If we can so establish the clauses, or indeed any one of them, the case against us fails: but unless we can establish all, we have not proved everything that we seek to demonstrate.

Our first object is to make the adverse position untenable: when we have done that, we fortify our own.
Therefore both the Dean and myself have drawn attention to the fact that our authorities are summoned as witnesses to the early existence in each case of 'some of the clauses,' if they do not depose to all of them.

We are quite aware of the reply: but we have with us the advantage of positive as against negative evidence.

This advantage especially rules in such an instance as the present, because alien circumstances govern the quotation, and regulate particularly the length of it.

Such quotation is always liable to shortening, whether by leaving out intermediate clauses, or by sudden curtailment in the midst of the passage.