, are described without needless technicalities, in a practical way, which will appeal to those who begin to work among such material without previous knowledge. ”

“ Rolls, records, and documents of all kinds exist in public and private archives, which are not included in these State Papers, but which are equally necessary for the formation of a sound and reliable opinion on the whole story. Besides this vast mass of material, the entire literature of the period demands careful examination, as it must clearly throw great light on the tone and temper of men’s minds, and reveal the origin and growth of popular views and opinions. ”

“ A microscopical examination of paper documents, such as wills, notes, checks, etc., as to whether or not they have been mutilated or forged, is certainly the most reliable test, and by far the easiest and simplest method of determining the authenticity or spuriousness of a document. ”

“ The History of England since the Conquest runs parallel with the History of England's Records. You cannot thoroughly understand either without knowing something of the other.
Statutory definition of the Public Records. I will first of all give you the statutory definition of Public: 'They shall be taken to mean all rolls, records, writs, books, proceedings, decrees, warrants, accounts, papers, and documents whatsoever of a public nature belonging to His Majesty'. ”

“ The comparative trustworthiness of documentary authorities constitutes a fresh class of facts at least as pertinent as any with which we have hitherto been dealing, and much less likely to be misinterpreted by personal surmises. The first step towards obtaining a sure foundation is a consistent application of the principle that knowledge of documents should precede final judgement upon readings. ”

“ The first effectual security against the uncertainties of Internal Evidence of Readings is found in what may be termed Internal Evidence of Documents, that is, the general characteristics of the texts contained in them as learned directly from themselves by continuous study of the whole or considerable parts. ”

“ It is a natural, probable, and consistent story, and the slight discrepancies to be found between the narratives of the different parties, and between oral statements and written documents, is the best proof of truth. ”

“ In view of the temporary character of these appointments, the word 'record' should receive a narrow construction, and be limited to such documents and entries as might subserve some useful purpose in the future. ”

“ No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all-disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report; ”

“ It is extremely hard to form a fair judgment from documents alone, and especially from those documents which most generally come before the public, namely, articles in such reviews as the Contemporary Review, on the one hand, and the Civiltà Cattolica on the other. ”

“ Such documents include "legislative enactments, judicial decisions, administrative rulings, public ordinances, or similar types of official legal materials" as well as "any translation prepared by a government employee acting within the course of his or her official duties." ”

“ The importance of practical knowledge in this direction by those who are continually handling commercial papers and legal documents is at once apparent, but others engaged in any business pursuit may be saved considerable loss, trouble and annoyance by observing the principles and suggestions explained and illustrated in this article. ”

“ Every man in her world could, when it came to the point, produce papers of some sort from somewhere—army-discharge, pension documents, testimonials, birth-certificate, etc., etc. Even the tramps who flitted in and out of Rowton House had their papers to which they rightly attached the greatest importance. ”

“ I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country. ”

“ A very large amount of new material for the history of the sixteenth century has been brought to light in recent years by the publication of State papers, ambassadors' letters, and other original documents which were formerly but little known. ”

“ ORDER.-It is ordered, in this cause, that both parties have liberty to produce farther proof; that all examinations of witnesses be taken under commission according to the rule of this court; that original letters and documents be, in all cases, produced, or a sufficient reason assigned for not producing such originals. ”

“ They issue from this process in the form to which analysis has reduced them,212 chopped small into individual statements; for a single sentence contains several statements: we have often accepted some and rejected others; each of these statements represents a fact.
Historical facts have the common characteristic of having been taken from documents; but they differ greatly among themselves.
(1) They represent phenomena of very different nature. From the same document we derive facts bearing on handwriting, language, style, doctrines, customs, events. ”

“ Such a compromising policy was short-sighted, since it was to little purpose that the nature of the documents should at 25length be correctly understood, if men were to be prevented from deducing fair conclusions from them. ”

“ The notes contain supplementary material designed to make the work a critical as well as a narrative history, and contain also specific references to the sources on which the text is based. These references involved a most annoying problem. When one's citations are limited in number and proceed in single file, as it were. they can be handled easily. But in the present instance as many as 1800 documents were used for a chapter, not a few of which were cited more than once; and each sentence of the text~to speak broadly—resulted from comparing a number of sources. ”

“ With hundreds of Reports and reports from Institutions and institutions, from Departments and departments, from Bureaus and bureaus, trials at law, equity cases, interference cases, Revised Statutes, and thousands of documents, all as anxious to attract the public eye as ever Mr. ”

“ From the great body of records, both public and private, many fall easily and naturally into the class in which the text takes a simpler narrative form; such as judicial records, laws, decrees, proclamations, registers, &c., which tell their own story in formulae and phraseology early developed and requiring little change. ”

“ On the Revolution, and to a less degree on the earlier period, valuable extracts have been taken from the journals, private letters, and reminiscences of those who had knowledge of public affairs. While less formal than the public records, or the careful state papers and official correspondence and arguments of the statesmen mentioned above, they have the value of unstudied testimony, and they cause an impression of the human side of the history. ”

“ We are obliged, therefore, to resort to historical evidence, and to seek the meaning of the words in the use and in the opinion of those whose relations to the government, and means of knowledge, warranted them in speaking with authority. ”

“ We must deal with the history, then, in the first place, as we should deal with all other histories. The historical student knows that his first business should be to inquire into the validity of his evidence, and the nature of the record in which the evidence is contained, that he may be able to form a proper estimate of the correctness of the conclusions which have been drawn from that evidence. ”

“ The issue, which, it has been shown, is subsequent to the record, and can only mean delivery, is treated as the thing to be proved; all the matters of record are but instruments of evidence to establish the fact of issue. ”

“ All is dull, solemn, and dry—paper, paper, paper—a redundancy of paper, as if it were possible to transfer the blush of perjury to paper. Fifty people will make affidavits for one that will go into a witness-box and have the truth twisted out of them by cross-examination. ”

“ For this is the true nature of a commentary (though Cæsar, in modesty mixed with greatness, did for his pleasure apply the name of a commentary to the best history of the world) . Registers are collections of public acts, as decrees of council, judicial proceedings, declarations and letters of estate, orations, and the like, without a perfect continuance or contexture of the thread of the narration. ”