date

7 Jan y 1807 Omissa Opinions
7 Jan y 1807

Omissa

Opinions undivulged

Judges have neither fees to receive nor power to exercise /abuse/. [...?] of the people state this repository of state [...?] /substitute for law/, or at least a part of it, and divulged it. The moment it was known it would to answer the purpose of those who had made it. they made[?] another in its stead[?].

Find out with despotism, the people became clamorous for laws. The cry then was not, as with us give us our rights - but give us our duties. Render it possible for us to know them, render obedience possible to us. A demand so seditious in its principle, was [...?] of course as long as possible: but at last, instances[?] being in vain, laws, such as they were, such as the light of the time /age/ could produce was made.
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  • Title: [7 Jan y 1807 Omissa? Opinions]
    Description: 7 Jan y 1807

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    Codification?

    No, my Lord, you who care, as far as any one man can, and farther - I call upon you in the name of the whole people of Scotland - their hearts I hope will not their heads I am sure will /can/ discover are - I call upon you - Give us our duties: give us our Rules that we may have them: give us our laws that we may obey them. The will is ours already: give us what alone[?] we ask , if the Minister of the Commons - of the Lords of the Sovereign - if any man - the possibility of [...?]. Rights we ask for more, against law: rights we see now, but through the medium of our duties: give us our duties, and then and not till then we shall know and have our rights.
  • Title: [7 Jan y 1808 Omissa Opinions]
    Description: 7 Jan y 1808

    Omissa

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    These are the materials the very best materials of which it is possible for jurisprudential law to be composed: These are the materials of which in England that species of law, shewn[?] and spurious as it is, is actually composed. Were they better than they are, dear enough in England we pay for it. Paying still dearer so much dearer for it even than we, our brethren in Scotland, have not they too a just /right/ claim to have it of the /these best materials? If they have, my Lord, it is one of those rights so numerous in both countries, for which care is /has been/ taken that there shall be no remedy.

    Supposing /Let us Suppose //say/ that in England what has sometimes been aimed at had succeeded, viz. that those least bad of the bad materials of jurisprudential law had been kept in darkness so affectively as the rule of action was among the original /primeaval/ Judges of antient Rome: the dicta of Judges forbidden to be divulged:- be not too hasty, my Lord: reject not the supposition as extravagant: what is actual is possible.

    The next best I should say had bad materials, materials at any rate very bad in comparison of those /these/ would be the arguments of Advocates: [...?] lawyers each of them, speaking /pouring out/ collateral regard to truth [...?] be[?] /to/ his conception bad [...?] for answering his purpose: heap of [...?] the substance of it capable of being condensed /composed/ into half a dozen or a dozen propositions - general propositions such as /each of which/ coming from the mouth of a Judge, would be capable of passing for a dictum, and being made productive of the same effect.
  • Title: [7 Jan y 1807 Omissa Opinions]
    Description: 7 Jan y 1807

    Omissa

    Opinions undivulged

    Sanction given and propriety given, by authority to the labours of an individual, has not unfrequently furnished a pretence for /given occasion though impropriety to/ a prohibition put upon the rival labour of individuals at large. Here no such abuse took place.

    Thus far every thing was well. Here were the antient English Year-books. Here were the more [...?] Year Books projected, but if carried into execution, never to any useful purpose, on the feeble reign of James the first.

    When the authoritative publication of these Scottish Year Books saw /came to see/ the, an observation was made /the fact came out/, that if the best /leats bad/ materials of sham how[?] there was nothing to be found. a folio of reasonable truth, and the contents of it /but filled/ from beginning to end, composed of nothing but of that second least bad sort, I have already been describing to Your Lordship, so compleatly unfit for use. Judges, had the original form[?] borne any resemblance to the picture here given of them, Judges, all[?] stock[?]-fish: among the Advocates /at the Bar/ no want of words, but as to the words adopted in time[?] or in effect by their whole Lordships, all or any of them thus, as if it had been a point of no importance, was given up abandoned to conjecture.