date

Feb y 1807 + +[?] A From Letter
Feb y 1807

+ +[?] A

From Letter IV

Resolut. 6.7.8.9

Juries

Lawyers or people?

In Geneva advocates paid by honour[?], as Justices of Peace in England

My Lord the wonders could not be comparatively great - far greater wonders have been seen - if some grave and deeply learned, or even without being law-learned, deeply politicated[?] and Machiavellically-instructed person, should accost your Lordship in a whisper, and by profound, or rather by sublime argument (sublime it must be the air being the region which it must never quit) - should insist that some of this sort, to a certain degree of extent and accuracy[?], are absolutely necessary to be running on the body politic, less professional learning should want food to feed upon. Changing the figure for that figure is too near the truth to be [...?]. The Constitution (it will be said) rests upon the law, and law upon the shoulders of the men of law. If Atlas were laid low, where would be that world to which he is now so generous as to lend his learned shoulders?

Taking up then the Atlas argument - and admitting the irrefragability of it,- for, as substance is wanting, to it, frangibility is so too - admitting that in the shape of injustice and misery, there is a price, the payment of which in return for such sublime security would be good economy, still would come the question, what price, and thence of the price at present paid for it, whether some thing might be spared?

All these questions /considerations/ your Lordship will understand, though travelling over English ground, travel there in theory - and in search of illustration merely[?], Scotland brings the goal on which they terminate. Many running over England, all looking to Scotland, and Scotland merely with any view to practise. For in Scotland, it is admitted in all hands[?] that there are some things as they should not be, though in England as Blackstone certifieth /as we learn over and over again from Blackstone, every thing is and always /ever/ has been, and ever will be as it should be.

When a Bill for the drawing of a fee has been lying on the table, whatever petitions it may have had to encounter, I do not remember to have met with any from an association of apothecaries or urging on a ground of for the rejection of the measure the decrease threatened to be made by it in the number of [...?] and thence in the prosperity of the profession and art of healing. But then some in which that really useful and really learned branch of labour is displayed is confined to the sick-room: it ascends not to the Cabinet, or to either House.
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