date

29 July 1806 Scotch Reform
29 July 1806

Scotch Reform

No Jury at first

Appeal to Jury

What distinguishes Jurymen from Judges (I mean permanent Judges I say for shortness Judges for Jurymen are Judges) is that Jurymen are not used to the business and Judges are. In point of education Jurymen when not compleatly unqualified, are very indifferently qualified in comparison of Judges. Security against excepted partiality in respect of no one qualification can you ever expect a Juryman to be equal to a Judge. But in ordinary cases the very timber[?] in which they are heaped together is itself a most inconvenient obstacle to good judicature: and an obstacle the force of which even in Judges.

In short there is but one description of cases though that a most important one, in which Jurors are any thing better than a nuisance and that is where Judges [...?] to the are not fit to be trusted. These cases are not altogether wanting but happily the extent of them is but /comparatively/ small. They may be tolerably well included in this description cases where there is or is apt to be a conflict of interests or affections between government and people or between the lower and the higher orders. Political libels and cases of Treason and Sedition afford the principal examples. Over and over again Judges would have destroyed the constitution and with it the liberty of the people had it not been for Juries. I am unable to conceive a probable state of things in which they would not. If a libel I know no other definition I mean under existing law than that of a writing disagreable to those who have to judge of it.
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    In considering to this purpose the constitution of a Jury I mean to view it to the best advantage. I consider it accordingly as pure /clear/ from those superstitions and abominations with which in England /by the barbarian ancestors of Englishmen/ it has been defiled, and from in Scotland it is free. Your illustrious father my Lord, when he pleasured[?] a jury he did not employ torture to force them to committ perjury. He did not subjugate the impartial to the inflamed or the corrupt or violent, the infirm to the robust: he did not lodge the power of the whole in the hands of the most obstinate. As little do they in Scotland now where they make use of Juries, a majority decides, and to ensure a majority they provide an uneven number. No superstitious adherence to number 12. From 9 to 12 or 13 are the numbers proposed by Lord [...?] for his Juries
  • Title: [2 Dec r 1807 Scotch Reform]
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    viz. among Jurymen

    Another object - and an object which though at first view of a somwehat refined nature - is too important to be neglected by us - is the encouragment to be given to the profession, by bringing the minds and morals of the people into a state the most favourable possible to the encrease of business. I speak of the use there will be in spreading the habit of perjury as much as possible among the middling classes of the people - among those classes from which Jurymen will be to be selected.

    In an English trial, as often as any real difference of opinion has place among the Jurymen, the difference is terminated by a pact of perjuries.
  • Title: [29 July 1806 Scotch Reform]
    Description: 29 July 1806

    Scotch Reform

    Facienda

    Jury

    5. No Jury at first

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    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.