date

29 July 1806 Scotch Reform
29 July 1806

Scotch Reform

Facienda

Jury

5. No Jury at first

6. Jury on Appeal

5. No Jury in the first instance except in particular cases - and those chiefly criminal ones: capital and next to capital.

6. Appeal to Jury in all cases, except particular exceptions and except where the appeal being on matter of law goes to the Metropolitan Court sitting without a Jury.

These two provisions being /in/ intimately connected, are brought to view together.

The life of the constitution depends upon Juries: but it is not in the way of [...?], but only in the way of medicine that they are /so much as really/ of use. Duped by lawyers, Englishmen and through them Scotchmen have been led to consider the institution rather as an end itself /being itself and end/, than as a means to an end. Trial by Jury is Trial with Lawyers.

In[?] the passion for Juries the nature of the great majority of causes is compleatly overlooked and the interests of the great majority of people are /as/ compleatly sacrificed. In a Court of Conscience the parties once met in Court a cause occupies upon an average no more than a few minutes. Demand, denial defence investigation of the matters of fact are all gone through at the same time. But before the matter can be or at least ever has been brought before a Jury, a deal of unnecessary time and labour a deal of unnecessary expense has been consumed. Compleatly unable to bear the expense of Trial by Jury, the Great majority of the people have been as compleatly excluded from the benefit of Justice. But the object of judicature having /ever[?] hitherto/ been plunder not justice, those alone who possess plunderable matter in sufficient quantity, have ever been considered as having any claim to justice.
Similar Items
  • Title: [094-279v] 24 Jan y 1807 C3]
    Description: 094-279v]

    24 Jan y 1807

    C3 Lett

    [...?]6.7.8.9. Juries

    There are some causes a great deal too short, too simple for Juries. I do not mean that the time they occupy /in/ at the trial that is in the collection of evidence is too short for the end[?] of judicature, but that the cause being capable of receiving its decision at the very first making (between the parties on which occasion the presence of a Jury could not be made to answer its useful purpose, the effect of submitting it to a Jury is the production of so much factitious delay, vexation and expence, without any other advantage in respect of security against misdecision, then what will be found to attach in a superior degree to the case [...?] it is only in the way of Appeal that the cause is refound[?] to this species of judicature.

    In this predicament stand the vast majority of causes: viz.: even of the causes that under the established systematical denial of justice actually taken place; much more of the bar /bars/ by which the great majority of the people are excluded from the protection of the law in civil cases were removed.

    That the causes thus circumstanced form a vast majority may be seen by an observation made /in the instance/ of the proportionable number of causes that come before /cognizable by/ the English Courts of Conscience, a number that altogether out of the reach of calculation: without rationing those which come under the cognizance of Justices of the Peace, sitting out of General Session - a multitude altogether out of the reach of calculation.

     Follow the proofs.
  • Title: [9 May 1807 Scotch Reform Letter]
    Description: 9 May 1807

    Scotch Reform

    Letter VI

    Letter VI

    II Jury Trial

    On the subject of investigatorial procedure or /for/ investigation of evidence. I had occasion to state in Letter │ │ the frequent necessity of this process, and its incompatibility with Jury-trial in the first instance.

    So far as concerns the necessity The opinion thus hazarded as well as the name bestowed on the process which is the subject of it has been fortunate enough to find a support in the /itself supported by/ the opinion and language of the same learned person. In the person of one and the same Jury the impossibility of carrying on any such process is (has been already) I flatter myself altogether out of dispute. Speaking of Jury-trial as necessary in all cases at the same time, and of this investigation as necessary in some cases, to reconcile the two necessities their purpose is, as it could not but be, "before the 'Jury Trial takes place". But, forasmuch as it is not to take place at the time of the Jury trial, nor therefore before a Judge and Jury, how is it that without thinking it necessary to state, they take for granted, the investigation will be conducted? How but by a /some/ single Judge, sitting in my plan of single-seated judicature, examining all witnesses, tracing out, and collecting all evidences of all sorts, in that same natural mode in which under Jury Trial alone it happens to have been all known beforehand it is collected in the person and for the use of a /the/ Jury? Here then, once more comes in that question which to me appeared so decisive an one - when by one and the same Judge all the evidence which the cause furnishes has been collected, why stop his mouth? - why not suffer the parties to take the benefit of his decision?- why force /compell/ them both as it were to appeal to a Jury from a decision at which they were not suffered to hear /was not suffered to be pronounced/? To what real purpose may the capacity of Juries as well as parties /suitors/ in each suit 12 Jurors and any number of suitors, except that in the capacity of suitors, for the benefit of lawyers in the capacity of Judges, Judge, official Judges and receivers, Advocates, Attorneys with a few Court Minions[?] who for the protection of the plunderers are admitted /let/ into a share of the plunder justice may be sold at an extortive[?] price, to all to whom it is not demand[?]?

    /are the good people of his Majesty's kingdom thus vexed//
  • Title: [23 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform To L d]
    Description: 23 Dec r 1806

    Scotch Reform To L d Grenville

    Resolut.6

    Jury

    Trial by Jury is Trial with Lawyers: love[?] of Juries, love[?] of Jus.

    My Lord, with submission, the most unexceptionable part of the Resolution is the exception at the end of it: "except in such cases as it shall be found proper to except from this rule."

    My Lord, in the mouths of the learned adorers /amators// enamorator/ of Jury Trial, it has not been /in general at least/ my fortune to observe any exceptions made: neither in favour of these cases in which they might give it if they would /might have given it, but would not,/ nor in favour of them in which they could not give it, if they would ever [...?], excepting only what is excepted, viz: the privilege of paying them their fees for it, without having it.

    This latter class of cases, my Lord, is not a scanty one: Take for example, what, if the Newspaper is correct I see happened but t'other day: in one Court in the day light causes, all of them special[?] Jury causes, all sent off to arbitration - not one of them tried. Why not tried? - because in its own nature physically incapable of being tried - the Jury incapable of sitting to hear them out without separating, and so ceasing to be a Jury.

    Where a suit comes to be to a certain degree complex trying it as a suit /cause/ ought to be tried, or else trying it at all becomes physically impossible, /of this description for example are a considerable part of the causes which come before an English Court of Equity./ but I will not attempt to detain your Lordship on this subject any longer if the circumstances which may conspire to place a cause in this predicament I have given a synoptic /simultaneous[?]/ view in a Table.

    I won't try this cause: Do you think I will try such a cause as this? How often have I not heard this said, and said with propriety, by Lord Mansfield!