In the early 1800s Congress was considering a bill to appropriate tax dollars for the widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in support of this bill. It seemed that everyone in the House favored it. The Speaker of the House was just about to put the question to a vote, when Davy Crockett, famous frontiersman and then Congressman from Tennessee, rose to his feet.

"Mr. Speaker, I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity, but as members of Congress we have no right to so appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Sir, this is no debt. We cannot without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one weeks pay, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

There was silence on the floor of the House as Crockett took his seat. When the bill was put to a vote, instead of passing unanimously as had been expected, it received only a few votes. The next day a friend approached Crockett and asked why he spoken against a bill for such a worthy cause. In reply, Crockett related the following story:

Just a few years before, he had voted to spend $20,000.00 of public money to help the victims of a terrible fire in Georgetown. 

When the legislative session was over, Crockett made a trip back home to do some campaigning for his re-election. In his travels he encountered one of his constituents, a man by the name of Horatio Bunce. Mr. Bunce bluntly informed Crockett, I voted for you the last time. I shall not vote for you again.

Crockett, feeling he had served his constituents well, was stunned. He inquired as to what he had done to so offend Mr. Bunce. Bunce replied, "You gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. The Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. I take the papers from Washington and read very carefully all the proceedings of Congress. My papers say that last winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000.00 to some sufferers by a fire. Well, Colonel, where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away public money in charity? No Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose.

 

"The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution. You have violated the Constitution in what I consider to be a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the People."

"I could not answer him," said Crockett. "I was so fully convinced that he was right. I said to him, 'Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head when you said I had not sense enough to understand the Constitution. If you will forgive me and vote for me again, if I ever vote for another unconstitutional law, I wish I may be shot.'"

After finishing the story, Crockett said, 

"Now sir, you know why I made that speech yesterday. There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember that I proposed to give a weeks pay? There are in that House many very wealthy men, men who think nothing of spending a weeks pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of these same men made beautiful speeches upon the debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased, yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it."

Person

"The word person, in its primitive and natural sense, signifies the mask with which actors, who played dramatic pieces in Rome and Greece, covered their heads.  These pieces were played in public places, and afterward in such vast amphitheaters, that it was impossible for a man to make himself heard by all the spectators.  Recourse was had to art; the head of each actor was enveloped with a mask, the figure of which represented the part he was to play, and it was so contrived that the opening for the emission of his voice, made the sounds clearer, and more resounding, vox personabat: whence the name persona was given to the instrument or mask which facilitated the resounding of his voice.  The name persona was afterward applied to the part itself, which the actor had undertaken to play, because the face of the mask was adapted to the age, and to the character of him who was considered as speaking, and sometimes it was his own portrait. In this last sense of personage, or of the part which an individual plays, that the word person is employed in jurisprudence, in opposition to the word man, homo. When we speak of a person, we only consider the state of a man, the part he plays in society, abstractly, without considering the individual." Toull. Dr. Civ. Francais, Liv. 1 n. 168; 1 Institutes of America Law, 57, John Bouvier.

Presumptions

Presumptions


(1)  An inference in favor of a particular fact.


(2)  A presumption is a rule of law, statutory or judicial, by which finding of a basic fact gives rise to existence of presumed fact, until presumption is rebutted.  Wart v. Cook, Okl.App., 557 P.2d 1161, 1163.


(3) A legal device which operates in the absence of other proof to require that certain inferences be drawn from the available evidence.
Port Terminal & Warehousing Co. v. John S. James Co., D.C.Ga ., 92 F.R.D. 100, 106.


(4) A presumption is an assumption of fact that the law requires to be made from another fact or group of facts found or otherwise established in the action.


(5)  A presumption is not evidence.


(6)  A presumption is either conclusive or rebuttable.


(7) Every rebuttable presumption is either (a) a presumption affecting the burden of producing evidence or (b) a presumption affecting the burden of proof.  Calif.Evid.Code, §600.


(8) In all civil actions and proceedings not otherwise provided for by Act of Congress or by the Federal Rules of Evidence. a presumption imposes on the party against whom it is directed the burden of going forward with evidence to rebut or meet the presumption, but does not shift to such party the burden of proof in the sense of the risk of nonpersuasion, which remains throughout the trial upon the party on whom it was originally cast. Federal Evidence Rule 301.


(9) See also Disputable presumption; inference; Juris et de jure; Presumptive evidence; Prima facie; Raise a presumption.
Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, Page. 1185 American Jurisprudence Legal Encyclopedia 2d defines "presumption" as follows: American Jurisprudence 2d Evidence. §181


(10) A presumption is neither evidence nor a substitute for evidence. ' Properly used, the term "presumption" is a
 rule of law directing that if a party proves certain facts (the "basic facts") at a trial or hearing, the factfinder must also accept an additional fact (the "presumed fact") as proven unless sufficient evidence is introduced tending to rebut the presumed fact. 2 In a sense, therefore, a presumption is an inference which is mandatory unless rebutted. 3 The underlying purpose and impact of a presumption is to affect the burden of going forward.


(11) Depending  upon a variety of factors, a presumption may shift the burden of production as to the presumed fact. or may shift both the burden of production and the burden of persuasion.


(12)  1 Levasseur v Field (Me) 332 A2d 765; Hinds v John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 155 Me 349, 155 A2d 721, 85 ALR2d 703 (superseded by statute on other grounds as stated in Poitras v R. E. Glidden Body Shop, Inc. (Me) 430 A2d 1113); Connizzo v General American Life Ins. Co (Mo App) 520 SW2d 661.


(a)  Inferences and presumptions are a staple of our adversary system of factfinding, since it is often necessary for the trier of fact to determine the existence of an element of a crime-that is an ultimate or elemental fact-from the existence of one or more evidentiary or basic facts. County Court of Ulster County v Allen, 442 US 140, 60 L Ed 2d 777, 99 S Ct 2213. 3 Legille v Dann, 178 US App DC 78, 544 F2d 1, 191 USPQ 529; Murray v Montgomery Ward Life Ins. Co., 196 Colo 225, 584 P2d 78; Re Estate of Borom (Ind App) 562 NE2d 772; Manchester v Dugan (Me) 247 A2d 827; Ferdinand v Agricultural Ins. Co., 22 NJ 482, 126 A2d 323. 62 ALR2d 1179, Smith v Bohlen, 95 NC App 347, 382 SE2d 812, affd 328 NC 564, 402 SE2d 380; Larmay v Van Etten, 129 Vt 368, 278 A2d 736; Martin v Phillips, 235 Va 523, 369 SE2d 397.4 FRE. Rule 301 5  *198.

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