date

[091-185] 29 Dec r 1806 Scotch
[091-185]

29 Dec r 1806

Scotch Reform

To L d Grenville

Omissa

3. Pleadings

 Add[?] Equity[?] mode of bringing to Issue without direction [?] viz: General [...?] by [...?].

My Lord, I am inclined to flatter /[...?]/ myself Your Lordship will already have recognised the impossibility the Scotch Courts will be under of bringing [...?] to one Issue - in other words, that is, of employing a Jury in the trial of civil causes, without doing one or other of these things: viz:

1. Hereby the Issue forwarded and directed in each individual instance by the Court, as in an English Court of Equity, when they send a cause /question/ to be [...?...?]: in which case the delay vexation and expence of English practice will be [...?] not substituted[?] to that /the already intolerable 2/ of the Scottish - not substituted.

2. Importing the English form of pleading in globo , exactly as they stand at present: importing, /making up and for the swallow[?] acute clearsighted class of [...?]/ into a supremely well informed and sharp-sighted nation, a cargo of lumber which when taken from under the clouds of prejudice to which alone it stands indebted for not being universally recognised for what it is /country, a mass of nonsense in n immense [...?], without the sweetening of prejudice that in England makes it go down so glibly/, will b seen to be a compound of lies and nonsense and other surplusage, for absurdity and depravity /wickedness/ altogether without a parallel on the surface of the globe. My Lord I am as far from [...?] as I am from [...?] to see that moral and high-spirited, non-lawyers or even lawyers - submitt willingly o any such degradation /depravation/: and what I am quite as sure of is that Your Lordship neither has thought nor ever will think of forcing them to it. In Your Lordship's plan, had I any such [...?], I would begin with conquering them in the first instance.

3. Copying and extending highest[?] might [...?] papers of particulars in [...?] side, with admission and demand in defend [...?].
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    Upon the whole, I can not help flattering myself that Your Lordship will consider with me in[?] opinion, that the plan is extremely well calculated to fulfill what appears /appear/ to have been the purposes aimed at by it: aims which in the notion of things /that case/ are truly[?] purposes that could have ben aimed at by it:- that consequently /accordingly/ the gentlemen of the profession, robed and unrobed, learned Lords included, will see no reason to accuse the learned Author of any inattention to their interests: that on the contrary the will find these interests promoted in a variety of ways -indemnification fr supposed losses, and no losses, at least no adequate losses incurred /really sustained/: advantage to many - no prejudice to any body, but to the suitors - to the good people of Scotland, who never having been in the possession /the habit/ of seeing their interests in that character /on the [...?]/ considered but for the purpose of losing[?] /in any other character than that of/ an object of apparent sollicitude[?] and real sacrifice, can not with any colour /shew/ of reason complain[?] now for the first time of their being treated with neglect /condemned as having little //being without little// to regard/:- that though in the order /faculty/ of Advocates there may seem to be at first some ground for jealousy as between the existing professors of written, and the new professors /venders/ of spoken eloquence - as in England for some[?] time between the [...?] /worshippers/ of Common Law and the [...?] /worshippers/ of Equity, yet, forasmuch as on a clear view [...?] consideration /observation/ it will appear that there is no real controversy[?] of interests - that each class will make business[?] for the other - that English Jury how[?] well be formed to be a mass not substituted but added to the mass of [...?] law [...?] into this difference - viz. that there it was the Rome bred that was heaped /[...?]/ upon the English bred, in Scotland the reverse[?].