date

4 Jan y 1807 Scotch Reform To L d
4 Jan y 1807

Scotch Reform To L d Grenville

Facienda

Juries why on appeal only

In causes not criminal (the only sort of causes here in question) Juries whether by possibility they could or could not be in practice, never are employed /called in/ except in an advanced stage of the cause, after a course of pleadings has been gone through, and other formalities performed in abundance. The consequence is that with the help of vacations and other unabridgeable intervals of factitious delay, be the actions of the demand ever so simple and the justice of it ever so indisputable, you can not obtain in the principal and most abundant scale of business the effect of it in so short a time as six months or twelve months.

Fill up with judicature these artificial gaps /receptacles/ of delay you might indeed * make a prodigious reduction of the quantity of factitious delay vexation and expense, and still make your use of Juries.

Still however you could never carry /apply/ the use of that institution to all causes in the first instance, without producing a large mass of factitious delay, vexation and expense, without any addition made to the security against misdecision even in the view, taken of the security by those whose attachment to it is most passionate.
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  • Title: [4 Jan y 1807 Scotch Reform │ │ To]
    Description: 4 Jan y 1807

    Scotch Reform │ │ To L d Grenville

    Facienda

    Causes mostly short

    Supposed security against misdecision is again inferior[?] to a [...?] why /point of law/ magnify the importance of the point of law

    /Meantime/ It is however on the ground of the pretended superior security against misdecision that the advocates of the technical system - including all who either find or seek their profit in the abuses of which it us composed - rest - (for certainly on no other ground could they hope to rest- ) its /all/ title to all the pretended excellence /reputation of superior excellence, or rather exclusive fitness/ which they never cease to claim for it. To say that the operations of the technical Courts are not attended with greater inconvenience in the shape of delay, vexation and expense would be /hopeless of credit/ as much as to say that there is no more light on the outer surface at midday than at midnight. But this extra quantity of delay vexation and expense put together as they say (or at least without venturing to say direct[?] use their endeavours to make us think) a less evil than the evil saved by that /the difference in point of/ superiority of security against misdecision of which their system is to be looked up to as the only source.

    It is to /from/ /through/ this extra and factitious quantity of delay, vexation and expense that by insinuation[?] conveyed through the mouth of Montesquieu they would if possible make us think though it be what in their own person they would scarce venture directly to assert - that the famed superiority of their system in point of security against misdecision flows from an indispensable if not exclusively operating cause: so much extra delay, vexation and expense so much extra security against misdecision: and whatsoever purchase is made at this price, they would, if possible wish to make us look upon /cling to/ as a very /most/ advantageous purchase.
  • Title: [Jan y 1807 Scotch Reform To L d Grenville]
    Description: Jan y 1807

    Scotch Reform To L d Grenville

    Facienda

    Juries why on appeal only

    Whosoever chooses to have /submitt his cause to/ a Jury may provided the cause /question/ is of the number of those that are physically speaking capable of being tried by a Jury, may have one if he pleases. To any useful purpose what more need any man wish to have to do with Juries?

    Whosoever finds himself /sees cause for being/ dissatisfied with the decision of a single Judge may betake himself to this superior or supposed superior, security against misdecision, if he pleases.

    But if a man is not dissatisfied /before it is in his power to have been dissatisfied/, with the decision of a single Judge, why force him into any other hands? But with the opinion of a single Judge, I will not ask how can he possibly be dissatisfied, but I will ask, with what reason can he be dissatisfied, before he knows what it is.

    The question being, how far and in what respects is the part borne by a Jury conducive /subservient/ to the ends of Justice, the first thing to be done is to advert[?] to the distinction between the different ends of justice.

    This done my Lord, my answer is very simple /short and simple/. In the first instance I do not employ Juries. why? because in the first instance the employment of /giving employment to/ Juries is inevitably attended with that factitious delay, vexation and expense which by the profit attached to it (has begotten in the heart of lawyers /heart of English lawyers/ his impassioned love for Juries.) has secured to that object of interested idolatry the devotion of the English lawyers and his dupes.
  • Title: [3 Jan y 1807 Scotch Reform │ │ To]
    Description: 3 Jan y 1807

    Scotch Reform │ │ To L d Grenville

    Facienda

    Causes mostly short

    It is in the small minority of the causes commenced in the technical Courts - in the number of those brought on to trial, that are to be looked /sought/ for the greatest number in respect of which there is any room for misdecision - any room in which any superiority of security against misdecision (if it were in the nature of technical procedure to afford any) could operate.

    That it is of /in/ the very nature of technical procedure as contradistinguished from natural - of technical procedure by its necessary operation viz: as productive of /pregnant with/ delay, vexation and expense is what I have had frequent occasion to shew +: by delay evidence perishes - by delay, vexation and expense, the plaintiff having right on his side is disabled or deterred from commencing or continuing his demand, the defendant from commencing or continuing his defence. Among the several causes of misdecision by which that system is characterized, these operate and firmly applying indiscriminately to all suits and to all systems is[?] in exact proportion to the degree of the complex evil composed of the delay, vexation and expense. (To this are to be added the instances of misdecision produced by the various devices more particularly characterized by this tendency such that of putting exclusions upon the evidence under the erroneous if not hypocritical notion of security against deception - that of receiving to no great an extent what is received in no other than a bad shape - part of deciding causes against rights /repelling just demands or defences/ on no better ground than the non-compliance with terms blindly fixt for various operations in other words according to the principle of mechanical judicature - the principle of nullifaction (that engine[?] of iniquity in the English system so mighty /powerful/ and so busy, in every other comparatively so feeble and inert!- with