date

19 May 1805 Evidence Ch. false
19 May 1805

Evidence

Ch. false Ends 1. Judges

'3. Corruption -cause

Note. 3A to p.1.

(a) Whether factitious recompense ought /reward shall/ or shall not be attached to labour bestowed in the exercise of a public function, depends every where upon a variety of fleeting circumstances: it will depend up on the sufficiency or insufficiency of the natural reward, if there be any in the situation in which a man is placed. In this respect neither from the name of the function nor yet from the nature of it, can any conclusive indication be drawn /deduced/. In England, not to speak of judicial offices of superior rank, to a judicial office of the same rank, that of Justice of the Peace, no salary at all is annexed in general, a liberal[?] salary in certain situations, and in neither instance without good reason. But the distinction has been the result of mature experience and improved intelligence.

In the highest class of Judges - that which is composed of the members of one of those branches of the supreme legislative body, no factitious recompense in any shape, or at any rate none in a pecuniary shape, is attached to this species of service. But it follows not that the same principle can be applied with advantage to the individuals or nations.

In a rude age, whenever, a factitious recompense has been attached to labour bestowed on the exercise of judicial power, at the same time that the facility of giving increase to the quantity of that recompense has been lodged or left in the same hands, the contravention of every one of those ends, the fabrication of a system of procedure repugnant to every one of those ends, has been the certain /constant and necessary/ consequence.

Against a power thus irresistible, and continually in exercise /always in activity/ to set any bounds to the increase would in the best informed age /[...?] of the public mind/ be supremely difficult, in a rude and inexperienced age, impossible.
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    Keep this as it is, or re-write, setting out with the principles of renumeration and quoting the London Police Act as an application of them.

    ''.3. Corruption universal: cause, the mode in which the Judge was paid. /took payment./

    We have been seeing how natural it was, (whether there were or were not an habitual exercise under some such name as that of legislative power one authority recognised as superior to that of the Judge, and as such more competent in the establishment of universally binding and settled rules /regulations/,) how natural it was (in what ever other department of the field of government the power of the legislator should have exercised itself,) that this narrow /confined/ department, the conduct of the business of judicial procedure should have been lodged or rather left to fall of itself into the hands of the Judge. We come now to see how natural, or rather necessary it was, that in the then existing state of society in other respects, this power should have been abused: abused to the utmost power of possible, not to say of considerable abuse: abused to the length of having given birth to these monstrous systems of iniquity and depredation /fraud and extraction/ which may be seen every where administered under the name of justice.

    The principle of corruption the cause of this abuse is extremely simple: it consists altogether in the mode in which, in the instance of the judicial office, reward was attached to labour, renumeration /recompense/ to service. Even in the present days of private & public opulence, much more in those days of poverty the quantity of pay left capable of being increased with the quantity of labour real or apparent and the quantity of such labour left capable of being increased to an indefinite amount at the will of the Judges. Of labour so applied, a quantity adequate to the demand could not have been had /be had/ without recompense /wages/: in those days of public indigence such recompense could not have been administered /attached itself/ to the service in the only form in which, without giving birth to the ensuing corruption it could have attached itself, viz: that of settled salary, pure of incidental /occasional/ emoluments, such as in English are called fees. It might indeed have attached itself to labour and without producing any such corruptive effect have been attached even in the shape of fees, had the number of incidents productive of such fees been so circumstanced, as not to have been incresable[?] by any end[?] worthy[?] /endeavour on the part/ of the Judge, or even though they had been so increasible[?] had not the pockets of the suitors been among the pockets out of which they were to come.
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    ''.5. Channels through which the matter of corruption

    between service and reward is formed in the manner in question, every particle of reward /whatever portion of the matter of the reward/ which the judge can hope to possess himself if by operations directed to that end, operates upon his mind, every particle of it in the way of corruption /a sinister direction/: or by a change not the less but the more effectual by being latent /quiet/ and imperceptible, the matter of reward

    A point /distinction/carefully to be observed is - that it is in the mode of connection only, of the connection between the service and the reward, not in the quantum /magnitude/ of the reward, that this /so disastrous a/ change depends: and that of any increase, when the connection is formed in the conscious and proper mode, is not to operate /act/ as a forment, but on the contrary as a check.

    If by adding to the number of operations performable /performed/, and thence of fees receivable from the aggregate number of suits in a year, that aggregate remains the same, it be in the power of the Judge to increase his annual emolument, from ,200 a year to ,400, the prospect of each /the/ additional ,200 a year operates /acts/ upon his mind in the character /form and direction/ of a bribe. Whereas if, instead of being thus capable of being by his own sinister exertions doubled, it be /were/ quadrupled to him in the shape of salary, no sinister influence takes place.