date

Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform │ │ To L
Dec r 1806

Scotch Reform │ │ To L d Grenville

Facienda

II Inspector Gen l 3 Appointment

2. Applicable to Scotch

If good law be written law, there is no country in which the benefit would not but[?] [...?] the [...?]

Should this suggestion be fortunate enough to meet Your Lordship's approbation as promising to shed a beneficent influence /beneficial effects/ on that part of the United Kingdom the particular exigencies of which have called it forth.

The suggestion /institute[?]/ if regarded as promising to be beneficial in Scotland /Scotch law and its law/ will probably be regarded as not much less promising when considered with reference to the law which governs the remaining and larger portion of the Empire. Several circumstances however[?] seem to concurr in pointing it out as applicable to Scotland in a preeminent degree. 1. the acknowledged inferiority of the Scotch system of procedure in comparison of /relation being had to/ the English: 2. in all[?] of the adoption of the already proposed or any other plan of reform, the demand there will be for an eye specially charged with the duty of watching over /watching/ the effects of the change: the distance of the capital seat of Scotch law from the seat of the imperial legislature /seat of inspection: [...?] and the advantage of having a fund of remuneration already in existence, obviating thereby the objection of [...?] given to the influence of the crown and the burthens of the people.
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  • Title: [21Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform │ │ To]
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    II Inspector Gen l 5 Appointment

    In the natural course of things and in virtue of the general constitution of human nature the Officer with this function and this name would not only himself be an Inspector, but in virtue of the principle of emulation he would be a cause of inspection /the spirit of that inspection would be/ in other men. Those in /among/ whom the heedless authors and unconcerned spectators if not the anxious protectors and concealers of the abuses and imperfections of the law would otherwise continue to be found, would by this means be rendered the careful observers and active discoverers. Seeing the preservation of abuse hopeless, they would feel it to be their interest to put in for whatever share it lay in their way to obtain of the reputation derivable from the correction of it.

    Scotland would then have /possess/ /present/ a reasonable probability of witnessing /possessing/ in adequate abundance a sort of character of which England has scarcely witnessed so many as one in a century - a reforming Judge. By a reforming Judge, I do not mean a Judge ready to concentrate in his own person the authority of Kings, Lords and Commons - for of that sort of character there has been so such scarcity - but a Judge seeking every opportunity of ministering by constitutional means measures /adding of his own accord to the number of his duties that of being on the perpetual look out for occasions to/ to the ends of justice.

    That your Lordship may see that the character thus alluded to is drawn /taken/ from nature and not from fancy /Utopia/ I will beg leave to subjoin a short extract from the life of the Lord Keeper North written by his honourable brother.
  • Title: [Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform │ │ To L]
    Description: Dec r 1806

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    II Inspector Gen l Appointment

    II. As to the Mode of appointment - for the first time, by the Crown, especially if the choice should be to be made out of redundant population of the Lords /Court/ of Session, and the office should find any /on the part of any/ of their Lordships a disposition to accept of it.

    - From thenceforward, by ballot in the Commons House of Parliament; with or without power of rejection, by the Upper House: no power of legislation /no share whatever in legislative power/ being attached to the office, nothing but a duty - and the function being of that inquisitorial cast which is understood to appertain in a more special[?] manner to the representatives of the people, a negative in the House of Peers seems scarcely accordant with the principal of the Constitution; and as no suggestion /proposition/ that may come to be suggested ny this Officer, can have any effect without the consent of that /the/ Upper House, such negative provision[?] seems moreover to be superfluous /a superfluity  Consult the lower Judicature and other cases of Baliol/.

    In the natural order /course/ of things, notwithstanding the secrecy attendant on this mode of voting, and without /even were/ /though/ the independence of Parliament were as entire as any theorist could wish, a candidate proposed by the Minister of the day would not in general be in any great danger of seeing the preference given to another /a majority on the side of any competitor/. (Yet in several accounts the mode of appointment seems to claim preference) but the disrepute[?] that would possibility of finding his choice superseded /set aside/ by the suffrage of the House, and the disrepute that would naturally attach upon any such failure would be a memento /warning/ to the Minister to make choice of the person, whose reputation promised him the most effectual security against any such disgrace.
  • Title: [094-136] 23 Dec r 1806 Scotch]
    Description: 094-136]

    23 Dec r 1806

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    Resolut. 6

    Jury

    Such being the properties of the proposed trial by Jury I will now beg leave to state to your Lordship, why Your Lordship has heard so much for it - nothing at all against it - why the members of the Scotch Bar, as well as those brethren of the English Bar - are so fond of it. It will then rest with Your Lordship to say /judge/ whether the good peoples of Scotland who are in question - to say nothing of their fellow subjects in England who are not in question -have the same reason to be fond of it.

    In England at Common Law a hearing with a Jury stands in

    lieu of a hearing without a Jury: and thus /it is then/ though a Jury cause consumes some hundreds of hours as much time as the same individual cause would in a Court of Conscience, it consumes less time than it would in Scotland. But in Scotland, as proposed, at least for any thing that appears in the Resolutions, every hearing with a Jury will be to much superadded to a hearing without a Jury: a cause /suit/ in the English stile, or at least the only useful part of it, superadded to a suit in the Scotch stile. in a word Trial of an Issue[?] sent out of any one of the three Chambers will be like /really[?]/ Trial of an Issue[?] sent out of an English Court of Equity. The learned combatants, after having /under favour[?] of an /the/ unbounded - however[?]/ exhausted their stock of ammunition in the shape of written eloquence the learned combatants will, have to renew the combat in the shape of the war of tongues, under a limited mendacity licence, the privilege denied to witnesses, extended /confined/ only to the representers and misrepresenters and suppliers of their evidence.