The first of these would aim at determining the standard of judicial certainty indirectly, by simply determining the statistical frequency with which the decisions (say) of a jury were found to be correct. This may seem to be a hopeless task; and so indeed it is, but not so much on any theoretic insufficiency of the determining elements as on account of the numerous arbitrary assumptions which attach to most of the problems which deal with the probability of testimony and judgments. It is not necessary for this purpose that we should have an infallible superior court which revised the decisions of the one under consideration;[26] it is sufficient if a large number of ordinary representative cases are submitted to a court consisting even of exactly similar materials to the one whose decisions we wish to test. Provided always that we make the monstrous assumption that the judgments of men about matters which deeply affect them are 'independent' in the sense in which the tosses of pence are independent, then the statistics of mere agreement and disagreement will serve our purpose. We might be able to say, for instance, that a jury of a given number, deciding by a given majority, were right nine times out of ten in their verdict. Conclusions of this kind, in reference to the French courts, are what Poisson has attempted at the end of his great work on the Probability of Judgments; though I do not suppose that he attached much numerical accuracy to his results. A scarcely more hopeful means would be found by a reference to certain cases of legal 'presumptions.' A 'conclusive presumption' is defined as follows:--"Conclusive, or as they are elsewhere termed imperative or absolute presumptions of law, are rules determining the quantity of evidence requisite for the support of any particular averment which is not permitted to be overcome by any proof that the fact is otherwise."[27] A large number of such presumptions will be found described in the text-books, but they seem to refer to matters far too vague, for the most part, to admit of any reduction to statistical frequency of occurrence. It is indeed maintained by some authorities that any assignment of degree of Probability is not their present object, but that they are simply meant to exclude the troublesome delays that would ensue if everything were considered open to doubt and question. Moreover, even if they did assign a degree of certainty this would rather be an indication of what legislators or judges thought reasonable than of what was so considered by the juries themselves.