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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.
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Title: [12 Feb y 1807 Letter IV Resolut]Description: 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: [13 Feb y 1807 Letter IV Resolut]Description: 13 Feb y 1807 Letter IV Resolut. 6.7.8.9 Juries Lawyers Re fondness The properties /property/ which do recommend it to /does contribute to/ the predilection of the same learned persons as its futility in respect of the crops of advantage which it pours into their laps in better shapes, profit and ease. 1. As to profit. Trial by jury, is trial with lawyers. Trial in the natural mode, is and in a great degree would be trial without lawyers. It is so[?] in the very limited extent as yet allowed to it: it would still be so in a great degree, were the extent of it /it to stretch to such an extent as/ to cover the whole field of law. Hence it is so much is said in praise of trial by Jury, while nothing at all is ever said in praise of the natural system or any branch of it. On the contrary every thing that can be insinuated in dispraise /disparagement/ of it - for unless it be in the way of insinuation not a syllable ever has been said or can be said in dispraise /disparagement/ of it - is insinuated. Witness Montesquieu, with his [...?] epigram: and Blackstone adopting and recirculating the insinuations of Montesquieu: Mr. Hutchinson with his learned and Right Honourable Curator[?] of the press adopting and circulating the insinuations of Montequieu given and Blackstone.
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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.)
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