date

24 March 1805 Evidence Securities
24 March 1805

Evidence

Securities

Ch. Procedure Technical

''. Summary & Regular#

Between technical and regular there is no such coincidence as between their respective opposites, natural procedure and summary. By technical /the technical system of/ procedure I understand that system of procedure - every system of procedure that has had men of law for its authors - men in law left free to act /fashion the system/ by their own powers, in pursuit of their own personal, (what comes to the same thing) professional, and like in either case sinister, ends. By regular procedure is generally and perhaps universally understood - understood by lawyers themselves, by whom the names characteristic of the distinction between the two systems was invented, that same /self-same/ system which has just been mentioned under the name of technical. Whatever application and extent the natural - the in general summary system has received, has been given to it, with or without their approval concurrence /cooperation/, but at any rate against their interests, against their prejudices, and in spite of their reclamations. In their vocabulary, to the very man[?] [...?] the name summary is evidently /manifestly/ attached itself. By summary they understand, and wish others to understand, precipitate, and through precipitation imperfect: a system that in proportion as it is summary wants something of that which is /is deficient in those ingredients which are/ necessary to its perfection /being compleatly suited to its purpose/. That it is regarded by them with an evil eye is manifest not only by its opposition to their sinister interests - not only by their sollicitous[?] [...?], + but by this plain /simple/ and universal fact - the more they have taken[?] to avoid the adoption of /copying of/ it, notwithstanding its under[...?] possession of that [...?] of which as far as can be without the reality and the merit they are on every occasion so sollicitous to obtain the praise.
Similar Items
  • Title: [24 March 1805 Evidence Securities]
    Description: 24 March 1805

    Evidence

    Securities

    Ch. Procedure Technical

    ''. Summary & Regular

    A distinction that coincides in some points with the above, is a distinction the terms of which are much more [...?] - viz: that between the summary /the summary and regular/ mode of procedure, and the regular But the terms /appellatives/ in question - natural and summary on the one hand, technical and regular on the other hand - want much of being interconvertible. Taken /[...?]/ in the aggregate, natural procedure as above described is beyond comparison more summary, more expeditiously dispatched than the regular. The former has of course /naturally/ the prevention of delay for its object, the latter as naturally for the reason already mentioned the production of this inconvenience. But in the nature of things it is not in the power of the natural procedure /system/ to be alike summary in all cases. Causes there are of which form a dozen to a score may be begun[?] and ended by the same Judge in the compass of the same day: and happily of a nature thus favourable to dispatch was a /the/ great majority of causes. But if at the commencement of the cause the [...?] of a necessary witness be at the antipodes, the time spent in /necessary to/ a voyage round the globe will be but a part of the span of time necessarily enclosed[?] /included/ between the non-measurement of the cause and the termination of it. In the 2 d and 3 d modifications as above described of the natural system of procedure, the impossibility of summary justice if by summary justice be understood the speedy termination of the cause results from the characteristic circumstances by which the necessity of demand for the correspondent deviations from the shortest and straitest course is produced. In this occasion as in all others, delay /lapse /consumption of/ of time/ is the natural and necessary result of local distance. But natural procedure arises if course arises in every case as being summary; and in proportion as it fails, the failure is the result not of this system considered in itself, much less of the system considered in contradistinction to the technical, but to causes exterior to both, and to each of them alike invincible.
  • Title: [Evidence 1[?] June 1805 Introd]
    Description: Evidence

    1[?] June 1805

    Introd

    Ch. Regular Useless

    Ch. Summary View of Regular Procedure

    Ch. Inability of the main body of Regular Procedure.

    Ch. Regular Procedure - the greatest part worse than useless.

    Taken as a standard and as a model, the system of summary procedure, with or without the addition of a part of the penal branch regular procedure, will serve for the /a not unuseful/ diversion and approbation of the main body of the regular system as applied to non-penal causes. The useless part of the technical system of procedure is equal to the difference between that and the summary.

    The business of the Common Law Courts may be distinguished /divided/ in the first instance into three great masses; -

    1. The business done in the Offices by Attorneys.

    2. The business done in Courts in Term time, upon Motions made by Advocates.

    3. The business done at Trials: of in Town Causes partly at the metropolis in Westminster Hall and the London Guild hall, so the house is in both instances at this [...?]: in Country Causes, in /at the home of/ the several Circuits, in the several Assize Towns.

    Of those three masses /branches/ the third is composed in toto of real indispensable business.

    The two proceeding ones may with little exception be set down to the account of made business, or sham-business.

    Of the business included in the first branch has nothing that corresponds to it in summary procedure. Yet has one thing ever been found to object to Summary Procedure? Of all the several ends of justice, is there a single one that is not much more effectively [...?] /fulfilled/ and attained by Summary than by regular? What then was the real design and intention of that branch of the business? We have seen already. To make business and profit immediately for subordinate officers and Attorneys: ultimately profit with little or no business for Judges: not to speak of the casual profit proposed for Advocates.
  • Title: [30 March 1805 Evidence Ch.]
    Description: 30 March 1805

    Evidence

    Ch. Engl. Summary

    ''.4. Arbitration

    IV. Summary Procedure N o 4. Procedure before Arbitration.

    This example /case/ is the more curious and the more valuable, inasmuch as it presents /takes its case in/ a Parliamentary recognition - a confession made by the legislature of the incongruity of the technical system:of that system which notwithstanding its incongruity it suffered to subsist. The protectors of the people rescued from the devourers /Harpies/ a part of their prey: but they wanted energy, or knew not how to recover the whole.