date

19 Oct r 1807 Lords Delegates
19 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

Letter VII

Letter VII Eldon's Bill

Along with the Bill which, under /in/ I know not what hand comes endorsed to me with the words L

d

Eldon's, come two others endorsed respectively in the same hand. L d President's Bill and L d President's 2 d Bill, both without any other date endorsed than the year, neither of them having any intimation of an Order for printing (made by) the House.

Comparing the Lord Chancellor's Bill such henceforward I shall venture to call it with the two Bills of the Lord President, I find to so considerable an extent a coincidence, as shews the Lord Presidents plan to have been taken as a basis by the Lord Chancellor.

In my last Letter which was honestly written before this /the present one/, written indeed in the main several months before any one of these three Bills came into my hands, I was exulting at the auspicious coincidence in so many essential points between the ideas of the learned Lord at the head of Scottish Law, and those of the adventurous and unlearned as well as untitled individual who has not the honour to be /no such honour as that of being/ at the head or so much as the tail of any thing that ever went by the name of law.

(Taking up his Lordship's two Bills for the purpose of the present Letter (I have at the outset the mortification to find alas! find at the outset all that exaltation at an end.) at the very first glance all that exultation stops, and the repose of despondency takes its place.

(Great however as is my concern, my disappointment is not equal to it.)
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  • Title: [18 Oct r 1807 Lords Delegates]
    Description: 18 Oct r 1807

    Lords Delegates

    Letter VII

    Letter VII Eldon's Plan

    At the outset of my first address to Your Lordship, [...?] in the very nature of the case a certificate of Your Lordship's being provided /under the necessity of providing yourself/ with a learned advisor, I numbered among the advantages of obscurity, that of not knowing /my compleat and wilful ignorance/ concerning the person to whose share that honour had fallen: the same obscurity secures to me the same advantage in the present instance.

    That the learning of the noble Lord who is at the very head of learning whose learning forms the very summit of the pyramid, may to a first glance wear the face of a solecism /inconsistency/ should need or admitt of any such co-adjutor howsoever learned as one to whom any such title as that of Advisor can with propriety be applied, is a notion which at /to a/ first glance may be apt to wear the face of solecism: but by a very short reflection on matters of fact unhappily but too notorious, any seeming incongruity will I flatter myself be removed.

    What Your Lordship, I am confident, as well as every other reader whose misfortune it is to have any the slightest acquaintance with Westminster Hall understands me already to have in view is the extreme pressure of that portion of the business which /that/ flows in upon that side and and[?] of it which is occupied by the Court (of Chancery) which has but one seat in it and that filled now for the second time by Lord Eldon. The pronouncing of decrees /decision/ when so it has happened, that in virtue of a gift become of late years somewhat rare /which in our days has not fallen to the share of every Chancellor/, a Chancellor feels within himself /finds himself endowed with/ the faculty of making one /coming to a decision/, is among those obligations, which if it were possible for obligations of the perfect class to reach so high, would in that station be acknowledged to be perfect and indispensable. The framing of Bills is an operation which of late years seems to have been regarded as superfluous,
  • Title: [19 Oct r 1807 Lords Delegates]
    Description: 19 Oct r 1807

    Lords Delegates

    Letter VII

    Letter VII Eldon's Bill

    Letter VII

    My Lord

    Before me lies a Bill, Order for printing dated 10 August 1807, and /if/ the papers of the time are to be believed laid upon the Table of the House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Eldon.

    This Bill will form the /It is this Bill that forms the principal/ subject of the present Letter.

    Taking this Bill for its subject at least for its principal subject it is to his Lordship /Lord Eldon/ that on some account it would most naturally be addressed.

    Your Lordship's however was the first seal stamped upon the measure. To Your Lordship as first occupant, will belong an incontestable share in whatsoever fruit in the shape of acknowledged merit and respect may ultimately be reaped from it.

    With Your Lordship I have contracted that sort of ideal familiarity which results from the habit of correspondence, even where if so it may be said without a solecism the correspondence happens to be, like the sort of reciprocity we sometimes hear of, all on our side. Into the presence, though it is but the ideal presence of the noble and Learned lord I should feel an awkwardness in attempting to intrude (myself).
  • Title: [PRIVATE Apr. 1807 Scotch Reform]
    Description: PRIVATE

    Apr. 1807

    Scotch Reform

    1

    Letter V

    L d G.s opinion of lawyers

    Conclusion

    L d G.s not consulting the Att y & Soll r General

    Conclusion for Letter V or VI

    Lord G.'s opinion of lawyers testified by his not consulting the Att y & the Soll r Gen l about any of his Bills, making sure of their support whether they approved of them or no. Romilly not fit for such a purpose. Grant the man[?] for L d Grenville.

    On this occasion, my Lord, it has been among my tasks, and surely not amongst the most pleasant ones, to hold up to view the fraternity of lawyers, as a tribe from whom, taken in the aggregate, no dispositions, but what were hostile to the interest of the community and to the ends of justice, under the sway of motives of the most selfish and sordid kind, could with any colour of reason be expected.

    To help prove this proposition, in so far as authority can be necessary or conducive to the proof of it, I have the satisfaction shall I say? or the regret, for there is a mixture of both emotions, to be furnished with a testimony no less respectable than Your Lordship's and that ready delivered, and without the trouble of citation on one part, personal appearance and examination on the other.

    Reading the three Bills which have successfully had the honour of being laid on the table by Your Lordship's hands, and seeing in them those features which I have been adventurous enough to hold up to view, seeing at the same time in the public prints - the only sources of information to men of my obscure and humble level: paragraphs stating the consultations and great avisandums held by Your Lordship at different times with this and that and t'other luminaries of the state and of the law, I could not but feel a curiosity to learn if possible, whether the learned and official personages, whom I had been accustomed to read of, under the appellation of the law-officers, meaning the law-officers for Great Britain were or were not of this number?