date

16 May 1807 Scotch Reform Letter
16 May 1807

Scotch Reform

Letter VI

Letter VI

V. Authoritative Plans

On this plan I see the advantage of comparative simplicity over factitious and useless complication.

Two Presidents struck off, useless beings, good for nothing but to east extra Salaries, and elbow the Lord President who desires to see no such upstarts.

Two extraordinary Lords also struck off, worse than useless beings Vampires raised from the grave, to suck the blood of the people, and to frighten learned Memorialists into fits.

Here to [...?] good purpose would be a greater inovation - a greater violation of the Union - which the only persons who seem either interested /or to possess the interest or desperation[?] /propensity// to set up their cries, are estopped from setting up either of them /have put the gagg into their own mouths/. (An estopped, my Lord! ask my Lord Chief Justice, and my Lord, now alas! EX Chancellor, whether it be not a good one.)

As to the extraordinary Lords, if the design be /was/ that one of them should be a foreigner (to a Scotch lawyer an Englishman is a foreigner) I can not help looking upon that part of the plan as beneficial, so far as it goes, and for exactly the same reasons that have always taught me to regard the admixture of /correspondent occasional/ foreigners (I mean men of Scottish birth and education) as beneficent in a high degree to English judicature. But in this advantage to make the most of it, I should never think of seeing any thing like an equivalent for the certain and palpable mischiefs attendant in the proposed Chamber of Review.
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  • Title: [16 May 1807 Scotch Reform Letter]
    Description: 16 May 1807

    Scotch Reform

    Letter VI

    Letter VI

    V. Authoritative Plans

    But my Lord, could but one of the learned Memorialists /majority/, to such a degree by the title of his first get the better of his second nature, as to consent to try causes in the new character of an honest Judge /man/ (your Lordship knows by this time what I mean by an honest Judge) - and to discover /is by this time more or less acquainted with my honest Judge having first discovered/ that (acting /judging/) honestly (in the character of a Judge and pursuing the ends of justice) is not contrary to the Act of Union or a violation of the [...?] of right - and moreover succeeded if possible, in persuading the Right Honourable President, and through him the 9 other learned Lords /his Co-Memorialists/, that the mode of judicature "most excellent" for ,5 would be good for ,5,1 s , could any such self-victories be obtained /atchieved[?]/, and discoveries made not all the extra salaries designed for both he extra Presidents with the addition of the revived extraordinary Lords could be too great /sufficient/ to reared the merit of the discovery.

    But I am running wild again and coming back to my old vision as if it were possible that a mode of judicature which is " most excellent" for 59,540 causes should be good for the remaining 4,550 of which the remainder is comprized.

    Lett. II.[?] p.52
  • Title: [11 Feb y 1807 Letter IV Resolut]
    Description: 11 Feb y 1807

    Letter IV

    Resolut. 6.7.8.9

    Juries

    1 Delay

    Taking up my pen in despair /a fit of desperation/ as the preacher took up his book[?], I set down at once six months for the average /thus explained/ minimum length of a suit[?] at Common Law with Jury trial in the belly of it: six months thus being in round numbers the nearest to the quantity by which I should expect to find it expressed. Should I have hit the right nail on this head as he did, when by a pagan miracle the foam of the horse gushed out of it, so much the better. But my Lord feeling the argument strong enough to bear the disadvantage in all allowances and having as the French say, margin enough instead of the 6 months, I will be content with 3 months making days 182, hours 4368 months ........262,080

    But, if an undisputed cause in a Court of Conscience, the length as above stated above may be set down, and after large and unfavourable allowances at 5 months - say minutes - 5

    262,080 minutes as to 5, as 52,416 to 6 - here[?] then, for the expence of the support, the nominal[?] support given to the law by the logical conjugate of the word law viz: the word lawyers, as have in 9 causes out of every 10 in the article of delay alone, for one natural and necessary particle 52,416 factitious and unnecessary ones.

    Meantime /But/, my Lord, after the allowance thus made ex majori cantilâ[?] , and for the purpose of the argument, I protest against the being considered by Your Lordships learned Scotch Reformers or by any learned gentlemen on either side of the Tweed as being estopped[?] from expressing the ordinary length of a suit by the quantity of 6 months, or 12 months, or even 24 months, for my Lord if the least quantity of a grievance be worth notice neither are the middle nor the greatest quantities altogether undeserving of it.
  • Title: [1823. Feb 21 For the giving you honest]
    Description: 1823. Feb 21

    For the giving you honest advice I on my part am in as /my situation is at the same time as/ favorable as it is possible to imagine so favorable that a more favorable one can not be so much as imagined

    With no one of you all have I ever either by word of mouth or by letter, directly or through the medium of any common friend or acquaintance had any sort of intercourse to me not one of you is or [..? ...? ...?] ever has been an object /a source/ either of fear or hope.

    Whatsoever the source of this advice be thought or supposed to be, I claim not, on the score of the whole or any part of it any the least particle of praise. No self©denial /self©sacrifice/ in any shape has the giving of it required at my hands. [...? ...? ...? ...?] it may the object of it and effect of it if it has any may be to call for self©sacrifice for sacrifice of personal interest to public to an amount which lies not within the field of any calculation I can make nothing can be more easy than to make a call upon others for such sacrifice: for Kings nothing more difficult than to obey it.

    After such observations as it has been in my way to make © on human nature taken in the aggregate © and on human nature placed in political situations in particular, my expectation of producing by this part of my advice any effect whatsoever © any expectation, of seeing a single needless or useless office struck off, or so much as a single atom of superfluous power from any office useful or useless struck off © can not be very sanguine. But to me it belongs to offer the advice to others if it be good advice to follow it.