date

21 Nov r 1806 Scotch Reform │ │ Evidence
21 Nov r 1806

Scotch Reform │ │ Evidence │ │To L d Grenville

Facienda

1. [...?] law[?] 2. Surplusage[?] 3. Inspection[?]

II Inspect Gen l Advantages

'. 3 or 4. Courses taken for rendering written pleadings subservient to /Means whereby[?] for improving the subserviency of/ the utmost to the ends of judicature.

Writing to them ever so little of it is at any rate in expence: writing by or with advice of a number of partnership is an expense yielding profit to the partnership. Original and fundamental use and profit.

To prescribe[?] /set/ limits to this expence is always attended with difficulty, a difficulty not to be surmounted but by written forms to the extent of the applicability of such written forms. In the hands of lawyers, Written pleadings /take all other written instruments/ have a constant and irresistible tendency to fill themselves /rise into/ with surplusage.

It was the century before the last that gave birth to the character thus described /delineated/: whether it be that nature after she had cast him broke the mould, or whatever else may have been the cause, since the days of Dudley North his fellow has no more been to be found in animated nature than a /any/ living specimen /sample/ of these of our fellow creatures /animals/ whose remand[?] the genius and industry of Caesar has recovered for our /us/ amusement from the wreck of time.
Similar Items
  • Title: [29 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform]
    Description: 29 Dec r 1806

    Scotch Reform

    To L d Grenville

    Omissa

    3. Pleadings

    [...?] attentive[?] as well as collective[?] are [...?...?] attention when by Scotch forms.

    In England, though alas! there is no such code, there is - though a most wretched /miserable/ and unworthy substitute there is a substitute for it:- there is that composed of /[...?...?] shall/ lies and nonsense and surplusage above mentioned - including the few pearls /pearly drops/ of good sense that are almost lost /smothered //drowned/ in it.

    In the mass of adjective law thus composed, the existence of a correspondent mass of substantive law, or ground without which it would have nothing to stand upon - nothing to give effect to as assumed. But by assuming this /the existence/ correspondent mass of substantive law, it constitutes - in virtue /by means/ of the correspondence - and though in a most reasonably weak and ricketty form - it constitutes[?] /creates //generates/ it. By a sort of relative it to a certain degree determines it: in one being given, the other though in a miserably [...?] way, and not in terminus [...?] anything like it, is given also: it is given as in a trough[?], one side and two [...?] being given, though with a very different sort of [...?], the other [...?] are given also.
  • Title: [27 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform To L d]
    Description: 27 Dec r 1806

    Scotch Reform To L d Grenville (3

    Resolut. 15

    Extract

    My Lord, with great /with all humble/ submission, that which is actual is possible: With us in England, extracting nothing at all under the name of [...?], or under any other that corresponds to it, is the actual practice, is if your Lordship pleases the new[?] practice.

    In England: yes even in England: ergo it is possible: as to its being "found" so, that is a very different affair. Whatever is, is: That which exists, exists. It is only what men wish /a man wishes/ to find that is "found". As to Interlocutors, in England /English law/ with all our surplusage (I speak here of Common Law) In English law (Your Lordship knows) we have no such things as interlocutors. English pleading /Pleadings in the English stile/ (for if not in that in what other?) as /are/ among the reforms of which this plea is pregnant: English Pleadings to render the matter so much the more intelligible to the Scotch Juries, to whom they will remain as compleatly [...?] and unheard as they are to English ones. But before the scores of pleadings, in the English stile takes its commencement, a [...?] series of Interlocutors in the Scotch state will of course have been run out: not to speak of the fresh[?] list /scores/ of Interlocutors to which it may so naturally happen to "to found indispensably necessary", after the termination if not likewise during the continuance of the series of English Pleadings, as well in the inferior provincial Courts which the Cause remains in a state of vibration between the Outer and the Inner Houses of the new Metropolitan Chambers, to say nothing of /not to speak of/ the Chamber of Review.

    /+ Motions [...?] until[?] motions of which there are so many more than there ought to be though hardly one for every cause out of law, motions with /including/ the rules to which they give birth, answer as far as they go por[?] tanto in some respects to Interlocutors.
  • Title: [29 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform]
    Description: 29 Dec r 1806

    Scotch Reform

    To L d Grenville

    Omissa[?]

    3. Pleadings

    In Scotch procedure, in many cases, and those happily the most common, which as already observed are happily the most simple, forms, so far as the demand is concerned are in actual use, and those upon a plain beyond comparison less bad than the English ones: [...?] by the gratuitous [...?], they are clear of so much [...?] and nonsense. The 6 th volume, the recently published collection of M r. Bill with its highly [...?] arrangements and explanation affords /presents/ in this time of instruction a most valuable set of documents.

    So far as demands /instruments of demand/ are concerned, and so far as the /[...?]/ coercive power of forms extends, these forms might be, under the proposed new system of pleading, be as doubtless they are under the existing System they are of considerable use to justice - And here my Lord is an occasion on which the art of printing, employed in a manner of which happily so many precedents are already to be found, might also have its use: I mean by furnishing the skeleton of these forms, with blanks to be filled up on such individual occasion by words designative /expressive/ of individualizing circumstances.

    But, [...?...?] uniformity, in so far as uniformity would be found apposite, the effect and use of these printed forms, so far as they were applicable, would be pro tanto to supersede [...?]: but, for the same reason that printing in addition to writing does, printing that [...?] in lieu of writing does not, such the purposes of the [...?].