date

27 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform │ │ To
27 Dec r 1806

Scotch Reform │ │ To L d Grenville

Facienda

II. Registration

Of theses topics in the character of heads for judicial registration I have ventured over this plan, and surrente[?] calamo[?], to save Your Lordship the trouble of turning or so much as off so far as even to the Appendix, to submitt to Your Lordship this trusty[?] /[...?]/ view.

Believe me my Lord, that whatsoever may be their possible use, and the advantage /profit/, eventually derived from them, in their nature and import when once brought together and expressed there will be nothing that will pass /to surpass/ the ordinary sum of understanding that may reasonably and from experience be expected to be found in every hand /man/ capable of holding a subordinate pen in any judicial office: nothing in a word more abstruse than to be found among the heads /articles/ which form the matter of the Table of the natural causes of Complication and delay subjoined /that accompanies/ to the end of this Address.

And now my Lord be pleased to compare with the list of these uses the uses that have been or could have been in [...?] with those in which the practice of compelling an extraction of the [...?], composed as above, originated: and the propriety and honesty there could be in [...?] at length whatsoever is capable of having been said by or on the behalf of both parties - all along without the smallest obligation to truth, and with the full benefit of the mendacity-licence: and this without any regard to the difference between cause and cause, and the difference in the demand respectively afforded for registration, according to the intimations /indications/ above submitted.
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  • Title: [27 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform │ │ To]
    Description: 27 Dec r 1806

    Scotch Reform │ │ To L d Grenville

    Facienda

    II. Registration

    Difference in the nature and importance of the heads calling for registration corresponding to the difference between species and species of cause. Demand for registration least diversified and extensive in the instance of the two sorts of causes that are beyond comparison of most frequent occurrence: demands among causes affecting /concerning/ property of many on the score of debts on the ordinary grounds such as goods sold and delivered, money lent &c: among causes affecting /concerning/ person, common assaults (among causes generally referred to the most highly or next most highly priced class prosecution for theft, or other modes /species/ of depredation /predation/ against strangers transgression with or without threats or violence commissible by strangers)

    Examples of basis on which the demand for registration is apt to be most diversified, most extensive and most important - causes concerning property in immoveables, and causes concerning condition in life, domestic or public. Condition of Husband, Wife Father, Son, Daughter Mother, Apprentice, Member of this or that Corporation - Occupant of this or that office, Civil, Military Ecclesiastical, Testamentary[?] Executor or other Trustee, and so forth. In these too may be some examples of the cases in which the interest is not apt to spread from the immediate parties to third persons, connected or not connected with the parties by any special tie.

    [...?] & sale[?] &c.
  • Title: [27 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform To L d]
    Description: 27 Dec r 1806

    Scotch Reform To L d Grenville (6

    Resolut. 15

    Extracts

    My Lord, as often as it happens to me to call to mind the sort of advice which Your Lordship is compelled to listen to, and to every thing [...?] governed by, I can scarce help smiling at my own simplicity, at the thoughts of the ridicule that attaches on the sort of taste that I have imposed on myself: but having gone this far in it, the labour already expended, becomes /affords/ as it usual, a motive /reason/ for an expenditure of /a draught upon the same fund, for/ an additional stock of labour, of as little value or promise as the first.

    After all that has been said Suspect me not, my Lord, of being an enemy to judicial regitration: long, very long time I [...?] in it an instrument of prodigious thought hitherto almost unexampled use. But [...?]-bona[?], to what specific, tangible use is a question by which my views on this as every other quarter of the field of legislation been [...?] directed. All surplusage, all extortion out of defatiated[?], registration is still every word of it, so much expence: now then, by the word which it may be, what is the case which you mean and expect to see made of it? /derived from it?/ Such is the question, which in these cases, in my humble view of the matter ought never to be lost sight of. Here is an entry you require to be made /propose to have made: and paid for/: [...?] /well/ these when made, what and to whom will be the use of it?
  • Title: [27 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform To L d]
    Description: 27 Dec r 1806

    Scotch Reform To L d Grenville (5

    Resolut. 15

    Extracts

    And now, my Lord, since we are on the subject of what is possible, give me leave to submitt /permitt me to state/ to Your Lordship what I can not help looking upon as not only possible, but whether designed or not designed, altogether natural: and that is - that after due compensation made (upon the principle so honourable and so congenial to this country of attaching compensation to individual less by reform whenever the object of it can be found) after the compensation made for official use also for professional losses by the security /rigour/ of the intended prohibition which awaits /intended to be paid[?]/ on these jurisprudential luxuries the surplusage when retrenched[?] /cut down/ in one form, will sprout up in another: heads will fly off, Hercules will lay about him, hands will fly off, but as to the [...?] iron it will not be to be found. In fact, my Lord, considering the nature of the case considered, what instrument is there that can be adequate to the purpose, other than a set of [...?] [...?], proposed before hand in the workshop /laboratory/ of Parliament? But of this in another place.

    My Lord, neither on this occasion nor any other, will I adopt the disingeniousness or the weakness /infirmity/ of those oppositionists, who finding laying their hands on an article that would useful /salutory/ in the character of a warning, convert it to prison by administering it in the form of a radical objection. I submitt to Your Lordship the abuse not as a mischief certain, either in design or in effect, but as a danger to be guarded against, and on that account to be thought of.