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16 May 1807
Scotch Reform
Letter VI
Letter VI
V. Authoritative Plans
As to the bonä fide Appeals, the only /the 4/7/ Appeals heard, the only Appeals that draw upon the House of Lords for any part of its time, to the diminution of this portion of the whole mass of Appeals, the plan of the Majority, I admitt, contributes nothing. The more they [...?] I hear has been advanced by very high and very competent authority in relation to the plan of the Minority. My own expectations I must confess are not equally clear /simple/, not equally decisive. 1. Along with the learned Memorialists I see a certain proportion of those who would otherwise have been appellants to the House, stopped by exhaustion of purse or perseverance in the Chamber of Review: but as to those the effect produced is - not justice but denial of justice.
2. Another portion /proportion/, I can help regarding it as probable, would really be stopped, according to the expectations held out by Your Lordships learned Adviser, in the desirable and only desirable way, by satisfaction given to the [...?] party of the justice of the judgement pronounced against him or at least of the [...?] of any other more favourable from above /at a higher stage/.
On a former occasion I [...?] the consideration which gave birth to any opinion that this almost probable benefit produced in this way would not compensate for the certain inconvenience /bad effect/. This being said already need not here be said again. But what belongs to the present purpose is hat whatever benefit in this shaped was perceived by the learned Advisers plan at the expense of all that inconvenience is permitted[?], and with at least equal probability of accomplishment by the plan of the majority, without any of that inconvenience.
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Title: [10 May 1807 Scotch Reform Letter]Description: 10 May 1807 Scotch Reform Letter VI Letter VI III. Review Chamber Another instance in which for my unauthoritative conception and weak reason I have found a support, and that a highly valuable one is the authority of their learned Lordships is an observation of mine which helped /had contributed/ to form the ground for my Court of Lords Delegates. "The most important and doubtful points of law often occurr (say they art. 40) in cases where the property at stake is very considerable, or where the parties are not in affluent circumstances." "Some of these causes" (continue they) "may be prevented from being appealed to the House of Lords, merely by the additional expense which must be incurred in passing through the Court of Review:" and yet, in such cases of importance" (conclude they) "it is obviously natural, both for the parties and the law that the judgment of the House of Lords shall be obtained." Thus for their /the/ learned Lordships /Judges/. Good, say I, of the proposed additional stage or degree of judicature. Equally good to some purposes at least of every one of the existing stages. For where is that Court of Justice, however high or however low, if the transactions of which it is not desirable that the supreme superintending Court should be informed to the end that in future at least wheresoever injustice appears, the current of it may be stopped? Apply this to the Sheriff Deputies' Substitutes' Court - to the Sheriff Deputes' Substitutes Court - to the Bill Chamber in the Court of Session with the eleven or twelve Lord Ordinary, sitting in it in vacation week after week, from each one[?] of whom /foregoing/ to his next successor a vertical appeal may be presented - then on to the Inner House then back to another Outer House, then again to the Inner.
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Title: [PRIVATE 25 May 1807 + 1 1]Description: PRIVATE 25 May 1807 + 1 1(9 Letter V Plan III. J.B. Remedies The remedies held out by this part of the learned Reformers plan being thus, in my view of them, throughout inapposite and in the whole inadequate, pregnant moreover with additional mischief rather than relief, the next task, {but for which I should hardly have engaged in a research so unpleasant as this introductory one, was to find out, if possible, remedies of better promise. One conclusion has been - that a marked and easily discernible distinction exists between malâ fide appeals, and bonâ fide Appeals:- in regard to malâ fide appeals, the desirable result is compleat prevention: and that such prevention may be accomplished without any such institution as the proposed intermediate Chamber of Review:- that in regard to bonâ fide Appeals, whether it be probable or not probable} it is not desirable, that such as would come from the Court of Session, should be prevented from coming, under the cognizance of the House of Lords:- that the sort of cognizance which at present the House professes to take is - besides its being in its mode of operation, inadequate to the ends of justice, and to the effectual support of the House of Lords in the station it occupies in the government is (I say) such, as in respect of the quantity of time requisite the House lies under a physical incapacity of continuing to take, as heretofore: that under this incapacity it would still continue to labour, even although the present habitual number of bonâ fide Appeals from Scotland to the House were to be diminished in any proportion that the learned Reformer would undertake to name:-
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