date

29 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform
29 Dec r 1806

Scotch Reform

To L d Grenville

Omissa

3. Pleadings

Besides action reported criminal, the defence of not guilty applies in common to those actions or demands each of very wide extent. Trespass, Trove and Ejectment. Trespass (transgression), is [...?...?] giving no information at all (for are we not all transgressers?). Troves giving information which is almost always false - Ejectment, giving information which is commonly false, and amounts to nothing when it happens to be true: trespass for all its sorts of purposes not included in the other denominations: Troves for the purpose of trying title to things moveable: Ejectment for the purpose of trying title to things immoveable.

Add to these [...?] facit[?] vextum[?] he committed no such waste[?] - made /[...?]/ a distinct sort of General Issue from not guilty - as if there were no guilt in committing waste: and[?] not[?] [...?] - and not[?] [...?] - he committed no such wrong - he committed no such [...?]: as if there were no guilt in committing wrong of any sort or at least of that sort; and as if the guilt which there was in turning a man out of an estate which should have been his for a limited number of years, and[?] as soon as the number of such years swelled to such a degree /beyond all limits/ as to be [...?]: for such is the difference between ejectment and [...?], in so far as confusion so thick can be [...?] in /receive clearness from/ so few words.

These are all the General Issues in Gilbert (on evidence) and even[?] there are more than are in use.
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  • Title: [30 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform]
    Description: 30 Dec r 1806

    Scotch Reform

    To L d Grenville

    Omissa

    3. Pleadings

    What these /That which/ general assertions profess to do and are said to do, but do not, is - giving information capable of being of use to him[?] (the [...?]) for which use they are pretended to be designed - information enabling him to make if he happens to have a legal and true defence, sufficient preparation for that defence. That which they do, and which unquestionably has its use is - the putting an end to the choice[?] of useless /unnecessary/ altercation, which goes on alone for want of a form of General Issue deemed apposite, the succession of alternate instruments goes on to the length and [...?] - the name and character of the special pleading: snaps off the chain just as Get about your business - or any of he still coarser formularies in vulgar use for breaching of inference[?] might have done instead of it.

    As for not guilty in the most comprehensive /extensive/ species of General Issue in defence - that which covers demand to a greater extent than all the others put together - applied to the action of trespass it does not except in so far as the declaration in trespass may happen to contain true and intelligible information, convey any information whatsoever: applied to Troves it is out of the power of it to convey any true and intelligible information, unless perhaps it be the designation of the individual thing claimed: applied to Ejectment it is out of the power of it to convey even that [...?] and imperfect scrap of information - even that not being conveyed by the declaration in ejectment.
  • Title: [1 May 1808 J.B. to H of Commons]
    Description: 1 May 1808

    J.B. to H of Commons

    I. Reason for the Work

    English pleading inapplicable to Sotland

    II. Defence

    23. I. Of the four species of satisfaction correspondent to so many species of wrong, and capable, as above, of being taken for the subject or objects of so many sorts of demands, the two first are possessions of an individual thing, moveable in the first case or immoveable in the second. It is by the species of action called an action of trover, that notice of the demand made in the first instance is conveyed: it is by the species of action called an action of ejectment, that the demand made in the other instance is notified.

    To either these demands the sort of defence most usually made is notified by the same expression Not Guilty: more at length, I am not guilty of the act charged upon me.

    24. But in neither of these instances is any thing of Guilt so much as imputed to the defendant. In the case of the action of trover, what the plaintiff says to the defendant is - there is a something of mine which you having found, have converted to your own use.

    In the case of the action of ejectment brought for the obtainment, for example, of ten acres situated on[?] such[?], what the plaintiff says of the defendant is, a person, real or imaginary, has turned an imaginary person out of a hundred acres situated in that same place.

    In both these cases if what the plaintiff has been saying be false, there exists not on the defendant's part any thing that can justly bear the name of guilt: but as little is there any guilt on the defendant's part even admitting what is said on the Plaintiff's part is true.
  • Title: [[clx. 202] 1821. April 19.]
    Description: [clx. 202]

    1821. April 19.

    First Lines

    Distributive Law.

    A body thus transcendant was too

    /Exercised/ /Made/ By subjects not commissioned for that purpose by their sovereign, capture thus made, would have given /gives/ to the act by which it was made, the denomination of an act of piracy, /and/ to the agents, the name of pirates. But, /as we have seen/ among the attributes which Blackstone's God upon Earth shares with that God which is in Heaven, is the incapacity of doing wrong. As, in the hands of Midas, dirt became gold, so, in the hands of this god, wrong becomes right. Committing to any extent those acts which, if committed by a subject, would render the agent a pirate, a King of England never is, never can be, a pirate. The profits of piracy may be his: but, when they are thus reaped, the legal guilt - let others say whether the moral guilt be - whether the religious guilt be - the legal guilt is nobody's.

    Calling these his profits droits of Admiralty, the Arch-pirate by whom they were reaped - I mean he who, but for the poweer of converting wrong into right, would have been arch-pirate - giving to these his profits the name of droits of admiralty he gave them the colour of law, but what is certain is, he did not do away or lessen the suffering issuing from that same source whatsoever he may have done by the guilt attached to the production of it. Whether, in converting wrong into right, he converts sin into merit, must be left to the decision of that most excellent church of which he is the most gracious and religious head.