date

12 Feb y 1807 Letter IV Resolut
12 Feb y 1807

Letter IV

Resolut 6.7.8.9

Juries

Lawyers fondness

It remains for me to submitt to Your Lordship what the cause is of the fondness shewn for this institution, even its present deformity /even under its present deformed shape/, by the Lawyers: by the people, at least by thinking people of all classes /in general/.

My Lord, they suck it in with their mother's milk: they take it with their pap from the hands of Nurse Blackstone. Is it necessary to state why Mahometans are fond of Mahometonism?

No institution how purely soever absurd and wreckeded, no institution to /for/ which authority is not of itself sufficient to secure in attachment; much more where the institution having an intrinsic virtue, rendered pernicious only by an extrinsic circumstance - the mode of its application, Authority if questioned, can never be without Reason for her support.

In criminal cases, the utility of Jury trial /in point of utility in point of security/ stands on stronger, still stronger grounds than in civil cases: but in England nothing calling upon the people to make the distinction, they do not make the distinction of themselves, still less are lawyers to whom it is of use in all cases, disposed to make it for them.

Thus it is that lawyers and non-lawyers and lawyer learned and unlearned, and learned dupes /imposters/ and duped /deceivers and deceived/ agree in their fondness for this instrument of oppression and injustice, (I speak of it in its present state, grafted as it is in technical instead of natural procedure) for this instrument of injustice, [...?] for different and even opposite reasons: non-lawyers because for want of that discrimination which has been rendered impossible to them, they believe it to be, in its present state subservient to the ends of justice: lawyers, because without any such discrimination as would to them would be worse than useless, they feel it to be so universally subservient to the ends of judicature.
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  • Title: [15 Feb y 1807 Letter IV Resolut]
    Description: 15 Feb y 1807

    Letter IV

    Resolut. 6.7.8.9

    Juries

    Lawyers re fondness

    The people, as was natural and unavoidable, the people at large, taking their conception of this mode of procedure from lawyers who alone had any tolerably correct and particular acquaintance with it, hence it is, that the causes and considerations which by their immediate operation served to recommend it to lawyers, served though in a less immediate way to recommend it to the people: and thus it is, that the more cruelly they have been tormented by it, the more closely they have been attached to it.

    The more formative it has been loaded /encumbered/ with - the greater quantity of jargon that in all shapes has been made to accompany the language in which it is spoken of the more subservient it has been rendered to the ends of judicature, the less subservient to the ends of justice. But these formalities, being by the jargon sublimated into mysteries have served to strengthen the attachment of the people, by adding to (the cement of) affection the (still stronger) cement of awe and reverence.
  • Title: [12 Feb y 1807 + D[?] To III]
    Description: 12 Feb y 1807

    + D[?]

    To III - Facienda

    From Letter IV

    Resolut .6.7.8.9

    Juries

    Lawyers &c [...?]

    But (says Your Lordship), if Jury trial even in its present form and stage, is not adequate to its ends, what is it that makes every body so fond of it? Here Sir, is experience, here is universal suffrage - what man would give [...?]? And again as to that natural system which you are so fond of, how comes it that no one but yourself has any where said a word in favour of it?

    My Lord different descriptions of men, according to their different situations are swayed by different considerations -

    I will first submitt to Your Lordship why lawyers are /(what are not, as well as what are, the considerations that render lawyers/ so fond of Jury trial in the present mode - next why non lawyers are /how it is that non-lawyers came to be so fond of it/ and this[?], is at the same time how it happens that we hear nothing from either quarter in favour of the natural mode.

    (As to learned Lords and Gentlemen, before I state what in Jury trial the properties are that do contribute to their fondness for it, it may clear the way to state what these are that do not contribute to it.)
  • Title: [12 Feb y 1807 Letter IV Resolut]
    Description: 12 Feb y 1807

    Letter IV

    Resolut. 6.7.8.9

    Juries

    Lawyers re fondness

    Next /Lastly/ as to ease. On this head little further need be said. In Jury trial they find a mode of procedure which in this respect is surely every where else without a parallel, in which far[?] to any amount may be and continually are received and nothing done for them: not to speak of Motions of course so happily sprinkled over the whole course[?] of procedure with and without Jury trial, Common and Equity - fees for which nothing is so much as pretended, seriously pretended at least, in any instance whatsoever to be done. At Sittings or at Circuits that for which time is never wanting is receipt of fees: that for which time[?] is present or wanting as it may happen is rendering the service undertaken for these fees.

    What is or is not possible is - to try the cause: - what is always possible, is - to receive the fees on pretence of trying it.

    But this is but a truth in comparison of what it does or at least of what in early days, before the time of Judges was so completely filled up by profit-yielding business as it is now it did for the hands that reared it, and trained it up to its present pitch of perfection - the managing members of the partnership. It rid /eased/ /ridded/ them of all causes which afforded no profit at all and all that afforded no profit worth stooping to take up. The advantage with reference to the partnership in this respect is exactly /mathematically/ equal and opposite to its mischievousness (with reference to the people), in the character of denial of justice, with reference to the great body of the people.

    And the case thus gained the case to which on the part of the people, is correspondent and commensurate to the denial of justice, ever without prejudice to that branch of profit to which on the part of the people os correspondent and commensurate the /that/ species of oppression already spoken of which is so much worse than denial of justice. I mean that which the partners both or neither of them, when under the notion of relief, in the shape of acquisition[?] or preservation of property in dispute, they embrace a remedy leaving them poorer than it found them, an affliction aggravating the disease: the apparent loser crushed to atoms; the apparent gainer, a loser; no real gainers but the lawyers.